Ethics of Innovation

Innovation involving digital- and data-enabled technologies and their application can help solve societal and business challenges.

But these innovations can also create ethical concerns such as inequity and inequality to groups and individuals. There is a tradeoff between risk and return, and these tradeoffs can result in unintended consequences.

Technology is neither good, bad, nor neutral. Designing innovations requires that we incorporate stakeholder values such as privacy and transparency, and with the goal that people will benefit.

Digital- and date-enabled innovations should consider what and how technologies are developed, for what purpose, how they operate, and who is to benefit. This should reflect the opinions and moral and societal values of diverse stakeholder groups. We can better predict the direct and indirect impacts the technology will have on stakeholders if we take human values into account in the design of technologies.

About the program

Alberta Innovates introduced this program in collaboration with AI4Society at the University of Alberta and Mount Royal University.

The consortium aims to help innovators and companies mitigate ethical risks to build public trust, reduce costs, improve efficiency, enhance reputation, and meet stakeholder and societal goals. It begins with building awareness, capacity, leadership, values, tools and resources.

To get involved:

Look at the business ethics resources provided below to set up your ethics plan.
Participate in an upcoming Ethics for Innovators workshop.
Submit an ethics case to include in our case studies.
Participate in the conversation and find out more about the work being done by the consortium to make ethics part of innovation.

Please complete the linked survey below so that we can learn more about you, your work and how you may interact with the consortium:

Ethics of Innovation Consortium Survey

Resources

State of Ethics in Large Companies - Ethics and Compliance Initiative

Source: The Ethics & Compliance Initiative

6 Reasons Why Some Companies Will Never Be Ethical

Source: CaseIQ

How to Monitor and Manage Legal and Ethical Issues

Source: KnowledgeLeader

A Good Start: Ethics for Entrepreneurs

Source: Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

The IBE Business Ethics Framework

Source: Institute of Business Ethics (IBE)

AI: Guidance for Small Custodians on the use of Artificial Intelligence

Source: Office of Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta (OIPC)

Contacts