The Shape of Uncertainty: Five Questions for New Technologies
/Most people believe that new and emerging technologies and innovations should be subject to critical assessment—including, usually, a risk assessment and ethical evaluation. But fewer seem to have given much thought to exactly how those evaluations should be structured and conducted. Ideally, organizations that recognize the need for assessment will turn to social scientists and humanists to help. But what exactly can these kinds of experts bring to the discussion?
As a social scientist and applied ethicist, I try to help people and organizations think in more systematic and evidence-based ways about the economic, social, political and ethical implications of the technologies they are developing, adopting, regulating or simply discussing. Identifying and reflecting on those implications often requires intensive, detailed, and sometimes mind-numbing, investigation. But it usually begins by asking five basic questions:
What are the intended uses of this new technology?
What are other possible and likely uses of the technology—benevolent and malevolent?
What are the benefits and risks of these various uses?
How are the benefits and risks distributed across gender, age, education, geography, class, race, ethnicity and other relevant characteristics?
What are the consequences of the technology failing—including, consequences for individuals, organizations, communities, and the economy and society more broadly?
The questions constitute a starting point—not an end point—for discussion. In fact, I usually ask a half dozen or more follow-up questions on each of the main questions. Moreover, not too far in the background is a series of ethical questions about whether the technology and its possible uses are consistent with values like liberty, equality and community; whether the expected distribution of benefits and risks is fair; and what the technology implies for who we want to be and how we ought to live—both individually and collectively.
Trying to answer the questions often reveals just how much we don’t know about the trajectories and implications of new technologies and innovations. At the same time, working through the questions produces a better sense of the nature and shape of the uncertainty we face, and a clearer understanding of additional questions and research we might need to pursue to improve our vision.
In his brilliant but challenging novel, Blindness, Nobel Laureate José Saramago imagines a community experiencing an epidemic of “white blindness” which afflicts everyone. While navigating their dangerous new reality, some residents begin to realize that their blindness might be a literal manifestation of the moral and intellectual blindness that characterized their lives in the pre-epidemic world. One of Saramago’s protagonists observes that, “I don’t think we did go blind. I think we are blind. Blind but seeing. Blind people who can see, but do not see.” By asking questions more explicitly and systematically—even when there are no clear and complete answers—we can improve our vision and, in turn, our ability to navigate and shape our technological futures.