I gave a talk today about our research to a class of grad students. From the Q&A, I learned that quite a few of them are concerned with how technology can be used ethically, and ways to prevent it from being used unethically.
It is wonderful that they are interested in this, yet I found the tone of some of the questions to be problematic. The question is inherently difficult, and I sensed that some of the students were frustrated that I could not supply an easy answer.
Yes, we should do all we can to create and use new technologies in an ethical way. But no, alas, there is no silver bullet.
The problem is that the biology of human brains has not evolved significantly in the last 200,000 years. By nature, we are still the same creatures we were in the Paleolithic age.
Ideas of morality and ethics can be culturally superimposed, but they don’t actually change inherent human nature. People remain, and will continue to remain, highly capable of dishonesty, theft, betrayal, and tribalist xenophobia.
We are also tool builders by nature. We have always built tools, and we will continue to build new ones, for as long as our species exists. Which means that these same difficult questions will always continue to recur.
I wish I could tell the students that there is an easy answer to how to create and manage new technologies in a way that is sure to be ethical. Yet I cannot.
I can tell them to continue to fight the good fight, and perhaps win some important battles along the way. But I cannot in good conscience tell them that we can ever hope to win the war.
The fault, dear reader, is not in our tools but in ourselves.