Ethical Technology Quotes

We need a science to save us from science.

Technology is amoral, but it requires humanistic values to steer it in a way that's empowering, and not detrimental to social progress. It's up to us to maximize the good and minimize the bad.

It is not enough to wire the world if you short-circuit the soul. Technology without heart is not enough.

Technologists provide tools that can improve people's lives. But I want to be clear that I don't think technology by itself improves people's lives, since often I'm criticized for being too pro-technology. Unless there's commensurate ethical and moral improvements to go along with it, it's for naught.

Technology cannot be an end in itself but must aim at solving long term social and ecological problems.

I do think that overall blockchains are likely to be a much more powerful force for good than evil.

The question I want to put forward is, 'Does the technology we are developing ultimately benefit mankind?'

The apparatus defeats its own purpose if its purpose is to create a humane existence on the basis of a humanized nature.

I think that technologies are morally neutral until we apply them. It's only when we use them for good or for evil that they become good or evil.

We know by now that if we make technology the predestined force in our lives, man will walk to the measure of its demands. We know how leveling that influence can be, how easy it is to computerize man and make him a servile thing in a vast industrial complex. . . . This means we must subject the machine - technology - to control and cease despoiling the earth and filling people with goodies merely to make money.

Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich.

Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors, concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods-in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

It will do us little good to wire the world if we short circut our souls. There is no delete button for racism, poverty, or sectarian violence. No key stroke can ever clean the air, save a river, preserve a forest. This transformational new technology must be an extension of our hearts as well as of our mind.

The great question for our time is, how to make sure that the continuing scientific revolution brings benefits to everybody rather than widening the gap between rich and poor. To lift up poor countries, and poor people in rich countries, from poverty, to give them a chance of a decent life, technology is not enough. Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich.

We're in partnership with technology, influencing each other in a dance. My loyalties are to our making and shaping technology to conform to our human values; and to confronting the hard job of figuring out what those values are, and how are we're going to get technology to do that.

Technological advances have always been driven more by a mind-set of 'I can' than 'I should' Technologists love to cram maximum functionality into their products. That's 'I can' thinking, which is driven by peer competition and market forces But this approach ignores the far more important question of how the consumer will actually use the device focus on what we should be doing, not just what we can.

As long as your robot isn't programmed by like Dr. Evil, I think you're going to be fine.

Technology can be used to make people's lives easier, to reduce inequality, to facilitate inclusion, or to solve intractable global problems, but without dialogue and governance, it can be used against humanity - the choice on how we use technology is ours.

While infusing technology with humanity, we are trying to make sure it's used for good and also trying to foresee some of the ways it can be used in a bad way and eliminate those.

If a technology is beneficial, everyone should have it. If it is not, no one should have it.