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Ethical Innovation

By Peter Lloyd

Here's a familiar ethical question for creative professionals to ponder:

In our unrelenting march called progress, are inventors and innovators responsible for the negative effects of their inventions and innovations?

Is Einstein morally or ethically responsible for Hiroshima?

Before you answer yes or no, factor in the benefits of nuclear energy. Just the benfits for the moment—energy that could eventually be too cheap to even meter, no dependence on oil-producing exporters.

There are more benefits and drawbacks, of course, but the marrow of the matter lies here: Someone else would have formulated E=mc² eventually and named it something similar—relativité, Relativitätstheorie, or относительность.

A couple of news items prompted me to raise this issue.

Φ "Study shows texting while driving makes drivers six times more likely to crash"
"Based on studying behaviors in a driving simulator, University of Utah researchers used a high-fidelity driving simulator to find that texting drivers had more crashes, responded more slowly to brake lights on vehicles in front of them, and showed worse forward and lateral control than drivers who either talked on cell phones or drove without doing either."

Would you have taken part in the invention of the cell phone, knowing that less responsible users might kill people while using them? I'm smart enough not to text and drive, but are the inventors responsible for the driver who hits me while texting?

Here's an old bugaboo that I thought had been put to rest. Apparently not.

Φ "Cell phone cancer warning proposed by Maine state legislator"
"A Maine state legislator wants cell phones in the state to carry labels warning of brain cancer risks due to electromagnetic radiation."

Even if cell phones did cause cancer, how would the inventors anticipate this problem? Should they try harder to anticipate the negative effects of their work? And if a problem is discovered after an invention enjoys mass acceptance, does a label exonerate the inventors? Maybe about as much as cigaret-pack warnings absolve cigaret manufacturers.

The big question of moral responsibility may never be answered to any inventor's satisfaction but we would be remiss not to think about it. Progress, however you define it, seems impossible to stop. Thinking ethically, I think, must be just as persistent.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.