Ethics don’t stand a chance: every technology will be used sooner or later.

I often discuss technological progress with various people. I meet people who are very critical of technological progress. I find this critical attitude very legitimate and valuable. However, I think our conscious, creative influence on technological progress, even if we “make” it ourselves, is extremely limited.

(Reading time: 4 minutes)

Technology is not the same as product

When we talk about new technology, we quickly make the mistake of confusing it with products. For example, we wonder why we don’t have flying cars today and at the same time say that the technology isn’t ready yet.

But if you take a closer look, that’s not really the case. We have all the technological components to realize flying cars. We could also bring the costs of such vehicles down to a level where we can afford them sooner or later by scaling them up. But the question is whether they make sense for us in everyday life. So far, we have answered this question with “no”. Nobody saw such great advantages in it that it had the value to take the rocky road.

So when we talk about technology, we must always try to separate products from technologies. Moreover, products are usually formed from a variety of technologies. The following, very comprehensive infographic from Quartsoft shows which inventions and findings were necessary to create a product like the iPhone.

Technologies that are developed today do not necessarily have to be used immediately, but will be used in later products over time, often in combination with other technologies.

Ethics and politics as catalysts of technological progress

Much of the technology being developed today has no direct application relevance. Research is producing initial findings and mechanisms. From today’s perspective, many of these results have borderline applications. Think, for example, of the progress made in the field of ectogenesis, i.e. the conception and maturation of a human being in an artificial uterus. This is an area that gives most people (including me) a queasy feeling in the stomach.

American and British researchers have made considerable progress in this field in recent months (scientific article here or here). The motivation for researching this was not primarily the vision of ectogenesis, but to understand how the fertilized egg cell implants as a cluster of cells in the uterine lining and how the cells then divide into which parts (e.g. child and placenta).

Understanding these processes, which were previously completely unknown, makes it easier to do something about miscarriages. The by-product of this research, so to speak, is that new knowledge and technologies are gained that enable ectogenesis. Even if there is a broad social consensus that they should not be used.

Deliberate brakes on the adaptation of technological progress

And there are also initiatives that aim to slow down or control technological progress. In 1975, for example, there was a conference of over 140 genetic engineering scientists in Asilomar, California, who imposed voluntary guidelines to regulate the modification of DNA in the future. A process that is still remarkable today.

OpenAI, the initiative funded by various Silicon Valley entrepreneurs with the aim of making artificial intelligence available to as many people as possible, can also be counted in this category. Although nobody at OpenAI wants to slow down the development of artificial intelligence, by making the technology publicly available, they are preventing it from being misused by individuals.

And that’s what it’s all about: preventing perceived abuse.

Unconscious drivers of the adaptation of technological progress: the brutality of life and generational change.

However, what we consider to be abuse is directly related to our personal and social values. And these, especially social values, are subject to constant change.

Just how fragile and negotiable personal ethics and values are is shown by a simple thought experiment that I have also used in other articles: Imagine you are firmly opposed to a technology (e.g. genetic manipulation). You are against everything that is done with this technology. Now your child falls ill with a fatal disease. The only thing that can help is a drug that makes extensive use of genetic engineering. What do you decide?

I think the brutality of life is one of the main drivers why we quickly discard our ethical concepts and our values, even in the course of a lifetime. It just has to be worth it. There are very few people who remain truly consistent and true to their values in such situations. Paradoxically, it is precisely in such blatant situations that value-based, consistent decisions are no longer supported by the environment. Not when it comes to life and death.

The other driver is that we are subject to constant generational change. What my father found reprehensible, I accept in my daily life. For my son, on the other hand, the ethical question no longer arises, as he is already growing up with the new technological possibilities and knows nothing else. At the same time, however, he will later be the father who finds new technological possibilities reprehensible.

This is how the perception of values is transposed by technological development.

And that is why our values and our current ethics do not stand a chance against technological progress in the medium and long term. What we gain with new technologies on a broader timeline is greater than what we would have to sacrifice. And that is why we will use all available technology in the short and long term. Regardless of whether that suits you or/and me at the moment.