Responsible Innovation: Evil is as Evil Does

The Fondazione Giannino Bassetti organization recently published “Conversations on Innovation, Power and Responsibility.”  In this document, author Jeff Ubois captured a few of my thoughts in a section entitled: “Applying the UN Declaration of Human Rights” (pp 31-33).   And as related to “is technology good or evil?” I said this:

 

Excerpt: “You probably can’t stop people from doing R&D to see what’s possible. But then how is it going to be deployed, what are its controls, what’s the oversight and accountability? And on and on, a series of checkpoints about how it’s going to be used,” Jonas says. “Until you pair the technology up with the use, you can’t even begin to assess its spectrum of good to evil. You have to go right to a use case and right to a governance model, and then you can start determining where it is going to sit on the spectrum of good versus evil.”

 

The entire publication is available in PDF here.

 

And then, of course, everyone can just change their mind and use something planned for one purpose for an entirely different purpose: A coat hanger to open a car door.

 

RELATED PAPERS: 

 

Giannino Bassetti Foundation: Jeff Ubios

Transparency, Privacy and Responsibility: An Interview with Jeff Jonas 

 

RELATED POSTS: 

Responsible Innovation: Designing for Human Rights

Responsible Innovation: Some Things are Best Left Un-invented

Responsible Innovation: Staying Engaged with the Privacy Community

My Testimony Before The DHS Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee (2005)

Comments

[Gail Jonas]

Chris Hedges has written an intersting article about whether or not the Net has improved discourse/democracy: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_information_super-sewer_20100214/.

I don't necessarily agree with him but found his perspective interesting.

[Tarun Srivastava]

I would beg to differ here. Its not innovation that needs to be responsible. Its the application or use of it.
Let me give some examples.
Electricity - The fact that some people use it to electrecute or get electrecuted by mistake does not mean the innovator had a responsibility not to get his idea out.
Nuclear Power - The ability to harness the most abundant form of energy is natural. Now if some people take it to extreme and create Nuclear bomb should not stop such thinking.
There are scores of other things - Petroleum (maybe used to set fire, Air crafts - Fighter Aircrafts to bomb n kill, cough syrup - To get High:), and the very basic thing used in every houeshold, Knife - Some people use it to stab). Its the twisted human mind that would discredit the innovation not the innovation itself.
The most striking innovation that I know of is Anthrax. It only has destructive use as far as I know. But we can learn a lot from it. If we try to understand how a bacteria protects its DNA to increase its chances of survival or in simple words makes it a tough guy, we can may be one day create a medicine which can help human survive extreme weather, extreme radiation or even help in space missions. Possibilities are endless. So its not the innovation but the use or rather misuse of it should be of concern. Not entirely related but something which effects me in my life. Not that H1B visa is a wrong idea. The abuse of it maybe. The govt should understand there are some people who abuse it and there are some who definitely would add to the American Brain power. But USCIS seems to be inspired by Mr Jeff Ubois and not by the ideas of like mine.