American impressions: the national future
Reflections on my time as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Elon University, North Carolina.
1. Elon University · 2. Flora and fauna · 3. Teaching technology ethics · 4. The sport · 5. Being a Fulbrighter · 6. Life in the North Carolina Piedmont · 7. The national future.
I try to arrive in the US as non-judgemental as possible, determined to reappraise America from first principles. Unrealistic perhaps, but it felt like the only honest way to approach my role.
I return home afraid for – and of – the future of America.
Exceptionalism still courses through American veins. Citizens still see the US as the best country in the world and presume others agree. Locals are shocked to hear my wife elected not to accompany me – who turns down America? – and assume I’d stay if I could. When I explain the temporary nature of my visa, several people lament that the US won’t kick out all these illegals but won’t let someone like me (a definition I don’t press) stay permanently. Were I to confess I don’t want to stay, it might be the first time some Americans hear it.
A common cultural theme: Americans are primed for the hardness of the world. You see this most clearly in TV commercials, particularly those aimed at men. In these ads toughness is framed as geographical, geological. Hard roads and baking sun require supersized solutions, unrelenting toil, a survivor mindset. Maybe there’s a little in that, but I feel the nation’s toughness is mostly of its own design. America makes its world hard in ways other nations do not.
I find violence to be imprinted at a near-cellular level in the American psyche. (Jonathan Stein has written admirably about this.) Masculine aggression is canonised and celebrated, a virtue flowing from the country’s expansive history. Justifications I hear for pointing a loaded gun at another person include 1. stepping onto my property at night and 2. touching my vehicle. The only role for nurture and compassion is as defence mechanisms, instrumental goods for furthering the true American virtue: individual or in-group sovereignty. Taking care of each other is transmuted into protecting your family from threats.
I once heard it said that America is a good idea but shame about the execution. I’m not sure the idea is good today. A nation fixated on individual liberty feels mismatched to the twenty-first century: ideologically dated, if not outright juvenile. The challenges we face in the coming decades are deeply interwoven and collective. Your fate will be my fate. So I’m particularly shocked by America’s total inaction on climate. There’s endless, needless polystyrene and plastic. The vehicles are obscene and, alongside jets, remain the dominant means of transport. Conspiracist outlooks on climate are routine. So when I overhear Floridian retirees complain about their spiralling home insurance, I want to tell them: buckle up. Things are set to get much worse. Unless you find a way to work together, sacrificing some of your personal wellbeing – and yes, even some of your more incidental freedoms – for the good of all, your state, your home, and your way of life have precarious futures.
More than anything, I want to tell America about decline. After all, what else has more clearly defined the last British century? Britain has mostly sublimated this decline into nostalgia: poisonous enough, but with the spikes on the inside. But I fear for America. The MAGA extremes make it clear many millions of Americans are eager to embrace full-on fundamentalist nationalism, a stance that will not tolerate also-ran status. The people who stand to lose most from this shift will of course be those who are already most downtrodden in society, while America’s recently capricious foreign policy suggests for many years we’ll be one flashpoint away from global disaster.
But America won’t listen to someone like me. Exceptionalism, remember. With sadness for the aspects of America I hold dear, I know the country will make its own mistakes. Its contemporary politics are postured as an emergency of liberty: unless we act immediately, they will take everything from us. But the adrenaline rush of fight or flight can’t last forever. The spring is wound too tight. Some kind of lashing out feels almost inevitable; I don’t know whether it will be internal or external, but I dread it either way.
A condition of my grant is that I fill in an extensive survey on how the Fulbright programme has changed my opinion of America. My cursor hovers over the scale, torn between No Change and Slightly Declined. In the end I chicken out, not wishing to appear ungrateful: No Change. No change. But the change is coming.
American impressions: life in the North Carolina Piedmont
Reflections on my time as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Elon University, North Carolina.
1. Elon University · 2. Flora and fauna · 3. Teaching technology ethics · 4. The sport · 5. Being a Fulbrighter · 6. Life in the North Carolina Piedmont · 7. The national future.
‘It is easy to fall in love with the beauty of a place, harder to accept and ultimately forgive its flaws.’ —Jan Deblieu
North Carolina is sliced in three. To the west, the Appalachian mountains, the high country of Asheville and waterfalls. To the east, the Coastal Plains beachfronts, native home to the Venus flytrap. In the middle, the Piedmont. Rolling farmland and tobacco fields; universities and difficult golf courses. My home for six months.
