( May 19, 2025 – May 20, 2025)

How can we understand the current ethics debate in the tech world?
Starting from a contribution by Moshe Y. Vardi, this text analyzes the background of the so-called “ethics crisis” in the technology sector and develops an extended dynamic perspective that incorporates cultural, systemic, and evolutionary dimensions.

CONTEXT

This text belongs to the overall theme REVIEWS.

INTRODUCTION

In the section “vardi’s insights” of the CACM Moshe Y. Vardi states January 2025, that he had in January 2019 a wrong understanding of the ethical-crisis vibe in 2018, because he assumed, that it would be enough, to install as remedy a public policy with appropriate laws and regulations.[*]

To issue laws and regulations is one thing, but what does this help if the impact of the new computing technology in everyday life is negative? What if the impact of market power is too strong for the political parties to install effective laws and regulations to weaken bad implications? What if the everyday ‘view’ of the new technology is forgetting the humans themselves and is focusing instead on the new technology as the main good? What does it help in such a situation to have an ‘ethical star’ in the format of the “ACM’s Code of Ethics” [1] as guiding principle which is using words like ‘public good’, ‘social responsibility’ or the ‘quality of working life’?

Vardi locates these questions to exemplify in the working environment of a Big Tech company which as such can be unethical and where the human actor has always to deliberate, when and what to ‘optimize more’ : the ‘me’ or the ‘we’, and what has this to do with the ‘public good’?

And Vardy points out, that the ‘lack of being ethical’ of a Tech company will usually not be ‘healed automatically’ by the market. This implies that a ‘worker’ who needs money by working can be cast in a real dilemma: working in an unethical company and getting money to enable his individual life, or not working and being left alone without money.

Vardi draws from this the conclusion : “By and large, Big Tech workers do not seem to be asking themselves hard questions, I believe, hence my conclusion that we do indeed suffer from an ethics crisis”.

DISCUSSION

The concept of ‘public good’

This sketch of an ‘ethic crisis’ by Vardi raises some questions. Let us start with the concept of the ‘public good’. This concept is used as the primary point of reference for all other subsequent ethical opinions.

The ‘concept as such’ has no meaning. To be able to offer some meaning it needs a sufficient rich cultural context of associated other concepts and expressions, offering known meanings for usage.

These ‘cultural contexts’ are located in a great variety of global dimensions or are limited nationwide or are locally restricted. Furthermore there are different kinds of social formats rooted in different religious or philosophical or whatever traditions. Which one of these should be selected as the ‘official main point of reference’?

Leaving out the necessary discussion to clarify all these possible options a ‘working hypothesis’ will be formulated here as a proposal accompanied by some discussion.

A possible working hypothesis

To master the great variety of possible ‘value reference points’ out of the history one could simply ask, which conditions are necessary for some human actor to ‘survive’ in this world located on the planet earth.

A simplified argument could run as follows: an individual actor cannot survive, but the ‘life’ manifested as a population can somehow survive as a population. And the population of homo sapiens actors can only survive as part of the bigger population of all living systems on this planet earth. And the ‘whole Life’ on the planet – as part of the solar system and even more … — is characterized by a collection of physical properties and dynamics which all together define a ‘process’, whereby life is developing. As far as we understand today this ‘process of Life’ enables a development of an increasing variety of systems associated with an increasing complexity of these, thereby demonstrating furthermore a clear acceleration in the development of complexity. Part of this development is the outgrowth of different kinds of ‘tools’, which are enhancing the ability of life to change the environment physically as well as in the dimension of ‘knowledge’ (‘knowledge’ is here more than ‘information’).

To that extend that the complexity of ‘systems of life’ has surpassed the level of mastering free symbolic communication associated with recursive processes of abstractions, with emotions as well as with the ability of coordination of actions between different brains, a population of such systems can generate ‘abstract models’ of themselves within some environment, related to some ‘possible goals’. These elaborated models and goals can then be used as ‘values for a common survival’.

In such a context the concept of a ‘public good’ can gain some ‘real meaning’ associated with such models or goals. As far as these models and goals can be traced to the ‘real world’ one can ‘measure’ the quality of such models and goals with regard to their ‘success in the real world’. In this scenario a ‘measurable public good’ seems to be possible accompanied with a minimum of rationality.

Because of the natural ‘finiteness’ of constructed knowledge in the format of dynamic models with goals it can happen, that within the same ‘time interval’ more than one model exists with assumed changes and goals. This ‘plurality’ in views can be understood as a necessary condition of a ‘multi-path search process’ for a more ‘integrated view of life in the universe’.

Distributed ethical responsibility

In this view of a ‘dynamic concept of public good’ the individual worker in a tech company would not per se be responsible for the more general structures of a company, of a market or even of a whole nation. The responsibility for ‘ethical structures’ and ‘ethical processes’ has to be located on different levels of organization each with only a limited responsibility. In a real democracy an individual worker could vote in elections for those people, which support a more advanced ethical perspective – if there exist such people at all –, whereas an individual worker within a full autocratic system has no legal option.

An open future

As we know from everyday experience and from history there is no guaranty that there are enough people to find and support the ‘optimal dynamic models with goals’ to enable a good process of survival for ‘all life’. Thus it is an ever ongoing complex process to find the right definition of the ‘public good’. Knowing this it is highly questionable to present a ‘Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct’ without reference to the real process which ‘generates’ such a code. Without an explicit hint to such a generating process it seems to be a great danger to produce the illusion, that such a ‘Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct’ is an answer to important questions whereby it is possibly only a collection of empty words.

[*] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3709024

[1] https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics