The Rise Of The Tech Ethics Congregation
Sarah Hussain, who worked on Twitter's Trust and Safety team until Elon Musk was fired, told me at an event in May 2022 that many of her colleagues in the field praised ATIH and recommended attending. Shana Deitch, an economics student who participates in ATIH's mentoring program, says the program not only helps with job opportunities and letters of reference, but also builds confidence and a sense of belonging. Alex Sarkissian, a former Deloitte consultant and now a Buddhist church student, sees the organization's potential to be "a kind of spiritual community for me and the Sangha [Buddhist sect]."
Above all, I have met serious and enlightened members like these, people who come together to seek sincere mutual support, moral reflection and, not insignificantly, to have fun with a cause close to my heart. Certainly, few people involved in ATIH hold, in my view, technical leadership positions, which may undermine the organization's claims to the ability to unite stakeholders around effective action. ...or perhaps it simply represents the kind of populism that may have eventually put his supporters in high office. ?
Despite my skepticism about theology and technology , ATIH often made me feel like I had found my technological tribe.
growing pains
Polgár is a charismatic former lawyer who has been developing the ideas and networks that created the organization for more than a decade. In the early 2010s, as a young professor of business law at a small, underfunded college in Connecticut, he began thinking about the ethics of technologies that had recently emerged as pervasive and pervasive forces in society and culture. Under the title "Ethics of Technology", he began writing a series of letters about digital health and the idea of "creating a better technological future together". In 2017, Medium's "All Tech Is Human," about how technology design is based on more than rationality or robotic utility, sparked an enthusiastic response and led to the organization's official creation a year later.
Polgar told me that it took some time to implement the ATIH concept. He worked without pay for three years and was about to quit. But his journey encouraged persistence. Born in Cooperstown (New York) in 1979, Polgár was a child philosopher who admired Nikola Tesla and wanted to be an inventor. He remembers thinking at the time: "Why can't I start something big, even from a small place like this?" »
Despite his growing influence, Polgár and the organization continue to assert their outsider status. He says the institute draws its inspiration from people who feel unfairly marginalized for their interest in ethical approaches to technology, as he and many of his colleagues have felt in the shadow of New York state.
The ATIH model, as Sandra Khalil, the organization's director of collaboration, explains, does not offer a "test on the stage", but a "guide on the edges". Khalil, a veteran of the US Department of State and Homeland Security who also joined the organization as an outside fighter, said he felt "very underused" in his role as a lawyer and was not "challenged to restore the status quo." .
Still, Polgar hardly dismisses opportunities to influence the tech discourse, whether through informative interviews with outlets like BBC World News or by joining advisory boards like TikTok's Content Advisory Board. ATIH acknowledges, in The Ten Principles, that it is based both on popular models, which it says "have ideas but often lack power", and on "top-down" models, which may lack "diversity of ideas". energy." The organization does not charge or accept membership fees from participants, but relies on large donations solicited by Polgar and his team, who control the decision-making process. There still doesn't seem to be an overt call for more democracy.