Elon NC is a small town, with most of its 11,000 residents being students or university staff. Its contiguous sister Burlington, technically a city, comprises a couple of downtown blocks and a few restaurants that close at like 4pm on Sundays. Central Burlington’s a 5km hike anyway, and walking distance is a thwarted concept here thanks to five-lane intersections and sidewalks that end abruptly in ditches. For someone used to the convenient density of London life, small-town America’s interminable planning is depressing: this is a 15-minute drive away, Walmart can ship that by Wednesday, but for that you’ve got to head upstate.
Thankfully one commodity is abundant. The brewing gods have landed me opposite craft beer store and bar Beer Republic, and oh boy does North Carolina have great beer: gloopy sours from Hopfly, rich and balanced hazies from DSSOLVR and Heist. Even the lime-green novelty St Paddy’s weissbeer (brewery withheld for reasons of decency) is drinkable. Being a quiet man I initially keep to myself, making lecture notes or solving chess puzzles at the bar, but an accent is eventually both an introvert’s blessing and curse. In time, I’m a regular. I find it’s easiest to say I’m from London until folks eventually indulge my explanations of the complex nesting of Welsh and British identities.
We chat about sports, local restaurants, and of course the beer, but where there’s beer there’s eventually politics. North Carolina’s democratic hue is magenta, let’s say, with the familiar split between rural conservatism and university town liberalism. Alamance County leans Republican, as do most NC counties thanks in part to outrageous gerrymandering. Having lived my adult years entirely in left-leaning communities – studenty Nottingham, Brighton, east London – it’s my first time as a political minority.
I suspect the trait North Carolinians value most is authenticity. The state is nothing if not genuine, per its motto esse quam videri: ‘to be, rather than to seem’. This is the Tar Heel state, founded on honest work and straight talk, and no place for the multilayered ironies of global cities. To be clear though, I want to recoil from the patronising stereotype of ‘simple country folk’. The regulars I befriend are complex and flawed like everyone else. True, most tell me they’ve not left the US – a prospect that would horrify most Europeans – but remember this nation contains multitudes. Fly from Phoenix to Madison or take I-10 eastbound from the Louisiana bayous towards the art deco of Miami Beach and it’s hard to believe it’s only state borders you’re crossing.
In other words, while my neighbours are warm and welcoming they’re also observant and direct. A quick way to lose friends would be to take the emissary Fulbright sentiment too far, to see my community as some kind of project. I’m lucky to have travelled widely but I know this doesn’t grant me a right to proselytise my worldview. People here can spot a crusader. So third-pint politics chat requires nimble footwork as I try to balance personal integrity and affability. My political get-out – ‘If these are the two best candidates America can offer, something’s desperately wrong’ – lands well, but no doubt in time people can taste my dread of Trump’s second term. I skip out of the gun chat but explain when pressed that the rest of the world finds the gun thing kind of unhinged and repellent. I gently put forward a case for European travel, encouraging the ‘I’ve always wanted to…’ crowd to be braver and get it booked.
Perhaps that’s our best option when outnumbered: to state our case respectfully but sincerely and try to offer a z-axis to the caricatures we all paint of our opponents. And – of course, since this goes both ways – to listen. I’m no political scientist but I think I get a better grasp on what motivates people (QAnon fringers aside, q.v. below) to support Trump. Patriotism for sure; loyalty and respect too, and the cost of living has also hit the Piedmont hard. But above all I sense a loss of agency and a fear of decline. Many people confide in me they know Trump’s a despicable man but will vote for him regardless because they see in him a last chance to save some idealised America they cherish. I wish I could express how high-risk, how reckless I fear this strategy will be, but it wouldn’t change anything if I could.
I live near an Amtrak line, with one train crawling up the east coast to New York each day and four shuttling between Raleigh and Charlotte. Trains are simultaneously roomy and utterly oversold. The experience is weirdly airlineish. You check in with attendants and are shepherded towards specific seats. You are counted on and off. There’s none of the self-serve spontaneity I’m used to, the grab-and-go of UK rail. I learn that in Amtrakian corporate lingo ‘All doors will not open’ means ‘Not all doors will open’.
On one journey we actually hit and kill some poor guy on the tracks. It makes a single-paragraph story on local news sites. Once the police let us disembark an hour or two later we grab Ubers to town, there being no other transport available from Kannapolis. Our driver regales us with a checklist of far-right conspiracies. My visiting friend, a researcher of disinformation and I, by this point entirely immune to this crap, egg him on to see how deep the rabbit hole goes (a tip: the phrase you want is ‘Wow, that’s crazy’, which stokes further revelations while being no word of a lie). It’s a long journey so we reach the outer brain galaxies – ‘Oprah is a sex trafficker’ and ‘the WEF are about to genocide 90% of the human race’ – before pulling to a merciful halt. We decline to tip.
I spend a lot of time in Charlotte. Ignore the dreary city centre, dominated by banks and eyerollingly called not downtown but Uptown, and take advantage of that Southern rarity: light rail. The Lynx Blue Line, bisecting the city northeast to southwest, has attracted the usual mass transit symbiotes: great cafés, quirky stores, microbreweries. Sure, there are plenty of these elsewhere in the state too, but here you can walk to and between them, rather than driving to a haunted strip mall. Raleigh, at the other end of the line, is also charming, with good BBQ, chess meetups, the Hurricanes, and what seems to be the only place to buy excellent bread in the whole state. (Don’t get me started on American supermarket bread: $5.29 for a heavy, pre-sliced, cake-sweet brick.)
Perhaps I regret not seeing the state’s wider reaches. I’d have enjoying pushing paddles in the Asheville Pinball Museum or dipping an oceanic toe off the Outer Banks. But North Carolina is nearly twelve hours west to east and, as no fan of driving, I’m hemmed in by the railway to the heart of the state.
I’m happy to have returned now to the overflow of London life, but a small part of me yearns for the Piedmont. I walk into Sainsbury’s and am disappointed it’s not Harris Teeter. I miss Biscuitville’s butter-flaked pastry and the sucrotic overload of Cheerwine soda. I need to find a UK importer of Texas Pete hot sauce. I’ve barely seen the sun in weeks, and I worry who’s feeding my backyard cardinals in my absence.
In an eccentric Greensboro book store I stumble across Amazing Place, a compendium of essays on why North Carolina seems to captivate so many writers. It’s not just me, then: there is something about this state, its lyrical appeal and its maddening contradictions, simultaneously lavish and rough, friendly but insular. Capturing North Carolina’s essence feels like trying to draw a bird in flight. Words fall short; maybe I should leave it to the professionals. But I know the Piedmont has put its claws in me.
American impressions: being a Fulbrighter
Reflections on my time as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Elon University, North Carolina.
1. Elon University · 2. Flora and fauna · 3. Teaching technology ethics · 4. The sport · 5. Being a Fulbrighter · 6. Life in the North Carolina Piedmont · 7. The national future.
Origin story, 1946: Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright persuades a war-weary Congress to flog its military surplus and invest in an enormous educational exchange scheme. Fulbright is a man of the world, a former Rhodes Scholar at Oxford – ‘an overeducated SOB’, Truman laments – and is convinced cultural understanding could help avoid future ruinous conflict. Let’s not do that again, essentially. (Given Fulbright’s empathetic aims, it’s surprising that he becomes an early opponent of civil rights initiatives, for which his name today is somewhat tainted.)
Fulbright’s idea also offers a secondary benefit, unlabelled – the term wasn’t born for five more decades – but surely intuited: increasing US soft power. Surviving a McCarthyist inquisition in the 1950s, the Fulbright programme today sees the United States temporarily swap academics and postgraduate students with nearly fifty nations. It’s selective and prestigious, with alumni including Plath, Friedman, Updike, Glass, and several dozen Nobel and Pulitzer winners. (We’ll gloss over Sunak.) This year I’m part of the British cohort, selected by the US–UK Fulbright Commission to lecture and research in the US as a visiting scholar.
Although I’ve aged out of imposter syndrome I do initially feel outclassed. I don’t have a PhD, nor any real publication history, but my eleven peers are accomplished and intellectually expansive: ophthalmology, fine art, glaciology, linguistics. Privilege and luck has helped get me here. Oxford’s philosophical reputation carries clout – although, thankfully, this strikingly diverse group doesn’t just hail from elite universities – and a Fulbright alum friend has coached me on what the Commission looks for. Candidates who see a Fulbright award solely as a vehicle for personal advancement do not do well. Remember the backstory. This is a project. Academic excellence alone isn’t enough: you need to be eager to embrace the mission, to uphold the ideals of shared values and mutual understanding across borders. To be a Fulbrighter is in part to commit to the ambassadorial bit and act as a minor cultural emissary.
In my first lecture I throw a UK geography pop quiz. Scores are woeful. Students pick out England, London, and Scotland at a push, but the other countries and capitals are a mystery. Even the division between Northern Ireland and the Republic comes as a shock. My one British student, banned from shouting out answers, flares her nostrils in exasperation.
The day before St. David’s Day I wrap up early to foist hwyl cymraeg on my class. Local supermarkets lack key Bara Brith ingredients, but with improvisation and a stroke of luck in sourcing Welsh butter I do okay. I buy a Welsh flag to act as a tablecloth and cue up a stirring eisteddfod rendition of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau while we cut and slather. The students are game for it, bless them, and I’m touched when they ask in a later class when our next cookery date is. I tell them we’ll flip the roles for our final day: now it’s their turn to make and share food that’s culturally important to them. And boy do they understand the assignment. These young Americans may not know where Cardiff is but they sure can cook. Fragrant rice and peas, lavish blueberry granola squares, a gingery lemonade, and banana pudding whose vanilla sweetness lingers still in my memory.
The university community wants my opinion on many things, particularly AI. Can it help us? Is it an existential threat? I’m surprised to find myself prevaricating. I chip in ideas on risks to watch out for and the view from a culture that’s less hostile to regulation, but I suppose the greater your expertise the more you distrust simple answers. And no one likes the gobby outsider who bails before facing the consequences of their opinions; anyone who’s worked with bad consultants knows how that story ends.
Now I’m home, friends ask how America was. Of course these posts are my attempt to figure that out, to unknot my tangled feelings. Maybe it’s easier to talk about how the Fulbright has changed me.
Certainly I feel more rounded, better equipped to discuss my work with people who aren’t technologists. I know more about how a mathematician or a sociologist might think about morality or emerging tech, and I can identify foundations we can build from.
I feel more confident. To live overseas is to suffer a hundred daily microembarrassments: you stand in the wrong line, you mishear an accent, you don’t get the joke. Self-consciousness will eat you alive in this sort of environment, so you might as well outgrow cringing. I’ve learned to simply take control of confusing or awkward situations rather than muddle through in the British style. I’m sorry, I forgot your name. I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I’m sorry, I’m not sorry.
But more than anything I feel older. A previous Fulbright recipient urged me to stay for the whole year, but I’m happy to return to my wife, my cat, and my friends after one semester. It’s not that five months felt like five years at the time, but it feels like I’ve leapfrogged half a decade of my life story. The ubiquitous friction of a new country and new job wears your cells out, sure, but there’s more to it. The side effect of a prestigious role is the pressure to live up to it. I’ll never make the impact more notable Fulbrighters have and will, but the expectations the award implies still induced me to wring each day dry. Yet there was always some nagging guilt I wasn’t doing more, always a concern I was failing my values or neglecting this earnest mission of international understanding.
My time as a Fulbrighter was profound and I’d recommend it gladly, but just before the eager candidate waved goodbye I’d add a final word of advice. Getting involved in something bigger than yourself is a noble, rewarding thing, but have no doubt: it takes its own tolls.
New talk: What Could Go Wrong?
Here’s the video of a new talk I gave at the University of Washington this spring.
Titled What Could Go Wrong?, it’s a look at both contemporary and future ethics issues with AI, the false dichotomy of regulation vs. practitioner ethics, emerging info on AI red teaming and opportunities for improvement, and why lean and agile remain thorns in the side of practical tech ethics work.
Thanks to Chad Hall for the invitation, and the (sold out, iirc!) audience for their lively participation, and many groups at UW that helped to get me over there: School of Art, Art History + Design, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the Information School, French & Italian Studies, and Textual Studies.
American impressions: the sport
Reflections on my time as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Elon University, North Carolina.
1. Elon University · 2. Flora and fauna · 3. Teaching technology ethics · 4. The sport · 5. Being a Fulbrighter · 6. Life in the North Carolina Piedmont · 7. The national future.
I have an advantage in that I already understand and enjoy American sports. It was even part of my cultural-exchange patter in the interview: I’ll buy the foam finger, shout ‘de-fense’, etc.
It’s obvious within the first few games of the season that the Panthers will be done long before I land in January. Bluntly, the Panthers stink the joint out right now, stumbling to a 2–15 record while giving away the draft pick that would have given them a leg up for 2025. Still, having been stateless for a while I at least have an NFL team to follow. The only way is up.
I still make it to the Bank of America Stadium to watch Charlotte FC, a recent Major League Soccer addition. Competent and well-drilled, they’ve smartly tried to capture the sporting attention and energy of the local Hispanic community in particular. Attendances are decent, probably north of 20,000, and the vibes are vibey albeit centrally planned: military flybys, anthem fireworks, loudhailered capos inciting exuberance. There’s none of British football’s spontaneity or in-joke humour yet. The crowd is still learning the game, getting excited by the wrong things and overlooking moments of quiet brilliance, but the game is gathering pace in the US – and don’t forget they’re hosting (most of) a World Cup in 2026.
