What does ‘ethical tech’ mean? The World Economic Forum states that “technologies have a clear moral dimension – that is to say, a fundamental aspect that relates to values, ethics, and norms. Technologies reflect the interests, behaviors, and desires of their creators, and shape how the people using them can realize their potential, identities, relationships, and goals.”

According to a recent Deloitte publication, ‘Ethical Tech’ is the relationship between technology and human values, the decisions we make toward technological advances, and the impacts they can have.

From autonomous driving to gene editing to machine learning, ‘ethical tech’ has become more prevalent than ever. Who decides what is right and what is wrong from a design principle standpoint in companies developing these technologies? How do we start to build fair and equitable machine learning systems? When is gene editing become un-ethical (e.g. designer babies)?

Business Leader & Ethics Expert, Shawn Vij states that ethical dilemmas have always existed through time. “We cannot bury product development teams with policy right before they start to ideate. We need to let them create and innovate as much as they can. However, I do see opportunity to bring in an ethical mindset and culture in every company. It is more than just hiring a Chief Ethics Officer but making it inherent in the company’s products and offerings.”

For example, Google plans to launch new AI ethics services before the end of the year. A new buzzword is forming, EaaS, for ethics as a service. As Tracy Frey, AI Strategy at Google stated, “The world of technology is shifting to saying not I’ll build it just because I can’ but ‘Should I?”

In fact, a strong movement has developed toward ethical training in universities, researchers are forming new venues for socially and ethically aware research on technology. “The profound consequences of technological innovation…demand that the people who are trained to become technologists have an ethical and social framework for thinking about the implications of the very technologies that they work on,” said Rob Reich, a political scientist and philosopher who is co-teaching a course called “Computers, Ethics, and Public Policy” at Stanford this year.

“As technology levels the world and the pace of innovation increases, I see an opportunity for ethics to play a greater role, more than ever today, starting with questioning our moral intent – on any new idea,” says, Vij.