Stoic Ethics Post 3

Issues in Corporate Ethical Responsibility in Tech

Corporate ethical and social responsibility in technology has become a frontrunning issue in American society as technology companies have ballooned in size and reach. Issues in marketing and advertising, social spheres in society, and corporate size and power have all become hot-button topics today.

Marketing, and more specifically advertising by and on social media platforms, has become a target of much outrage in America today. Increasingly, companies are stepping out in their own advertisements to highlight and consider the issues plaguing American society. One such example is recent advertising by Twitter addressing gender equality that featured prominent female figures. However, despite the advertisement in support of a major topic in American society today, Twitter still suffered from mounting criticism of its handling of gender equality in its own labor practices and its practices with gender equality and harassment on its platform. The public today increasingly supports corporate social responsibility, but in genuine, impactful ways - not simply making an advertisement and not following through. Companies need to live up to the standards of the public and the standards that they themselves self-impose, and anything short of those goals will seriously impact public opinion and support (both socially and financially) in most likely a negative way.

Major classical “social” issues also permeate corporate ethical responsibility today. One such example is the environmental impact of technology companies. Emissions, energy production and use, and product makeup are all major factors that major technology companies receive low marks in. Companies like Amazon, with its ubiquitous two-day for its members, greatly contributes to Amazon’s greenhouse gas impact. Similarly, technology companies need increasingly large amounts of power to feed their growing collection of devices and data centers. Switching from fossil fuels to more environmentally friendly sources would help drive American energy use to new heights in the 21st century. Another such social issue in technology today is the power of data in politics. Most prominently, Facebook has been accused of allowing the spread of deliberately false or misleading information on its platform which has been indicated in many of the recent elections and votes in America and abroad. This begs the question: what role do major corporations have in the political sphere, and does the “corporate personhood” upload for the political realm? Technology companies are increasingly having to answer to the public and government about its role current and where these companies’ power should be in the future.

Arguably the largest corporate social responsibility issue concerning technology companies today is the issue of their size. The five largest companies by market capitalization in the world are major technology companies. This fact has raised eyebrows and caused many to eye these companies’ shortcoming and the possibility for antitrust actions. This size issue has also raised specific issues in technology today, especially for these corporate giants. As more companies look to gather big data on their consumers, more and more people are keeping watch. We see this issue with Facebook, as stated before on their political implications. According to testimony from Facebook and others, Facebook collected and sold data on its customers to data companies which was then used in elections. Similarly, major companies like Google and Microsoft have had issues with information flow to their customers. Both companies have been accused of promoting their own products and services on their platforms over competitors - a serious violation of anti-competition laws. Finally, other major technology companies like Comcast and Amazon have been under scrutiny for their supposed consumer access practices. With the fate of net neutrality still up in the air, companies like Comcast stand to gain from unregulated internet access, allowing Comcast to throttle or wholly block competitors from customers who use Comcast’s services. Similarly, Amazon has been known to undercut and eventually buy out competitors on its online marketplace using Amazon branded practices, which could severely limit consumer access to a variety of products at a variety of price points.

A Stoic Critique of Google’s Project Maven

Google has been contracted (expiring in 2019) to work with the Department of Defense in the development of AI technology for military usage. This project is known as ‘Project Maven’. The AI tech is specifically meant to speed up the process of analyzing video images. This of course has been speculated to be used in more accurate drone strikes. Thousands of Google’s employees signed a letter urging the CEO to not renew its contract with the Department of Defense, as they do not want to be involved in making technology for use in war. Many employees resigned as well. Due to the severe backlash, Google will not be renewing the contract after it expires in 2019. Some senior executives in the company stated that the contract was not worth much and Google was simply providing open-source code for the Pentagon. However, recovered emails indicate that the executives viewed this contract as a stepping stone to even more military and intelligence contracts, opening up a whole new market of business. Google was not simply providing open-source code, but developing machine learning algorithms, aiming to create AI technology that would be able to surveil entire cities. The executives were well aware that the contract would be controversial in the public eye when initially inking the deal. It appears that executives were also dishonest with employees, telling them that it was a $9 million project. This is false as it is estimated that it was at least a $15 million project. Google worked closely with the Pentagon, setting milestones. They even made the terms in the contract that the Pentagon wouldn’t publicly list Google as a partner.

Stoics believe that the goal is a world of happiness, willed by the gods. The only way to achieve this is by everyone making virtuous decisions at every opportunity. Virtue is the only thing that triggers happiness. Virtuous decisions are based in reason, rationality, and are free of passion. In addition, Stoics believe humans are motivated by their self love of their rationality, not just their physical bodies. This ties in to causing happiness through virtue for other members of the human race. Through a Stoic’s eyes, Google committed multiple actions with vice, not virtue.