Ice hockey is the only sport with a great North Carolinian team, and the Carolina Hurricanes become a new love. Since tedious blackout rules wipe Canes games from mainstream cable, I stump up outrageous streaming fees. Their play is fast and skilful, devoid of other teams’ thuggery, although this being hockey there’s still the occasional double-take-inducing fight – why are the referees not intervening? surely this is a shameful nadir for the sport? – before you remember violence is integral to this odd game. Tickets are usually sold out but I score a back-row resale against the Bruins, an uncharacteristic loss. I learn the only American accent I can do well is the fruity overenunciation of hockey announcers: ‘GOOOoooal for the Hurricanes, scored by number 37, Andrei… SVECHnikooov!’ (I make the mistake of telling my students, who immediately demand a performance.) The Canes’ rampant form sees us favourites for the Stanley Cup but we fall at the first stiff playoff hurdle, the New York Rangers. I hear this is common practice – but again, a team for life. All in.
Chess isn’t a sport, much as it wishes it were, but Charlotte has seen heavy investment and hosts three major tournaments while I’m in-state. I play them all, starting well and ending badly. Entry fees are scandalous compared to London but I’ll admit 4-star hotel ballrooms are a big step up from wintry church halls. I pay no mind to my slumping US Chess Federation rating: my unaffected English rating is all I care about, and a terrific win against a 1702 junior keeps my spirits up. I also hang out with delightful chess Twitter folks with whom I share philosophical, musical, and/or analytical interests but who tend to stay on this side of the Atlantic.
You can’t move for college basketball in March, so I end up getting into it. Elon games are fun even though the team’s mid at best. I drink faculty-discounted tallboys in a second-row seat amid sneaker squeaks and jolt-inducing buzzers. Elon’s star player leaves in search of better options once the season ends.
But ever since bootleggers decided to race their souped-up law-evaders it’s been NASCAR that really owns the southeastern US. The Coca-Cola 600 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway is the strangest day of my US stay.
This is MAGA turf. RV campers in the infield erect Trump flags, and in the stands it’s a veritable supermajority of red caps and sloganed t-shirts. There’s something fascinating about the graphic design signifiers of the American right. Not just stars and stripes and eagles – although there are plenty, of course – but also the hunting aesthetic, which itself is a domesticated military aesthetic. Realtree® camo is particularly prized. Fonts are industrial and ultra-heavy: think Impact, chunky extrusions, the type of memes. Occasionally the Roman square capitals beloved of trad Twitter accounts that valorise the ‘lost era’ of European supremacy. The overall look is dense, complex, and entirely masculine. Not so much inelegant as anti-elegant.
I must give NASCAR some credit. They are – I think quite skilfully – trying to defang their audience’s more objectionable material but still leave space for regional pride and self-expression. Confederate flags are banned, a post-Floyd gesture, and stewards eventually negotiate the removal of all overtly political signage. A huge spray-painted TRUMP banner at Turn 1 is gone when I return from the bathroom. Nevertheless, it’s obvious I am not of this crowd. I don’t feel threatened or unwelcome so much as acutely misplaced; I make friends by offering spare earplugs to the unprepared but we don’t exactly discuss the ills of the world. Then Trump Force One flies low over the circuit and the man himself turns up. Mercifully there’s no lap of honour, but the occasional big-screen wave sends the crowd into frenzied approval. After a Memorial Day parade of Black Hawk helicopters and much talk of those who made the ultimate sacrifice – a phrase also heavy with symbolism – the cars finally come out.
Having watched NASCAR on TV now I’ve warmed to the style of racing, strategic, sinusoidal, more about momentum than perfection. But I hadn’t prepared myself for the physical experience. As 128,000 pounds = 58.1 metric tonnes of metal pass in a thunderous peloton, some atavistic awe-fear mixture awakens in me. Like staring into a live tiger’s eyes at a truck stop café – true story, different trip – I feel it inside my heart, and I’m slightly ashamed how impressed I am by brutal, ear-splitting technology.
On lap 249 of 400, with Christopher Bell in the lead, it chucks it down. Oval racing and rain don’t mix, so the event is suspended and most of the crowd recognises the fat lady has sung. Cue transport chaos. Despite a sellout crowd of 95,000, CMS has no allocated spot for pickups so we fight our way to surge-price Ubers caught in eight-lane gridlock. Walking is out of the question. After four cancellations I finally split what turns out to be an hourlong three-mile ride that costs fully $77, our Eritrean driver quizzing me about Newcastle United, where a cousin is setting the Premier League alight.
And we’re not done yet because the next day I actually go in one of the cars for a possibly-health-insurance-invalidating NASCAR Track Experience. I even get three free laps because my driver runs out of gas, coasting expertly back to the refueller. What surprises me isn’t the straight-line speed but the adhesion on the banking, like how does this thing possibly stay on the track? They’ve wisely put padding on the inside of the cockpit to catch your g-forced triceps. It gets slightly hard to breathe at one point. Stupefying.
