The Ethics of Efficiency
The Ethics of Efficiency
The machines are learning, but are we?
“I think technology really increased human ability. But technology cannot produce compassion.” — Dalai Lama
What is it about technology that makes us think we’re inoculated from the errors, pains, and foibles of what it means to be human?
I’m a big fan of the old Twilight Zone series, and I was recently streaming it. One of the episodes in the final season is called “The Brain Center at Whipple’s,” and while it was made in the mid-1960s, it struck me as remarkably prescient in its insight and predictions.
The episode opens with CEO Mr. Whipple previewing a film with his Chief Engineer: an update that Whipple is making to the board of directors. He assesses the W.V. Whipple Manufacturing Corporation by the numbers: 283,000 personnel, 13 plants, and 34,827 people in a single plant.
He says, “At Whipple’s, we only take forward steps,” and proceeds to introduce the X109B14 Automatic Assembly Machine, proudly announcing that it will replace 61,000 jobs, 73 machines, and save the company $4 million in employee insurance, welfare, hospitalization, and profit-sharing.
And that the entire company would be automated within six months, running from a so-called “Brain Center” filled with similar computers.
He says all of this without emotion or regret, much to the chagrin of Hanley, the Chief Engineer, who does not approve of “a lot of men out of work.”
He cautions Whipple about taking men’s livelihood and reason for being away from them, and points out Whipple’s lack of goodwill and compassion through his “heartless manipulation of man and metals.”
Whipple’s response is one rooted in numbers: “I am here to provide efficiency. That is my only concern.” And in Whipple’s mind, efficiency only comes from machines.
The episode ends with the board removing Whipple from his job, due to overexertion and the inability to make sound judgments. Cut to his office, where a robot is now handling all of his duties.
Rod Serling reminds us that this is “the historical battle between flesh and steel. Between the brain of man and the product of man’s brain.”
And the battle continues to this very day…
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” — Aristotle
Ethics, Efficiency, and Empathy
This isn’t the first example of humans grappling with technology. The term “robot” was first introduced in the 1920s in the play “Rossum’s Universal Robots” by Czech playwright Karl Čapek. The word robota means “forced labor.”
And robots were certainly a central theme in Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film Metropolis, about the conflict between man and machine and lives lost in the process. The film ended with an interstitial card that read:
In Westworld on HBO, we witness android hosts at an American Old West theme park that are programmed with narratives and interact with each other and guests. Meanwhile, guests can do whatever they want to the robot hosts, including murder and rape.
What is it about technology that makes us distance ourselves from the laws and customs that have been established for thousands of years? From our humanity?
Related:
Automated Shortcuts
Part of the answer lies in the drive within Mr. Whipple, who was only concerned with efficiency. Looking at the history of technology, in every case, tools — however crude they were — allowed humans to be more efficient.
Stone-tipped spears were more effective at hunting. The wheel allowed us to move large objects more easily. The machine gun and chemical weapons made warfare much more deadly.
In every case of technology, it removed us one step or more from the task at hand: we didn’t risk being maimed by a wild animal during a hunt, construction became less back-breaking, and we didn’t have to murder with our bare hands.
But that distance created a barrier. Because we aren’t so closely and viscerally connected to such instances of the infliction of pain, we’re less likely to have the empathy that Whipple’s chief engineer noted was missing.
Consider Microsoft and Google’s recent layoffs of 22,000 people between them: each was done in favor of pursuing more AI technology, and in most cases, the news was delivered to terminated employees via email.
An inhuman method of sharing news about inhuman priorities.
With artificial intelligence, mounds of data, the Internet of Things, and autonomous everything, we ostensibly have more technology at our disposal than ever before. As a result, we’re experiencing a crisis of ethics that seems to take on a daily drumbeat:
Elizabeth Holmes, recently convicted of running a massive fraud scheme at Theranos, kept people in the dark about the true nature of the blood test she supposedly invented. The lie was promulgated such that Walgreen’s signed a major deal with them, and investors were blinded by their own greed, seeing their paper worth balloon.
Adam Neumann led WeWork into a proposed IPO in 2019, but it quickly fell apart. The company hadn’t been profitable since 2015, but the sexy appeal of kiosk check-ins, free beer, and the freelancer work, along with Neumann’s charismatic salesmanship made it irresistible. Until it wasn’t.
Sam Bankman-Fried was a crypto Bernie Madoff, collecting upwards of $32 billion in assets in his cryptocurrency exchange FTX, only to be caught with his cargo shorts down as his fraudulent business practices were exposed when the company faced an $8 billion shortfall. Soon, his gambit was exposed for all to see.
In each of these instances, technology is at the core. But here’s the thing: the technology isn’t to blame.
Humans are.
In each of those cases, a human made the decision to say, “I have a choice between right and wrong. And I’m choosing wrong.”
The technology just made it easier for them to accept what they thought: that they weren’t causing direct harm.
Is it any wonder that we’re trying to wrap our heads around this lack of humanity in technology right now? The engineers and programmers that have contributed to this phenomenon have been brilliant technologists in their own right.
But with any undertaking that affects such a mass of humanity — whether it’s the 283,000 employees of the Whipple Manufacturing Corporation or the nearly 50,000 tech workers of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta — needs to have leaders that understand the human impact of these decisions.
Particularly when decisions to fire tens of thousands of employees come when the companies are raking in profits. Consider net income reported in the most recent quarter for:
Microsoft = $17.6 billion
Alphabet = $13.9 billion
Amazon = $2.9 billion
Meta = $4.4 billion
Here at Timeless & Timely, we like to consider timeless wisdom: putting things in perspective and reflecting on how similar struggles were met in the past.
Something the humanities take into account — whether it’s history, literature or art — there are thousands of years of examples to learn from.
And that’s what seems to be missing in our technology-forward culture: a fundamental understanding or awareness of how human beings will react to various forms of technology.
To study humanities is to understand humans, as flawed as we are.
From head to heart.
And we need leadership that accounts for both.
Thanks, and I’ll see you on the internet.
One more thing…
You might be interested in hearing Mark C. Crowley talk about leading from the heart:
