Ethically Wired: Computer Ethics for Technologists

Hello, everyone. My name is Salamu-Eat-Moges, and the title of my talk is Ethically Wired, Computer Ethics or Technologist? So a little bit about me before we begin. I go by Salam. I'm a software engineer at a medical technology company called Apella. Prior to that, I studied at New York University and I graduated with a computer science degree. And I'm passionate about accessibility, inclusion, and activism in the tech space.

With that, what is computer ethics? To preface this talk, I'd first like to say what we won't be doing. And that's really just calibrating anyone's moral compass. Ethics treads murky waters, so to give a hard and fast, this is right and this is wrong, really wouldn't be doing justice to the topic overall and specifically this conversation we're having. But what we will be doing is presenting you all with open questions to bring to your respective communities and discuss what computer ethics is and how we can integrate guardrails into our practices.

Now, the definition. Computer ethics is the set of agreed upon principles that govern the use of technology. And a typical problem in this space goes as follows. First, there's an advancement in technology. Then technologists are presented with new choices and decisions to make. And normally, they'll look at existing policies to figure out what's the best thing to do next. But unfortunately, some policies aren't relevant or the situation is more complex than the intended policy was supposed to address. So here lies the central task of computer ethics. And that's really to proactively formulate policies to better guide our actions on the societal level.

Now, why should we care? More broadly speaking, as technologists, we have varying goals, stakeholders and priorities at hand. But I argue that regardless of where your focal point lies, having an ethical framework will only result in the best overall outcome for both you and your goals. Let's take these three archetypes of technologists as examples. So let's say you're the type of technologist that cares about speed and experimentation. Well, computer ethics should matter to you for things like long-term relevance, user trust and adoption, and overall avoiding harm. While building technology quickly is important, integrating ethical considerations into your development process can enhance the quality, sustainability and positive impact of your creation. Now, it's not about slowing down innovation, but rather ensuring that your innovation contributes to a better world for everyone. Now, let's say you're the type of technologist that cares about business principles, metrics and industry trends. Well, computer ethics should matter to you for things like reputation and brand value, long-term sustainability and risk mitigation. Incorporating computer ethics into your business practices enhances your ability to succeed in a rapidly evolving and interconnected world. Ethical considerations not only align with fundamental business principles, but also position your business for things like long-term growth, sustainability and positive influence within your industry.

Now, lastly, let's say you're the type of technologist that simply cares about doing what's right. Well, computer ethics should definitely matter to you for things like minimizing harm, holding folks accountable and positively contributing to society. Ultimately, caring about doing what's right means taking a thoughtful and responsible approach to the use and development of technology. Integrating computer ethics into your decision-making process reflects your commitment to ethical principles and fostering a better, more compassionate technological landscape.

Now, all this to say is that ethics is for everyone regardless of where your goals and priorities lie. Now, with that, let's look at how ethics could actually affect our work. And we'll be doing that by looking at the product development cycle. Now, I'm sure all of you here are familiar with this life cycle, but let's just go over it quickly. So, when we first are thinking about building a product, we brainstorm. We think about what the features could be. We think about how people can use it. Then after that, we'll define goals and prioritize them. We'll design, build, test, and possibly go back to building based on how the test went. And then ultimately we'll launch our product into the world, see how people react to it, and then build features and pivot off of that and then go back to the brainstorming session. And the cycle continues over and over.

Now, let's think about how a lack of ethical decision-making may affect this cycle. And more specifically, let's use bias. Bias can be introduced during the brainstorming session when there's a homogenous team working together on a product to ideally benefit a diverse group of people. That leads to poorly defined goals only benefiting one group, which then leads to designing and building a product that centers only on one kind of user and works okay or poorly for other types of users. Then testing on a limited data sets validates the biases that have gone unnoticed thus far. And ultimately, we're releasing a product into the world that doesn't benefit all the communities that it's trying to serve.

And unfortunately, in many cases, we'll see products and features left in this state, causing communities to either stop using the product entirely or find hacks to best fit their needs. Now, in some cases, however, we see organizations or companies go back to help better accommodate the diverse audience that's using their product. And it's great that they were able to make the necessary changes to make the experience more inclusive. However, the consequences of retrofitting inclusivity as opposed to baking it into the infrastructure results in things like money loss or software factoring and additional time spent on all fronts, whether from the product manager, the engineers, the designers, etc. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't make these improvements post-launch if necessary, but it also is more so to highlight that incorporating ethical frameworks earlier helps to avoid these problems later.

Now, let's see at where we can bake ethics into the product development cycle. So firstly, incorporate premortems into the pre-development process. A premortem is an exercise where your team thinks of all the scenarios of where your products can fall short and coming up with solutions ahead of time before launching and even developing the product. Next could be check-ins to see if the ideas that you're actually trying to build make sense for the communities you're trying to serve.

After defining the goals, validate the goals are prioritized properly. What a CEO, what a designer, what an engineer might think is the most important thing might not actually be the most important thing for the communities. After the design, integrate feedback and suggestions in the design phase. And of course, lots and lots of user testing.

Outside of looking at the product development life cycle, let's look more broadly at how we can promote proactive inclusivity. And thankfully, we don't actually have to reinvent the wheel. The Association for Computing Machinery actually has a Code of Ethics, and I'd like to pull out three of the many parts of the Code of Ethics. The first is contribute to society and to human well-being. Being in tech, you can get lost in all the money, the perks, the benefits of being a trailblazer and all these other things. But just remembering the humanity of what we're all doing, and we ultimately just want to make the world a better place, is really critical in what we're building. Next is foster public awareness and understanding. This is critical, especially if you work with vulnerable communities such as young kids or the elderly. And lastly, ensure that the public good is the central concern in everything that you're doing.

Now, if you'd like to see the full list of the ACM's Code of Ethics, feel free to scan the QR code here. Now, before I leave you, I'd like to show you some resources that also supported me in my journey and learning about computer ethics and responsible building. And here are some books that I've read, and then I'd also like to highlight Design Justice specifically has a Design Justice Network that helps bring people together in this space. Now, if you want to connect with me specifically, feel free to scan the QR code here or all these various places that you can find me via LinkedIn or email or on my website. Thank you so much.