My dear friend Simon visits for a bucket-list golf trip. It’s still early season and the Bermuda grass is still asleep, giving the grounds a bile-yellow tinge. But the courses are superb. Duke University Golf Club (yes, Duke owns one of the state’s top courses – of course it does, it’s Duke) is wet and hilly, its sweeping fairways lined with pines and its bunkers a death sentence. Tobacco Road is the work of a madman, a cocktail of LSD, Deliverance, and crazy golf. The clubhouse has the whole Southern porch rocking-chair thing going on, which said clubhouse feels more like a BBQ shack than the jackets-required-beyond-this-point crap of England’s elite. We drive home overstimulated. Tot Hill Farm, by the same designer, is similarly unhinged, crammed with rocks and streams, blind shots and cow skulls.
Pinehurst sits at the bougier end of the market. Our veteran receptionist reveals we’re staying opposite Arnold Palmer’s favourite room. She and he were on close – you sense near-intimate – terms when he was a regular. We start with course #8, fiendish and magnificent, before the jewel of the crown, Pinehurst #2. #2 is also savagely tough, as Rory McIlroy finds out in June, but we get out of jail with the weather, dodging a 32mm precip. forecast with just a brief shower. Our caddie Kevin is a wide-grinned Southern charmer – ‘Well now let’s see what we got for ya, Mister Cennydd’ – and helps reduce my score from embarrassing to just real bad. But when it briefly goes well, I can report that sticking an elevated green from 152 yards and being handed a putter is feeling worth chasing. Our final course at Pinehurst, #4, is an affront to my physical and mental wellbeing. Winds reach four-club strength near the end. Facefuls of sand. Simon plays great, I shoot well into three figures. No matter.
Southern Pines is our last stop, overseeded with rye grass and therefore lush and green even in March. Another stunning course, not overlong, with plenty of elevation and wild rolling greens. Later, I pop to Quail Hollow to watch the Wells Fargo Championship. A younger, drunker crowd than British events. The ‘get in the hole’ guys are exactly who you’d expect: sunburned bros stumbling from hole to hole after too many Michelobs. I have a blast despite them and might return for the PGA Championship next year.
In my local bar, I chat with a somewhat overbearing boomer. We talk sport to avoid talking politics. America, he says, could be the greatest at any sport going if it chose to. Then do it, I reply. Put up or shut up. The All Blacks might have something to say about rugby though – and good luck unseating the Chinese at table tennis. Four weeks later, the US beat Pakistan in the T20 World Cup and for the first time my North Carolina bar buddies want to talk cricket.
Fucker may have a point.
American impressions: teaching technology ethics
Reflections on my time as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Elon University, North Carolina.
1. Elon University · 2. Flora and fauna · 3. Teaching technology ethics · 4. The sport · 5. Being a Fulbrighter · 6. Life in the North Carolina Piedmont · 7. The national future.
I teach Ethics in Interactive Media, an elective course in Elon’s now-paused MA Interactive Media. I’m not precious, so here’s my full syllabus including readings and assignments (hit me up for more detail):
Our course starts tangible and personal, covering safety and bias through case histories like the Ford Pinto, Ring doorbells, and COMPAS before linking these to core ethical principles and the theories of utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. We spend a week each on persuasive tech, privacy, and digital wellbeing, which I’ve found all mesh well with other topics. We split AI ethics into short- and long-term perspectives, before ending with practical anticipation methods and real-world application. Alongside our 3hr 20m of classroom time, I assign five hours a week of either reading or assessable work.
Assessment
Elon students prefer continuous assessment. Since I want them to practice making ethical arguments from the outset, the first three assignments are 1,000-word essays on recently covered topics.
‘Is it ever morally acceptable to knowingly release a biased algorithm?’ (Bias, justice, balance/asymmetry of harms and benefits.)
‘Should apps use ‘streaks’ to encourage habitual use?’ (Autonomy, persuasion, manipulation.)
‘Billions of people give tech firms consent to use their personal data. Given the complexity of today’s digital technologies, should we consider this consent valid?’ (Privacy, consent.)
