Future Ethics

bias. Discrimination is already interwoven in the fabric of our tools and datasets.

Data always looks backward, meaning historical prejudice is frozen into a training corpus.

19 The future isn’t a mark on a map; it’s the map itself. Collectively we get to decide which coordinates to head to.

Unintended consequences affect familiar people in unknown ways, while externalities happen to people we’ve ignored. In other words, we overlook unintended consequences by not looking deeply enough, but we miss externalities because we were looking in the wrong places.

Ethics should be about living our best lives, not seeing how low we can sink. And

The Incredible Machine, ‘Transparent Charging Station’. Reprinted by kind permission.

We must show that we deserve society’s trust by engaging the public in the moral decisions that surround technology, and prioritising the good of all, not just our revenue streams.

‘Ethics is the aesthetics of the future.’6

Design changes how we see the world and how we can act within it; design turns beliefs about how we should live into objects and environments people will use and inhabit.