Holy Writ - The Vatican and Silicon Valley Collaborate on Applied Ethics
The ITEC initiative hopes to spark discussions and practical ethical frameworks that can apply across religious, business, and cultural boundaries. The Ethics Center been working with Silicon Valley companies on applying practical ethics since its founding in 1986. Ann Skeet, senior director, leadership ethics, explains:
"We've been watching this trend of companies setting principles around their design and use of technology. And we've even seen some emergence of consensus about what those principles are, things like accountability and transparency. But we've seen less consensus, actually, on what companies should do, and less understanding of how to actually apply those ethical standards."
Dan Cooperman, Ethics Center advisory board chair, says things have only gotten more challenging with data governance given the massive proliferation and tangled webs of data businesses are collecting.
"Given the pace of advancement here in just recent years, I think managers understand that there need to be some guiding principles, some overall framework within which the advancement of these technologies can be presented to the market, and in a responsible way."
Ethics Center Advisory Board Chair, Dan Cooperman, and Ann Skeet, senior director, leadership ethics, quoted by Diginomica.