To encourage collaboration our next assessment is a group exercise. Posing as a Meta product lead, I propose a hypothetical AI-driven dating feature that infers romantic interest and ask students to roleplay as a Meta ethics committee reviewing my proposal. You’ll notice some obviously laid pitfalls, and some attempts to mimic Big Tech language and product-centric thinking:
A student’s final project, 40% of their course grade, is a solo presentation identifying ethical concerns with an app of their choice and both recommending and justifying improvements. Students can create portfolio-worthy deliverables if they wish, but so non-designers aren’t penalised there are no marks for execution quality. What matters is whether the student spots salient issues and makes convincing arguments in the face of my robust challenges (‘Competitor X doesn’t do this, why should we?’ / ‘Isn’t complying with regulation enough?’ etc). Most students pick Insta and TikTok as expected, but a couple of niche apps are fun to handle.
Finally, a small participation grade to incentivise discussion but which ends up mostly as mark padding (see below).
Students
Most of my class are iMedia postgrads, with a skew to design and content strategy. I have a couple of undergrads from communications and engineering, but sadly there are no takers from CompSci. Just one student is male: remind me to write another time about the gender-coding of ethics in the STEM mindset. As a group, the students are sunny, curious, and generally attentive, but they’re also spooked by the market and the worrying trajectories of our world. I feel for them. It’s a tough, tough time to begin a career, and something’s dreadfully wrong when youth becomes something to pity rather than envy.
They call me Professor Cennydd, and I let them – something that would absolutely not fly in the UK – but, chastised by Susan Harlan’s poem My First Name, I assiduously use colleagues’ proper honourifics in front of students.
Looking back: what went well
Attention spans are short. I tried – and mostly succeeded – to spend at most 20 minutes in any one delivery format, e.g. lecture, before switching to another, such as exercises or discussions (as taught in Fitzpatrick and Hunt’s Workshop Survival Guide and confirmed by a fellow designer-turned-teacher). This made lesson planning more complex but was worth the effort. I also tried to break up the syllabus with visits to Elon’s Center for Design Thinking, a critical screening of The Social Dilemma, and an outdoor class once the weather permitted.
The group ethics committee was great. Students drew out the best in each other, building on peer analyses while respecting everyone’s opportunity to contribute.
After a faculty workshop on the benefits of video feedback – higher student satisfaction and reported belief instructors are engaged in student outcomes – I gave it a go, recording with Screenflow and uploading privately to YouTube. Since I already knew the software the workload was only marginally higher than written feedback, and I liked being able to draw students through their essays and highlight arguments that didn’t quite land. I hid the grade inside the commentary so students actually watched it, but from view counts I know students tended to review this feedback several times.
I let students revise and resubmit their first two essays since I knew some would take a while to adapt to ethical writing. Resubmission obviously increases marking workload so it’s not for everyone, but it helped assuage my class’s early discomfort and gave scaffolding for improvement. More students took up this option than I expected, although some revisions were very minor. I ended up running diffs on the two versions and bounced a few essays back with the same mark.
Most students made noticeable progress, showing clearer thinking and connecting ethical topics together in more sophisticated ways. One turned a 2/10 start into a 9/10 performance six weeks later, while one or two who drifted turned things around after a warning/pep talk.
Looking back: what was tougher
I’d been told US standards lag behind the UK. This was spot on. The stronger students were good but some were surprisingly far behind. I elected to add unscheduled time to describe proper academic writing, structuring convincing arguments, and how to reference. Referencing improved once I realised I needed to explain why we reference, offering the carrots of generosity and respect and the stick of Elon’s anti-plagiarism policy.
Every university is understandably freaking about generative AI. My initial instinct was to ban GenAI completely, since it can’t (yet) conduct the reasoning that moral philosophy requires. After a class discussion, we agreed to allow a final GenAI pass to tidy up near-final drafts. Nonetheless, I’m sure some of the less successful students used it more. Detection isn’t viable in practice and I’m unconvinced by most attempts to roll it into student assignments. I’m no closer to an answer here.
I tried to ground our topic in students’ everyday lives, showing that many tech news stories are really ethics stories and asking students to share examples they’d seen. There weren’t many takers. The reason, confirmed by other faculty, was a shock: students simply had no habits of news consumption. The one story that did cause chatter was the proposed TikTok ban, which sparked interesting conversations about privacy, state involvement in Chinese enterprise, and US national security.
Assigned reading didn’t work great. The better students certainly did the first few batches but I’ve no doubt reading dropped off later. The Elon library is quieter than at other unis. These being postgrads, I didn’t want to drop nannyish pop quizzes but in retrospect I’d tie the essay questions closer to assigned reading to make sure it’s completed.
I struggled to teach utilitarianism because I think it’s daft I disagree with its primary assumptions. When I teach ethical theories I often poll the audience: which theory convinces them most? I know my bias shows because they tend to disapprove of utilitarian ideas. I’ll work on that.
What did I learn?
