Introducing "The Ethical Technologist"
Building a healthier tech industry isn't just for executives and regulators - it's for every employee working with technology.
Nice to meet you.
My name is Ben Leiner, and, as of today, I am the author of “The Ethical Technologist,” a newsletter detailing how everyday technologists - product managers, marketers, data scientists, designers, you name it - can build technologies that help, not harm, society at large.
Jonathan Haidt, Casey Newton, and many others write thoughtfully about technology and its impact on society. As I read these authors, it seems that their pieces are geared mostly toward regulators, executives, and the voting public. To ensure that advancing technological innovation can exist alongside a thriving democracy, it is essential that these writers keep up the good work and that readers heed what they have to say.
Although I may sprinkle some of my own takes in this newsletter about tech, democracy, and, occasionally, politics, I am not starting a Substack to follow in these writers’ footsteps. Nor have I created yet another forum to bash Facebook or Tik Tok, although both companies are, at times, deserving.
Rather, I am joining the Substack universe to fill a distinct need: the need for everyday technologists to have a resource when they consider how they can make their products more ethical.
In my course, “Technology and Ethics” at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, I have seen firsthand that the product managers of the future, many of whom are joining the Google’s and Meta’s of the world, do not want to build products that discriminate against disadvantaged groups, spread disinformation, or cause teens to become depressed. But, as any seasoned technologist will tell you, good intentions are not enough. Everyday managers need to know how to fight back against incentives — such as counting monthly active users for investors or the inability to quantify “ethics” for management — to develop products that harm, rather than help, society at large. Moreover, they need frameworks and tools to navigate ethical tradeoffs, which, at these tech companies, are ever-present and pose real-life consequences.
“But Ben,” you might ask, “do these new tech managers have any say in the directions of a company like Meta? Shouldn’t we focus our attention on Mark Zuckerberg? Or on the need for government to intervene in the tech industry?”
My response: although we need to care about Mark Zuckerberg and whether the Biden Administration has a grip on the emerging opportunities and threats presented by AI, we need to care more about everyday employees at these tech companies. Contrary to popular belief, it is these frontline managers that are making the decisions with the greatest impact on society. Paraphrasing one of the guest speakers in my class, “Gmail was invented, by, like, seven weirdos in a room in San Francisco. You’d want to be sure they’re considering all the right factors.”
In this newsletter - which will come out whenever I have time between my day job at SmartNews and my side hustle at Darden - I will seek to shed light on stories, tools, principles, and examples to help people working with technology build products their mothers can be proud of. Along the way, I will occasionally offer anecdotes that I share in class and stories from my friends and colleagues tackling these ethical questions at work. Even if you aren’t someone building technology yourself, you’ll get some context for how you can influence your workplace or companies you work with to build more ethical products. You’ll also, I hope, get some fun points to make at dinner parties. I’ll try to keep the technical lingo to a minimum.
If you have friends or colleagues who you think might be interested, please share this note or direct them to my Substack page! If you have comments or articles I should include in the newsletter, please leave them below or shoot me a note. Would love to hear from you all as we get the party started.