In collaboration with Deloitte and the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University Ethics by Design: An organizational approach to responsible use of technology WHITE PAPER DECEMBER 2020 Cover: Getty Images/Gremlin Inside: Getty Images/Mihailo Milovanovic; Getty Images/Gorodenkoff Contents 3 Foreword 4 1 Introduction 6 1.1 Three design principles for promoting ethical behaviour 8 2 Ethics by design principles 8 2.1 Attention 9 Examples of tools and tactics to drive attention 11 Consequences of failing to promote attention 11 2.2 Construal 12 Examples of tools and tactics to drive construal 13 Consequences of failing to promote construal 13 2.3 Motivation 14 Examples of tools and tactics to drive motivation 15 Consequences of failing to promote motivation 16 2.4 Summary 17 3 Findings 18 3.1 The importance of integrating attention, construal and motivation 19 3.2 Getting construal right is the most challenging 19 3.3 Instituting ethical reviews and assessments is becoming standard 20 3.4 Employees look to senior leadership to provide ethics frameworks 22 3.5 Ethics deepens relationships with customers 22 3.6 Diversity is fundamental 23 3.7 Ethics is a discrete business function 24 3.8 Ethical literacy develops as the company matures 25 3.9 Summary 26 4 Recommendations 27 Conclusion 28 Contributors 29 Acknowledgements 31 Endnotes © 2020 World Economic Forum. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system. Ethics by Design: An organizational approach to responsible use of technology 2 Foreword From AI to blockchain to quantum computing, This paper focuses on the last component, an the explosive growth of new digital technology is area in which research has to date been nascent a defining feature of the current era. While new but which remains no less critical. While certain technologies can serve as powerful tools to help foundational ethical risks can be mitigated organizations become smarter and more agile, through the establishment of clear operational their deployment must be carefully planned to rules, many others require the capacity for avoid adverse ramifications. ethical judgement and organizational factors that support translating that judgement into action. As Most companies today understand the technology is increasingly incorporated into the Beena Ammanath importance of ensuring that the technology daily operations of companies across sectors, Executive Director, Deloitte AI Institute and Trustworthy they employ is trustworthy (i.e. that it addresses leaders must prepare their people to be aware of and Ethical Technology foundational security, privacy and regulatory the ethical risks posed by emerging tools, equip concerns). Lately, however, many are beginning them to make ethical choices even in situations to acknowledge a range of new ethical challenges in which information is imperfect or ambiguous, related to how such emerging and disruptive and motivate them to act upon that judgement in technologies are designed, delivered and used in ways that advance prosocial goals. ways that may erode fundamental human values (e.g. equality and autonomy), and which require Given the immense impact that technology can careful judgement to identify and mitigate. While have on individuals, corporations and society critical ethical thinking about technology may more broadly, institutions have begun to actively be a new skill set for some, almost everyone identify best practices to ensure its ethical use agrees that issues such as data privacy and (e.g. Deloitte’s Trustworthy & Ethical Tech offering Kay Firth-Butterfield algorithmic bias can pose significant reputational and the Markkula Center’s Ethics in Technology Head of AI and Machine and financial risks if unaddressed. This paper Practice). To that end, this paper reflects a Learning, Member of the seeks to offer clear principles and practices that collaborative effort between the World Economic Executive Committee, organizations can apply across their operations to Forum, Deloitte and the Markkula Center for World Economic Forum improve the ethical use of technology. Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, which we hope will offer helpful guiding principles and We believe a comprehensive approach to illustrative examples that can support your firm’s promoting the responsible, ethical use of journey in navigating the evolving landscape of technology should consider three critical embedding ethics in technology. components: education in how emerging technologies work and what ethical challenges they might pose; the product life cycle and development of the tools needed to help drive ethical outcomes; and the design of organizations, to ensure that the people creating, Don Heider deploying and using these tools are motivated Executive Director, Markkula and equipped to make ethical choices. Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University Ethics by Design: An organizational approach to responsible use of technology 3 December 2020 Ethics by Design: An organizational approach to responsible use of technology 1 Introduction I don’t think technology by itself improves people’s lives. Unless there’s commensurate ethical and moral improvements to go along with it, it’s for naught. Jaron Lanier1 Ethics by Design: An organizational approach to responsible use of technology 4 While stories of ethical failures and calls for ethical it will be important to ensure that the evolving legal leadership in business dominate today’s headlines, and regulatory systems do not needlessly impede particularly in relation to the tech sector, the topic technological innovation. is hardly a new one. Ethical discussions pertinent to business conduct date back centuries, and These calls have been met with a proliferation of business ethics emerged as an academic discipline technology ethics statements of principles and in the wake of environmental and anti-corporate guidelines. For example, AlgorithmWatch’s AI protests in the United States in the 1970s. Yet the Ethics Guidelines Global Inventory has compiled continued emergence of high-profile corporate no fewer than 160 sets of AI principles and scandals throughout the decades attests to the fact guidelines promulgated by prominent companies that ethical research, debate and instruction have and organizations.7 Similarly, many companies have not consistently translated into ethical behaviour. adopted codes of business ethics. But issuing a set of guidelines or a code of conduct does not Furthermore, previous generations’ leaders have guarantee that more ethical behaviour will follow. sent mixed signals about the need for ethics in business training and decision-making. In 1970, Another signature issue of our time – the Milton Friedman famously argued that, “There is one revolution in our understanding of human and only one social responsibility of business – to psychology ushered in by Daniel Kahneman, use its resources and engage in activities designed Amos Tversky and their collaborators and to increase its profits so long as it stays within the followers – offers an underused toolkit to help rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open bridge the gap between ethical intentions and and free competition without deception or fraud.”2 ethical behaviour within organizations. In realms One sociologist reported that getting Harvard such as law, economics and public policy, Business School to teach ethics in the late 1980s the idealized view of perfectly rational, self- (after receiving a $20 million grant to do so) was interested economic actors has given way to nearly impossible. He commented, “They said, ‘We a more nuanced view of actors characterized teach people how to put small toys into large boxes by bounded rationality, bounded self-control, so they seem bigger. We put hot colors onto boxes bounded self-interest and bounded ethicality.8 to produce impulsive buying. If you want us to teach ethical behavior, we’re out of business.’”3 A major implication explored by the behavioural economics pioneer and Nobel laureate Richard Today’s climate of opinion is considerably different. Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein in their In 2019, the Business Roundtable moved away “choice architecture” manifesto Nudge suggests from Friedman’s doctrine of shareholder primacy, that – contrary to the classical economics declaring the need to make “a fundamental postulates – providing information and offering commitment to all of our stakeholders”, to support material incentives are not the only drivers communities and uphold the environment.4 More of human behaviour. The manner in which recently, to mark the 50th anniversary of the information is provided (for example, the choice publication of Friedman’s essay, a chorus of leading of frames) or choices arranged (for instance, economists and business leaders have articulated the choice of defaults) can significantly and the need to move beyond a single-minded focus on systematically affect behaviour. Thaler stated, “A short-term profits.5 good rule of thumb is to assume that everything matters.”9 This carries a powerful practical This shift in sentiment occurs at the same historical implication: We can harness insights from the moment as a widespread acknowledgement of the social and behavioural sciences to design our potentially deleterious effects of new technologies on operating environments in ways that promote individuals