Advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing, among others, are increasingly being adopted. These technologies, used appropriately, can reinvent government services, education, healthcare, and the way businesses interact with their customers. If not responsibly applied, however, they have the potential to cause harm.

With so much at stake, it is essential that we, as a society, continue to advance the practice of infusing ethics and responsibility through the entire life cycle of technology. To this end, the Ethics Center and World Economic Forum (WEF) have collaborated on the Responsible Use of Technology initiative. The ongoing project aims to provide practical resources for organizations to operationalize ethics in their use of technology and features a series of case studies designed to surface lessons that can help organizations advance their own responsible innovation practices.

To date, Microsoft and IBM have been profiled with Ethics Center staff Don Heider, Brian P. Green, and Ann Skeet contributing to the work. WEF and the Ethics Center hope that the initiative will encourage organizations to not only adopt and operationalize technology ethics, but also to share their experience with the global community.

Ethics by Design: An organizational approach to responsible use of technology, December 2020 

Responsible Use of Technology: The Microsoft Case Study, February 2021

Responsible Use of Technology: The IBM Case Study, September 2021