The Morality of Technology

by Eduardo del Buey

Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all-

The Morality of Technology

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all”

Aristotle

Technology can make doing many things easier.

In itself, it is neither good nor bad.

Technology simply is.

What gives it a moral personality is the use to which it is put, who is using it, and why.

The ethics of technology refers to the moral implications and considerations associated with its development and use, focusing on themes such as responsibility, risk, justice, equity, and autonomy.

But it goes beyond this.

Descartes once summed up the human experience with his famous saying: “I think, therefore I am”.

In my life, I have always amended it to “I feel, therefore I think, therefore I am.”

“Feeling” can go far beyond a simple emotion.

It is the connection with our intuition from which all of our ideas and creativity flow: not ideas based on what is known, but, rather, on what is imagined. Imagination cannot exist in something that cannot feel.

To date, the ability to feel has not been replicated by artificial intelligence since it goes far beyond information and depends on emotion and empathy.

Let’s explore.

The rapid evolution of technology today scares many, yet it also fuels many improvements to the lives of individuals and institutions.

A major development in medicine is the advent of nuclear medicine. Nuclear medicine is a medical specialty that uses radioactive tracers (radiopharmaceuticals) to assess bodily functions and to diagnose and treat disease. Specially designed cameras allow doctors to track the path of these radioactive tracers.

Another major development comes from Neuralink, one of Elon Musk’s companies which has developed brain implants that allow many blind people to see again.

There are many examples of technology bringing hope to many who had none before.

Regarding education, American University in Washington, D.C., reports that the COVID-19 pandemic is quickly demonstrating why online education should be a vital part of teaching and learning.

Teachers can harness online learning as a powerful educational tool by integrating technology into existing curricula rather than using it solely as a crisis-management tool.

The effective use of digital learning tools in classrooms can increase student engagement, help teachers improve their lesson plans, and facilitate personalized learning. It also helps students build essential 21st-century skills.

Virtual classrooms, video, augmented reality (AR), robots, and other technology tools can not only make classes livelier, can also create more inclusive learning environments that foster collaboration and enable teachers to collect data on student performance.

Still, it’s important to note that technology is a tool used in education, not an end in itself. Educational technology's promise lies in what educators do with it and how they best support their students’ needs.

Fintech has challenged the traditional financial services industry by offering tens of millions of people globally access to financial services from which they had been previously excluded. According to a recent McKinsey study, the financial services and banking sectors face a future marked by fundamental restructuring.

In this new era, banks and nonbanks compete to fulfill distinct customer needs in five cross-industry arenas: everyday banking, investment advisory, complex financing, mass wholesale intermediation, and banking as a service (BaaS).

This provides millions with access to the global economy. Clients now managing their finances on their phones and bypass traditional banks, which have always erected barriers to extending credit and services to the more economically deprived.

It is important to keep in mind that the last massive transformation in the global economy – the Industrial Revolution – led to massive social changes that challenged all of society’s premises. People went from piecework in their homes to massive factories that relied on important investments of capital and all of the social challenges that this transformation produced.

The advent of the printing press just prior transformed learning from the purview of the few to a tool for all.

Society changed radically. Politics were transformed, the family structure was greatly affected as people concentrated on working outside of the family home, and religion changed as observers could explore alternatives to the monopoly that the Catholic Church had hitherto enjoyed.

Today, technology has made a quantum leap and is fundamentally altering our lives.

The result is the melding of technology and knowledge we have achieved. This is presenting a new tool – artificial intelligence – and its potential effect is both profound and awe-inspiring.

Today’s massive transformation has put most knowledge available on our smartphones and has allowed us to connect globally, through social media, with anyone at any time.

But, has this been accompanied by the wisdom with which to use it?

The short answer in many cases is “no”.

Is this good or bad?

It depends on how the changes affect one and how one changes to adapt to the challenge.

We see how medicine and education are two of the many fields enriched by technology.

We may soon see technology's transformative impact on US governance during the Trump administration, with the central participation of innovator and technology gurus Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

There has already been a lot of change regardless of Trump; we already see it everywhere with you using facial recognition on your smartphone and cameras in major cities around the world following people and using facial recognition in police work to identify people as on January 6 and as an example of why protesters wear masks.

Also, digital voting systems collect voter data in China using AliPay and facial recognition via cell phones to control people’s access to their money.

Melding a broad vision of how technology can be used to improve the efficiency of governance and its impact on individual freedoms will be a major challenge for all. And it appears that Musk and Ramaswamy, who have transformed a number of industries, might be the sharp end of the spear in this transformation from an efficiency point of view.

What Musk and Ramaswamy introduce to American governance processes will reveal whether our political leaders are ready to introduce and apply morality and heart to the development, use, and implementation of technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), or if we are in for a laissez-faire era in which we have no idea about or control over the impact and results.

Technology can allow governments to significantly streamline resources, which will affect efficiency, jobs, and how citizens and companies interact with the government.

The tectonic shifts directly affect our lives, putting our current livelihoods and our concept of self at risk.

Unless we accept the reality of constant change and the need to change and reinvent ourselves at many stages of our lives, we will consider the march of time a negative element rather than an opportunity to adapt and improve ourselves as we seize the opportunities that technology presents.

Questions of ethics are typically directed toward individuals and their capacity for action and the possibility of some sort of justification for the rightness or wrongness of those actions or the choice of one course of action over another.

With the help of technology, our capacity for action has expanded in scope to the extent that many suggest the need for ethics, particularly in the development and use of social media, medicine, and artificial intelligence.

But these ethics must be developed out of wisdom and not fear.

Out of careful analysis and not political expediency.

The ultimate goal is to liberate us all to a better quality of life while maintaining our rights and freedoms and access to credible, impartial sources of information that are free of falsehoods.

This will be the ultimate test for morality in our lives and how technology can contribute to it or detract from it.

Can this be achieved, or am I seeking a chimera?

I could say, “Time will tell.”

But the time is now, and we face the challenge every day.