By choosing to help develop AI technology for the Pentagon that would be used in drone strikes, Google is fully contributing to war. It is certainly not a virtuous action, as drone strikes are designed to kill people, much of the time they kill innocent people. A Stoic would not find it reasonable for a public company like Google to be involved in war in anyway. There are many employees and stockholders who would indirectly or directly be involved, despite only the executives deciding to go into the military market. Also, it is clear that Google’s executives withheld information from employees and the public for the sake of more profit. They stated that the project was smaller than it really was, trying to minimize employees’ fears. The executives also lied about the role Google played in development. They claimed that the deal was of little value and simply provided the Department of Defense with open-source code, when in reality they were directly developing algorithms for AI technology. They discussed goals and milestones with the Pentagon, including the vision of being able to surveil cities. They spoke excitedly in emails about future endeavors in the military and intelligence space, seeing this contract as the first of many. All of these actions indicate the opposite of the executives’ attempt to imply Google did very little to assist the Department of Defense’s AI technology.

There are two main despicable actions by Google in the eyes of a Stoic. Directly contributing to war and harm to others by making technology that will be used to harm others and blatantly being dishonest to its own employees and the public. War and doing harm to others is a vice as it solely causes unhappiness. It is not reasonable to cause pain to fellow humans, as causing happiness to each other is truly virtuous. Humans are bonded together by our self-love of rationality, so from a Stoic’s perspective, there should be no reason to participate in war. A Stoic believes in making decisions free of passion, so that includes not being affected by any patriotic emotions. In addition, it is a vice to rob another human of the truth. Since this is a scenario where money was the main motivation, it was not reasonable for the Google executives to be dishonest. As stated early, a Stoic would point out that as humans, we are required to act with virtue at all times, which includes treating other humans in a respectful way.

A Stoic knows it is not rational to lament over past mistakes, as that would bring in unnecessary emotion. The ethical way to resolve this is to not renew the contract with the Department of Defense, to not cause further harm, as they have already done. A Stoic would commend Google for making the ethical decision over making more money in the future. Ethically, Google should have never inked the contract with the Department of Defense in the first place, if it was to create war technology. Even with the contract, Google should have been completely transparent in their dealings with the Pentagon for the sake of its employees and the public. Instead, Google piled onto their unethical decision by continuing to lie about their exact role. To put it simply, Google needs to make every decision with virtue, not profit to be aligned with the Stoic ethical framework. There are surely times where these two mindsets end up with the same ultimate decision. Also, there are many decisions that Google makes that are indifferents, causing no happiness or unhappiness. However, in this case, it is very clear that Google committed vices as their actions only caused unhappiness. It also sparks another debate in exactly how closely should companies follow this framework. I think a Stoic would reason that Google should still focus on profits, but only virtuous or indifferent decisions.

Stoic Comparison of 2 Proposed Methods

Corporations can behave unethically in many different ways. What is unethical to some may be fair to others. Stoics believe that one should use rationality to achieve virtue, which is subdivided into wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation. Therefore, in this section we will treat monopolies as unethical, as they do not align with the idea of moderation as a virtue for which to strive.

One proposed method to stop monopolistic behavior is for the government to force giant corporations to break up into smaller, separate businesses. Another idea is for the government to require data portability and interoperability.

The tradition of forcing monopolies to break up has historically been called “trustbusting.” This action means that regulators force large companies with multiple businesses to spin off some of those businesses to operate independently. This separation ideally would lead to more opportunities for smaller or newer companies without as many resources to be able to compete in the market. Many historical examples of breaking up monopolies occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century. For example, Teddy Roosevelt, as President of the United States, forced the Standard Oil company to split into 28 smaller companies. A more recent example is AT&T in 1984 being forced to spin off several smaller companies that executed different areas of the original company’s operations. However, these breakups are not necessarily permanent and may not lead to new competition. We no longer have 28 oil companies in the United States, and AT&T is currently the largest telecommunications company, after one of its severed companies became more successful and bought out the original parent company in 2005.

The other strategy of requiring companies to offer data portability and interoperability is also meant to increase the ability for other companies to compete with large, established ones, and to give consumers more options to choose service providers. Data portability means that consumers should be able to take their data, such as their email history or music downloads, from one company and start using another one. This ability is meant to fight the idea that users are stuck with the original company they started using. Interoperability means that big technology companies must offer ways for other companies to work with their company. This could mean offering an API to access their services, or sharing internal company data, or their customers’ data. Data portability may not necessarily foster increased competition, because big tech companies have already established such dominance in most markets that smaller companies do not have the resources to compete, even if customers were seeking new businesses. Interoperability may give new or smaller companies more opportunities to fit into a tech ecosystem, but as is evident through Amazon’s dominance in its own online marketplace, a company may be able to participate in a platform and still have very limited profits compared to the larger monopoly.

