Alum Jane McGonigal Creates Ethical Toolkit
BCNM Alum Jane McGonigal created the Ethical Operating System, a toolkit for helping people who make technologies or design apps, experiences, and tech services to better anticipate the long-term social impacts of what they build - specifically with an eye toward protecting common goods like truth, democracy, privacy and mental health.
Her work was covered by Wired and Marketplace NPR.
Wired describes it as a Silicon Valley having a "Frankenstein moment" in developing "a playbook to help avert ethical disasters." (Read here.)
Marketplace NPR provides the transcript between Jane McGonigal and Molly Wood regarding the Ethical OS. Large technical companies in Silicon Valley, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google, are facing issues in which their platforms have frequently acted as the site for hate speech.
Jane McGonigal explains the concept of the ethical "playbook" below:
What might happen when employment decisions are made on algorithms that assess our mental health? There are already researchers figuring out how to tell if you are prone to depression or anxiety or you might be a narcissist or a sociopath just based on which things you like or favorite on your social media feeds. And what if employers had that data and they were using it to decide who they want to hire? Do we want people assessing our mental health using our public behavior on the internet?
Read their conversation on Marketplace here.