Published on the 10/02/2023 | Written by Heather Wright

How responsible – and trustworthy – is your technology?

It’s a question many business leaders are asking with an MIT Technology Review Insights report concluding that responsible technology has gone beyond being a hypothetical or a buzzword to become a concrete business consideration across industries.

The report, sponsored by software consultancy Thoughtworks, says 73 percent of the 550 senior executives surveyed agreed that responsible technology considerations will eventually come to equal business or financial considerations in importance when companies make decisions about technology use.

“It relies on you to not assume that your deployment of technology is a neutral decision.”

With the pervasive use of technology across all facets of business and life, and governments struggling to keep up with the speed and scale of change, technology companies are often being relied on to self-regulate. But according to the World Economic Forum, that’s resulting in a crisis of trust amid the growing ‘techlash’.

The WEF has called for practical guides based on proven models for companies in the tech sector to use to ensure ethical considerations are integrated into company culture and processes, and has been running ‘ethics executives’ identifying tools such as evaluation schema, training curricula and organisational models and assessment frameworks.

For businesses implementing tech, though, there is much to grapple with as they face treading a fine line between focusing on responsible technology while ensuring that focus doesn’t hurt their business should they chose not to work with certain suppliers because they’re not deemed ‘responsible’ enough.

Indeed, while the MIT report suggests responsible technology use has become a critical business expectation, how companies interpret that obligation and the degree to which their execution matches up to their aspirations is less clear – though legislation such as GDPR and the anticipation of pending regulation is a top motivation for adopting responsible tech practices.

Rebecca Parsons, Thoughtworks chief technology officer, says at its core, the notion of responsible tech is about ensuring that everyone benefits from the deployment of technology.

“It relies on you, as a decision maker, to not assume that your deployment of technology is a neutral decision and to validate that your use of technology doesn’t exclude or disadvantage anyone,” Parsons says.

She says while we’ve all seen the reputational damage that results from programs that are racially biased, companies aren’t adopting responsible technology strategies purely as a defensive play. Many, she says, instead see benefits from playing up their responsible technology aspects.

“One of these benefits is attracting talent: People increasingly want to work for organisations whose values align with their own,” Parsons says.

That benefit of attracting and retaining talent was particularly high for Australian respondents (New Zealand wasn’t included in the survey), 50 percent of whom cited it as a tangible business benefit of adopting responsible technology. That gave it the number one spot, alongside prevention of negative intended consequences, also on 50 percent.

Globally, retention was ranked fourth equal at 43 percent, behind better customer acquisition/retention (47 percent – and 43 percent in Australia), improved brand perception (46 percent global/47 percent for Australia) and preventing negative unintended consequences and associated brand risk (44 percent).

But while companies might be talking responsible tech, when it comes to why they are actually investing in technology, their priorities remain firmly in the more traditional spheres of financial gain and increasing organisational efficiency, with responsible technology use mentioned as a secondary priority.

The State of Responsible Technology also shows there’s no consensus on which responsible practices should take priority.

“Organisations name a wide range of focuses for their responsible technology practices, with inclusive design, data privacy, environmental impact, elimination of AI bias and workforce diversification each in the top three for about half respondents.

“User privacy and surveillance was seen as less important than all the other options offered, with only 35 percent of respondents ranking it among their organisation’s top three focuses.”

In Australia, accessibility and inclusive design (63 percent), elimination of bias in AI (58 percent) and sustainability and environmental impact (52 percent) lead the charge as the most important factors for Australian organisations’ responsible technology practice.

Parsons admits embracing responsible technology isn’t easy.

Companies face hurdles including senior management awareness, organisational resistance to change and internal competing priorities – the three leading challenges cited in the report.

“To get it right, you have to be prepared to examine in detail many working practices you may take for granted. How do you factor in a diverse set of user requirements when building digital products? How do you assess, model and mitigate risks of the software you are creating? Do you understand sufficiently the systems underlying the data you are relying on to create the tech?”

Some companies, MIT says, have started implementing concrete frameworks and guidelines, which may be embedded in official company policies, mission statements or codes of conduct and which often use data to measure the success of the initiatives.

Those frameworks often involve employee resource groups or dedicated roles ­– such as an AI ethicist, or data protection officer – or even entire teams working with compliance and risk management teams as well as product development.

“Demonstrating responsible technology use will be critical to counter the growing phenomenon of techlash or mounting hostility toward big tech,” MIT says.

“While businesses that use technology recklessly or unethically are certainly deserving of aspersion, reflexive suspicion of technology may also hinder its productive use.”

That’s a view shared by the World Economic Forum, which last month, in collaboration with Deloitte, launched a Centre for Trustworthy Technology, with a stated mission of promoting responsible production and use of emerging technologies such as AI and machine learning, blockchain, virtual reality and quantum computing.

“Societal trust in and acceptance of technology is dependent on the technologies in question being designed in an inclusive, ethical and responsible manner,” says Jeremy Jurgens, World Economic Forum managing director and head of the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.