Ethics hackers and ethics cyber security - new specialists needed in the digital age

Every week, the global public seems to be blindsided by new ways that the internet, social media, and data in our digital lives can be turned to harmful or malicious purposes. But why isn't more of our attention focused on new, creative, and thoughtful ways to tackle ethical problems combined with new technology, to create a better world?

In the tech world, hackers are typically malicious actors that find weaknesses and flaws in software or the systems around them. They exploit those flaws for their own gain, or to create chaos. On the flip side, cyber security experts have the technical know-how of hackers. They find the flaws, real or potential, and get a detailed handle on the worst case the scenarios. But they spend their time and energy coming up with solutions that protect from misuse and harm.

Although we expect technical security, recent news cycles have highlighted the ethical and political shaky ground underlying our digital products and services. Some of these issues have been around below the surface of the rapidly growing tech industry for a decade or more:

• Creators of digital devices struggle to balance rewarding return business with alarming data about addiction.
• Social media, and online communities of all kinds, grapple with their role in polarizing people's views, in politics and every day.
• Open communications channels draw criticism for not policing harassment, hate groups and more, while on the flip side deal with troubling demands from governments that may oppress dissidents or violate civil rights.
• Content hosting wants to be open to creators on one hand, but on the other wants to moderate troubling content - getting caught in outcry over restrictions and boycotts for lack of them.
• Fitness apps with global tracking reveal privacy- and security-threatening data, while private data is lost or stolen at a breakneck pace.

The truth is, these problems don't have easy answers we can "check a box" to cover. We can fail in many ways - we might even face contradictory demands or ambiguous answers that don't make sense. We have more people picking apart the problems than fixing them. In short, we have many, many "ethics hackers" - people pointing out the failings of incorporating healthy political, ethical systems with our digital lives. We don't have enough "ethics cyber security experts" - people who solidly know both fields of politics and technology, examining the real and potential weaknesses, and exploring sound, thoughtful, thorough solutions.

Data & Society is an excellent start for a dive into these topics. As one of their speakers recently cautioned a conference of tech innovators, we tend to have an overly-optimistic view of how virtuously our new ideas will affect the world, without giving enough thought to serious, but ambiguous ethical issues that may come up. Young entrepreneurs, especially in tech, often see themselves as rebels against the evil establishment with an over-simplification of how much good they'll do. Additionally, Time Well Spent founder Tristan Harris has spoken extensively about these problems and what we could do about them so we live up to that old Google motto, "don't be evil". We should all be able to call ourselves do-gooders. We may have all the best intentions, but as the reality checks mentioned above remind us, that's not enough.

We wouldn't approach a new business without a business plan or a new project without a team of experts to hammer out all the details. In the same way, we should approach the difficult terrain of business ethics in new technology and the digital world combined with a deep understanding of politics and ethics. This expertise is becoming a necessary part of the tech industry. We most certainly still should consult with legal counsel, security specialists, technical experts and our common sense. But we should also promote quality internal and public discourse around how our work impacts our political societies and the practical implementation of our (business, national, and universal) values.

• What is the responsibility of a business to ensure its product does no harm?
• How does the way we understand potentially "harmful" products evolve or stay the same for the digital age?
• How does the scalability, sharability, and persistence of digital products affect or change responsibility, prevention, mitigation of potential harm?
• What do we need to know about the relationship between digital products and potential harm, such as addiction? 
• advertising and marketing, such as for minors? 
• accountability for political speech? 
• digital "residential zoning", i.e. limiting noise, lights, hours of business for public health?
• What would we need to know about research-backed potential harm to make informed choices as users? - As creators, developers or sellers of these products?
• What is the responsibility of a business to align and communicate its ethics and values with society?
• How does the way we understand "ethical" business evolve or stay the same for the digital age?
• How does scalability, sharability, persistence and privacy affect or change the way we live our values?

It's not just that we need to understand these kinds of questions internally, but we also need to build quality public discourse and will to hold businesses and users accountable in ways that make sense. We need thoughtful discussion so we - as business owners, employees, customers, and citizens - take steps in the right direction towards policy and practice. We have the opportunity to learn from and leverage public energy to do the right thing, make the strongest case possible, and set a tone in the digital frontier that can resonate for years to come.

The latest broadside in the news should be a red flag that our current understanding, our common sense and pool of expertise, is insufficient. We can't wait around for "ethics hackers" to surprise us. The rapid, widespread impact of digital age ethics questions is both alarming and energizing as a call-to-action. The chance for positive impact of thoughtful, ethical understanding and action now is great. We can't afford to lose it.