Blinded With Science

In the past, I’ve seen many discussions on the ethics of inventions and scientific breakthroughs. In our society, we’ve generally gone with the assumption that progress is good, and it’s just expected that new ideas are going to keep coming. But sometimes someone suggests that we’d be better off without certain inventions. In the past, that’s been big things, like nuclear weapons, say. But these days, we’re more likely to be questioning the value of social networks, or modern applications of AI.

I always thought there was an aspect of this discussion that was missed. When people rue the very existence of inventions, the anger is usually pointed at the inventor. It often isn’t explicitly stated, but the feeling is that the inventor should have thought twice about whether the world is really better off with the invention before telling anyone else about it. There’s an implicit assumption that this world-changing decision should be made by the inventor. I see a couple of big problems with this.

One is that this difficult ethical decision will be made by someone who probably doesn’t have a lot of knowledge of ethics. No, I don’t want to dredge up stereotypes of scientists being unfeeling or uncaring, I’m just saying that we should probably have people with more experience and representation to make such wide-reaching decisions.

The second — and I’d say bigger — problem is that the inventor of a technology is the least objective judge of the new technology that there can be. If it is up to them to decide the fate of their new invention, then we’re asking them to make a rational decision between two options without being swayed by the fact that one option gives them fame and fortune, while the other gives them nothing but the satisfaction that they did the right thing in a circumstance they can’t even tell anyone about. And in modem "publish or perish" academia, they may have to make a major career sacrifice to do the right thing.

So I'm thinking about this because we're starting to see the down side of many of our recent innovations. A lot of people were concerned by Google recently showing off its assistant making a call on your behalf to make an appointment.

That’s technically impressive, though it’s another example of us solving a problem with unnecessarily complex technology. The claim is that you could use this to set up appointments for you when you don’t have time. But a less difficult way to do that would be some sort of shared calendar, like what Google and Microsoft Outlook already offer. But making one that everyone can use would require different companies to agree on a universal standard so that you can use your iPhone to make an appointment with your dentist that uses Google. That won’t happen, so we’ll have a future where your computer calls the dentist’s computer, and they each use cutting-edge AI so that they can talk English to each other.

But the other complaint is that it's not hard to imagine how this tech could be harmful: A human-sounding computer could be great for scams, and it would put telemarketing within reach of any company, not just those that can afford a third-world call-centre.

And what further concerned many wasn’t just the technology, but the universally warm welcome it received from the tech-conference crowd. That was in sharp contrast with the discomfort that was most people’s reaction, and it seemed to show off the industry's disconnect. While much of the outside world is still sore from Facebook's many betrayals of our privacy, it's still business as usual in Silicon Valley.

So that's what reminded me of my concern with who polices innovation. In the modern case, you can replace my hypothetical inventor with a company, but the same principle applies: we expect an entity to fall on its sword for the good of society.

Traditionally, this is where government would step in and do what's right for society. But the other shocking thing from the Facebook scandals was how unprepared the U.S. government was at dealing with technology. The Facebook hearings often seemed like a parody. In "defence" of the politicians, I would point out that a lot of their apparent ignorance was really just playing to ignorant voters. From what I saw of the hearings, the interviewers ignored the actual problems to focus on points that were minor or irrelevant, but easier to understand. But still, we can’t realistically expect judgement of inventions from politicians who are either ignorant, bought-and-paid-for, or terrified of being seen as an over-regulating commie pinko.

I don't really have a solution to all this. I'm just pointing out that we're right back to where we started, assuming that innovation is going to keep coming.