The evolving intersection of humans and tech in the workplace has the potential to deliver huge benefits for workers and society. Mechanization and automation can release humans from repetitive or dangerous tasks and give us more flexibility in the way we learn and collaborate. But to realize tech’s potential for the future of work, we must ensure that tech’s impact on humans is centered in development processes from the outset and equip all kinds of workers with the skills to use tech effectively.
From bias in automated hiring and firing, to privacy concerns and employee surveillance, the use of new tech in the workplace can have unintended consequences, with marginalized workers disproportionately affected. Leaders and workers creating and deploying tech need support from their organizations to invest in learning – both building their technical expertise and learning beyond their field in topics such as ethics.
By ensuring design teams consist of people from diverse backgrounds and disciplinary fields, we can better anticipate and optimize tech’s human impact. Companies can go further by engaging with communities both directly and indirectly impacted by their products, integrating assessment of social risk early in the innovation process.
Because we're so dependent on technology today, it's important that we create technology that is good for us – as human beings on a group level, not just an individual level.
Student and tech worker, Sweden
Efforts are also underway to ensure tech talent has the necessary knowledge and diversity to act effectively. Deepmind has set up a dedicated ethics and society team to ensure it lives up to a rigorous set of ethical standards, including actively engaging citizens and experts on privacy, transparency and fairness, AI morality and unintended impacts. Organizations such as All Tech is Human are promoting knowledge-sharing about ethics and responsibility in the tech industry. Pivot for Humanity is campaigning for an accreditation of tech workers to professionalize the industry and increase responsibility. Universities are introducing interdisciplinary programs that integrate ethics, social sciences and computer science (e.g., Harvard’s Embedded EthiCS course).
A number of initiatives are working to improve diversity in the tech industry. AI for People aims to end the underrepresentation of Black professionals in the U.S. tech sector by 2030. PAZ helps refugee professionals in Europe adapt their skills for the tech industry. The Localization Lab has helped translate open-source technology into over 220 languages to facilitate diversity in tech development.
More tools are coming online to help tech developers understand the ethical implications of their work. The Ethical Explorer Pack aims to help product developers identify warning signs of possible negative human impacts early in the innovation process. The ethical decision-making app offers tech workers a quick screening tool for ethical impacts of their products. Amazon’s SageMaker Clarify helps developers detect statistical biases in datasets used to train AI programs.
New platforms and organizations are emerging aimed at evaluating tech companies’ commitment to ethics and stakeholder engagement. Practices from outside the tech industry – such as the use of participatory processes in city planning – could be used to better assess the social impact of new innovations.
We spoke to people working in the U.S. and Europe to hear their views on the future of work.
When Anushka graduates from her Master’s in human-computer interaction, she hopes to work in human factors engineering, which combines psychology and engineering and become a medical devices product manager. She says it’s vital to take a multidisciplinary approach to tech development. Transcript.
Eloïse runs virtual customer training sessions as part of her job and says that, although tech has enabled the way in which she interacts with her customers, she doesn’t think AI will be able to completely replace human-to-human interaction. Transcript.
Although technology enabled Leif to teach his classes remotely during the pandemic, he found the human side of teaching and learning was lost when interacting through a screen. Transcript.
In your own organization:
Establish rigorous ‘test fast and evaluate’ principles, bias detection tools and impact tests to identify and mitigate social or human harms from technology.
Ensure impact assessments involve diverse groups of people, and include non-users, marginalized and difficult-to-access voices.
Publish policies and procedures for integrating ethical and social impact into tech development and the criteria used to decide if a product is safe for the market.
Prepare your whole organization to ask the right questions of technology through tailored training for leaders and managers, tech specialists and all employees who may be using ethically sensitive technology.
Incentivize interdisciplinary learning through company-wide accreditation and performance management.
Create cross-functional, cross-hierarchical employee groups to shape and test corporate strategy that involves new technology and put in place clear procedures for responding to concerns raised by employees.
With others:
Work with policymakers to design clear and practical safeguards for deployment of algorithms, particularly those that may have a significant impact on life outcomes (e.g., hiring and promotions, educational testing, crime prevention).
Work with policymakers to clearly define the duties and responsibilities of employers towards their employees and broader communities regarding technology innovation, development and deployment, tied to ESG and human rights frameworks.
Work with policymakers to establish risk and stakeholder impact assessments, and management requirements for tech innovation, especially related to tech deployment in the workplace.
Collaborate with online learning platforms and universities to develop interdisciplinary training content at the intersection of tech and ethics.
Partner with local community organizations to improve stakeholder engagement at the start of innovation processes, (e.g., through the use of ‘citizen assemblies’).
Collaborate with educators and NGOs to promote careers in technology to underrepresented groups.