Ethics, privacy and culture

Questions without one right answer

Technology brings benefits and costs, and different people (stakeholders) feel them differently.

• Privacy: location tracking, smart speakers, face recognition and monitoring at work collect data people may not want shared. A record of where someone goes shows where they live and work, and could be misused or sold. Employers may monitor staff emails to protect company data and check rules are followed, but too much monitoring invades privacy and damages trust.
• Fairness: an AI trained on biased data repeats the bias. This is algorithmic bias: a system giving unfair results for some groups. Important decisions should be explainable and open to challenge.
• Jobs: automation removes some jobs and creates others with different skills.
• Wellbeing: designs that keep people scrolling or spending; screen time; cyberbullying and pressure to look perfect on social media. Technology also helps: video calls and messaging keep people in touch with family and friends, and fitness trackers give data that can help doctors spot illness early.
• Work: many people can now work from home, but work can spill into evenings and weekends.
• Culture and access: the digital divide between people with good access and skills and those without; accessibility features such as screen readers (which read out text and image descriptions for blind users), captions, and voice control and keyboard shortcuts for people with limited movement.