Judgment Calls

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

–Albert Schweitzer

Recently, I saw Sam Altman’s announcement that OpenAI’s ChatGPT will soon allow porn–or as Altman euphemistically called it, ‘erotica’.

Here’s Altman’s complete announcement:

After the inevitable backlash, Altman said

“we are not the elected moral police of the world”

and

“It was meant to be just one example of us allowing more user freedom for adults”.

Still scrambling, he added later:

“Well, we haven’t put a sex bot avatar in ChatGPT yet”

which was a dig at what Elon Musk has already done with his xAI.

I’m picking on OpenAI here, but only to illustrate a point.

To be clear: I’m not concerned about the availabity of ‘erotica’, whether created or…generated. I’m not even concerned about the difference between titillation and exploitation or even monetization, or which label fits OpenAI’s new feature.

What I am concerned about is an increasingly common view I hear from those working in tech, which goes something like: “My job is technical, not ethical.”

I see this everywhere now. Not just amongst the captains of tech industry like Musk, Altman, or Peter Thiel, but engineers, marketers, middle managers, everyone. Even my own coworkers.

You’ve probably seen this in other contexts, too: tobacco, guns, drugs and alcohol, you name it. It’s not limited to tech.

Hannah Arendt called this ‘the banality of evil’–moral disengagement through obedience or neutrality. It seems a straightforward attempt to avoid moral dilemmas by claiming it’s not your job to even have such dilemmas, to make moral or ethical judgments. Rather, your job is to give other people what they want and let them make those judgments. Like Altman, call it ‘freedom’ and be done with it.

But that ‘freedom’ coin always comes with a flip side: responsibility. And we humans don’t like to flip that coin over. Instead, we say “It’s just business”, or “guns don’t kill people, people do”, or more grim: “I was just following orders”.

Of course, nobody’s job (or life) is disconnected from ethics or morality; we all apply them (with varying degrees of consistency and success) to how we live and work.

I’m not talking about ‘corporate’ ethics or morality (whatever those are), but personal. Ultimately, these are always personal decisions. What do you believe is right or wrong? Where do you stand? Corporations don’t make those decisions: only people do, even if they obscure it behind a corporate veil.

So what should we do, how should we act?

First, let’s understand that tech is a different animal altogether: unlike tobacco or guns or alcohol, tech pervades every aspect of human life and can affect the planet itself, making it a domain where we need to pause and reflect more about the consequences of our actions.

Then, let’s set the bar higher: instead of starting with why not?, let’s start by asking why? –and try to be sure we come up with a damn good answer.

When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.

–Shirley Chisholm