According to Deloitte’s recently released State of Ethics and Trust in Technology report, nearly 90% of respondents lack ethical guidelines when designing and using emerging technologies.

The inaugural State of Ethics and Trust in Technology report (available here), a new study to be conducted annually by Deloitte’s Technology Trust Ethics practice, surveyed 1,794 business and technical professionals (across 8 industries) to assess if and how ethical standards are being applied to emerging technology — defined as cognitive technologies/AI, ambient experiences, quantum computing, augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR), distributed ledger technology, autonomous vehicles or robotics.

A few notable results:

• Emerging technologies perceived as having the highest ethical risk were cognitive technologies (41%), digital reality (16%), and distributed ledger technology (13%), while those seen as having the most potential for social good were also cognitive technologies (33%), AR/VR (14%) and autonomous vehicles (11%).
• Nearly two-thirds (64%) of those surveyed share leading practices across the organization to identify potential ethical issues, but less than half that number (31%) partner with other commercial organizations to review ethical concerns of emerging tech.
• 87% of survey respondents said that, with the exception of cognitive technologies, they do not have or are unsure if they have specific ethical principles governing emerging technology.

The report also includes information about Trustworthy and Ethical principles of emerging technologies (ordered by their relative importance to survey respondents) and Deloitte’s Technology Trust Ethics framework – which is depicted in a really nifty infographic that illustrates the ethical principles to be addressed!

You can go to the summary page for the State of Ethics and Trust in Technology report here, from which you can download the full 40-page report, which is chock-full of graphics and very interesting. It’s an ethics in technology week!

So, what do you think? What ethical guidelines does your organization apply to the technology you design and use? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclosure: Deloitte is an Educational Partner and sponsor of eDiscovery Today

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