The main difference between these approaches is that the first is a more active approach that will yield successful, though potentially temporary, results, while the second is a more passive approach that trusts market forces to lead to increased opportunity for competition. Therefore, the two approaches are trying to stop monopolies with different degrees of intervention, but both could be considered to have the same eventual end goal of increasing competition. The first approach of spinning off smaller companies from a large monopoly would ideally increase competition by limiting the resources that a single company could leverage, thus making the market more accessible to new or smaller companies. The second approach attempts to increase competition in the market by making sure a consumer is not tied to a specific company once they start using it. This approach relies on a consumer having multiple options from which to choose, and if they do not, then it at least being possible for another company to enter the market. Therefore, the trustbusting approach may offer more of a guarantee to increase competition, even if it is only temporary, because if a couple companies control a market, as is frequently the case in technology, for example when buying a phone or choosing an operating system, then giving the customer the ability to switch to another or to work with multiple companies at once is meaningless. The second approach does nothing to limit the resources that a monopoly has at its disposal, which means newer companies and investors will probably still be intimidated to enter the market.

Both of these approaches require government willingness to intervene, though, unless a large corporation decides to split itself up into smaller companies. However, it is generally accepted that a company acts in best interest of its bottom line, so its decision to spin off businesses would probably be different than how government regulators would divide it. Both approaches also would take plenty of time and effort by the government and by the company itself to execute. Therefore, progress may be slow with either option.

In conclusion, the first approach of forcing a monopoly to separate some of its businesses is more favorable according to the Stoic framework of ethics. Stoics want to make all of their decisions based on rationality, not passion, in order to act with wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation. Both actions would require and lead to amounts of wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation, however since the trustbusting approach has a more certain outcome than requiring data portability and interoperability, it is the more rational choice when trying to limit monopolies. The active approach of splitting up a large company relates more directly to moderation, one of the four main aspects of virtue, than forcing data portability and interoperability relates to any specific main aspect of virtue.

Stoic Proposal to Promote Corporate Responsibility

The Stoic ethical framework would view corporate responsibility in general as virtuous because acting in a manner that is appropriate to the company and those that interact with it (e.g. clients/customers, local community, employees’ families) aligns with the nature of rational things. Meaning, a well-reasoned business decision motivated by the attainment of wisdom, justice, courage, or moderation is what a company ought to do to be considered ethical. Corporate responsibility as an umbrella term for having respect for the social community and ecological environment in which the company operates as well as being accountable for any potential wrongdoing to community and environment, would undoubtedly be considered a virtuous task by any Stoic. In order to enforce corporate responsibility in a virtuous manner, a stipulation is that the company must choose to do so rationally. A Stoic would create a policy that forces this decision onto a company with every choice they make, such that acting “corporately responsible” would merit a benefit, such as an allowance for political lobbying (in a world where lobbying was strictly regulated), and irresponsibility would call for a consequence, such as a fine (proportional to the wrongdoing) and/or increased governmental oversight. This kind of policy would work both to enforce and reinforce corporate responsibility. Choosing to be irresponsible results in an undesirable consequence, like losing money or being ‘watched’ more closely such that there is more pressure to act responsibly at the risk of being promptly exposed otherwise. Choosing this path would likely be irrational as it is not appropriate to the nature of a company to obstruct itself. On the other hand, the intentional decision to act corporately responsible would result in something that is preferable to the company: the chance to lobby legislators to create policies that are in the interests of the company. Choosing this path is rational more often than not in that (a) it avoids hindering the company’s progress (a fine) and uncomfortable supervision, and (b) it could lead to a more suitable political climate for the company’s success.

To demonstrate this enforcement/reinforcement mechanism, consider the above mentioned situation concerning Facebook’s unethical actions in betraying consumers’ trust by collecting and selling user data surreptitiously. Since it has been uncovered, it seems that Facebook has yet to fully reconcile with the public, sparking concern about data privacy as it relates to other popular social networks and beyond. Facebook also has been hypocritical in showing remorse for their actions as it vowed to make changes in transparency of data collection and user control over it yet Facebook fought regulatory responses by governments across the world at nearly every chance. Those at Facebook wanted all the benefits but none of the drawbacks that come with assuming accountability. In this proposed mechanism, Facebook would have be fairly heavily fined for such a large scale unethical action. Additionally, the failure to demonstrate reasonable and genuine corrective action would subject Facebook executives to giving government auditors access to sensitive business information and permission to oversee Facebook operations (to a reasonable extent) for a set amount of time. This is to ensure that the necessary preventative measures are being taken (with verifiable documentation) to avoid another similar ethical violation. This would work to keep Facebook accountable to their actions and protect consumers from further exploitation while maintaining the freedom to which Facebook is entitled. If Facebook had proven a rational decision to (a) provide remediation to those exploited and (b) change business practices accordingly, then only a fraction of the initial fine is to be reasonable imposed on them since the unethical action was still taken. If Facebook hadn’t done anything unethical over, say, two to three years then they would earn permission to lobby with a set budget. This approach would correct unethical behavior by incentivizing consistent ethical behavior, imposing a fine for unethical behavior proportional to the wrongdoing’s severity and extent, and mandating extended supervision for failure to take accountability for the unethical behavior and failure to offer appropriate recompense.