Ask HN: How can we change ethics in big tech?

Let me know when you can solve for 1 or more of

- Human Greed

- A system set up on the principal of the more you have capital you have, the more capital you can acquire.

- The instinct to achieve "security" for you and your family

- Democracy being run on averages, and the IQ/EQ of the average person is frighteningly sub-par

- Ethics being an idea not a formula

- The instinct for most of our educated population to focus on second rate problems they are not in a position to solve

Then get back to us

Tech worker unions?

As well as designer unions?

Basically empowering tech workers to refuse unethical work, collectively, without the threat of losing their jobs and becoming homeless.

And, sufficient diversity to ensure representation of vulnerable populations in the workforce.

For example, a product team having women in decision making positions is much less likely to ship a product lacking basic protections from types of abuse that only women experience - compared to a product team consisting of tech bros.

Mike Monteiro has a fantastic talk on the topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIcM21l61TE

Probably by realizing that people who work in tech are no better and not more moral than people working in any orher industry.

That is not serious enough?

To be fair Google gives you a lot of control over what data is kept but the defaults suck.

I am not sure what happens now but there was the PRISM debacle. Send an email to a non US citizen and they can end run your rights because the other person isn’t.

At scale things that are innocent are no longer so. Your neighbour knows you had a visit from the police at 6am. But what if a company knows who has visited who, where everyone has been, what sites they have visited (e.g. anger management class, criminal lawyer) and then can piece it all together in a world where, well look at Trump - you can make a misdemeanour into a felony with the right constructs against even a powerful person.

It is quite dangerous for the average person.

And this is pre AI revolution.

That depends entirely on which niche of society you look at. The Amish are the epitome of ethics-driven technical choices. Even though their specific ethics mean a rejection of much of today's tech, it shows that communities can and do exist that put their ethics into their tech choices.

The problem is that we live in a society where the bulk of people focus on money as the #1 priority. Fixing technical ethics involves making changes that allow people to have different top priorities.