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In May 2021 Twitter user @capohai shared a screenshot of a Google search for “what terrorists wear on their heads”, which returned the Palestinian scarf keffiyeh as the first result. Meanwhile, the French Senate has just voted to ban women under the age of 18 from wearing the hijab in public, and President Macron’s LREM political party has withdrawn support from candidate Sarah Zemahi for wearing the hijab in an advertising campaign. How many others have asked the same question to Google and accepted its answer as a confirmation of their own prejudices or as an objective statement of fact? How many others were hurt by the results?
Outrage over Google’s silent equation between Palestinians, headscarves and terrorists spread on social media in the news, but when the same search is conducted today, keffiyeh is still the best result.
It is logical that @capohai turned to Twitter, because one of the only opportunities for most people who notice unethical behavior of technology companies – breaches of confidentiality, promotion of hate speech and misinformation, prejudice, etc. – is to post about it on social media. But as this example shows, the retribution model does not work to actually correct ethical violations.
Looking at the bigger picture, there have been calls for greater regulation of the technology industry, which is urgently needed, but legislation can take a long time to pass and be implemented and is generally insufficient to stop unforeseen ethical failures, endemic to technology. Because algorithms tend to express our (bad) values in unexpected ways that require constant updating and fine-tuning to correct, regulations, no matter how cleverly and extensively written, cannot predict and stop all future problems.
But there is an option that relies on neither social media outrage nor new regulation. Technology companies actually are already configured to deal with ethical issues on a large scale. They just have to adapt their existing reward system.
Hundreds of companies and organizations, large and small, are currently offering rewards ranging from thousands to millions of dollars to those who find vulnerabilities in their code that bad actors could exploit. Google’s rewards program even covers apps sold through its Play Store. Apple, which only recently launched an award program (with compensation of up to $ 1 million for the most serious types of exploits), takes a similar approach. In its notes on the program, the company said it would “reward researchers who share with us critical issues and the techniques used to use them” by providing public recognition and matching donations from the charity award.
Imagine how much better Silicon Valley products and services could be if these companies grouped ethical violations under “critical issues and the techniques used to use them” and began offering the appropriate rewards. After all, ethical breaches can cause just as much trouble for the company and consumers as a little leaked code. The above language does not even have to be changed. And the ethics program could use other Apple policies, which include: 1) You must be the first to report it, 2) You must clearly explain and show evidence of what happened, 3) You cannot disclose it publicly before Apple gets a chance to fix it and 4) you can get a bonus if the company inadvertently re-introduces a known issue in a new patch.
For consumers, the reward system will encourage people to look for ethical violations and report them more quickly. For companies, this system could help them locate and deal with problems before harming more customers, generating negative press, and potentially destabilizing governments. Of course, some companies may not be concerned about negative press, loss of customers and the promotion of prejudice, but they are still likely to be motivated by the long-term stability and goodwill that such a program can create. Having public experience of carefully responding to ethical issues in the past can also help a company if it wants to hire talented workers and expand into other markets and industries.
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