Word got back that I’m a tough marker. In my current Masters programme 70% is a distinction, the mark I’m chasing in hopes of acceptance for a DPhil, but for my postgrads at Elon 70% was the failure boundary. So early low marks shocked some students. I’d anticipated this and offered the resubmission opportunity as a salve. I doubt the school would have let me flunk someone off the programme entirely without performing some face-saving cultural normalisation first, and strong final presentations lifted grades to what students hopefully consider fair. Certainly I didn’t hear any parental complaints – apparently this does happen.
I had a light teaching load but still had to create my course almost from scratch. With my previous materials lacking detail and the in-class rhythm I wanted, prep took forever. The good news: I now have forty hours of road-tested material for future courses and workshops. The bad: research time suffered.
Anyone who’s tried to teach knows it can be an inscrutable art. Tuesday’s class fizzes with energy while Thursday is mysteriously flat. Some of this is just vibes and circumstance; I learned to accept their vicissitudes. But I also gained a greater appreciation for the performance of teaching. There’s no room for an off-day: you have to be switched on all the time. The few student evals I saw gave me good ratings, so hopefully I imparted at least enthusiasm if not wisdom in those trickier days.
Graduation was sweet: hired robes, pennants, trumpeters, all that Elon earnestness again. In all, I’m pleased with what we accomplished in our four months together. It was a bittersweet joy to wave my class off towards their uncertain futures, recognising on their faces that same proud panic I wore two decades ago.
American impressions: flora and fauna
Reflections on my time as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Elon University, North Carolina.
1. Elon University · 2. Flora and fauna · 3. Teaching technology ethics · 4. The sport · 5. Being a Fulbrighter · 6. Life in the North Carolina Piedmont · 7. The national future.
One afternoon, small bales of pinestraw appear in my back garden. The next, Elon grounds staff spread it over the red clay and centipede grass that flash-flooded last week. Circular divots soon pock the springy straw as squirrels bury their finds. Overgrown shrubs creak against my windows when the wind is up; it takes several hacks of the kitchen scissors to cut back something purple and threatening that’s crept into the blades of the air-con.
The sun hits differently at these latitudes. There’s been a misconversion, surely: 65 °F is 25 °C now, and even in February the skies are usually cloudless. I can see why UNC chose that specific shade of Carolina Blue. I begin to wonder whether it’s just the weather that’s keeping me happy, holding at bay the loneliness and uncertainty that stalk anyone far from home. Although we creep up to 33 °C by my departure, I miss what people tell me is the really malevolent summer heat, all humidity and subjugation.
Just the one tornado warning.
As the seasons rotate the world awakens. Dogwoods erupt with white flowers, which yellow at the edges and fall just two weeks later. I can barely see the bird feeder, attached to a denuded February tree, for leaves. (I moved it several times to thwart the squirrels, but soon conceded they were too smart for me and I was now feeding them too).
Cardinals are my favourite garden visitors, the males a shocking, unnatural red. Little spiky helmet, black faces, and profoundly grouchy, twitching and snapping at each other for territory and excavation rights. I call them ‘cardioids’ and my heart bursts. I buy sacks of the special Red Bird Food from Harris Teeter, which is probably 70% sunflower seeds, apparently a cardioid favourite. Their songs always fall or rise, like sound effects from a toy laser gun. Pew-pew-pew-pew. Twit-twit-twit-twit. Such an easy choice of state bird that fully seven states, North Carolina included, have made the appointment.
Cornell’s Merlin app, my wife’s recommendation, identifies other lurkers: northern mockingbird, tufted titmouse, blue jay. Carolina wren, red-bellied woodpecker. A mourning dove, handsome and almost veloured. American robins are nothing like their European cousins, lacking the popcorn bounce but borrowing some magpie impudence. My first bluebird, harder to spot than the cardinals, a streak of colour slicing across a tree line. I reluctantly conclude the birds of prey I see are mostly turkey vultures, which on the ground resemble wet black towels. Doubtless there are more impressive species to my west, up in the Appalachians. I catch one or two TuVus snacking on squirrel viscera, true to form.
Surprisingly no raccoons at all, and although it’s meant to be a mega cicada year – one of those prime-number-meets-prime-number superevents – they’re no noisier than I’ve heard before. Elon’s squirrels are tiny by London standards, but an hour south in Pinehurst we’re met on the course by fox squirrels, easily 60 cm and skunklike.
There are no cats. Seems America has decided it’s cruel to permit a cat its species-typical behaviour and instead locks them all indoors. On my short London street I have at least seven cat friends but in Alamance County I have none. I miss them.
One evening two deer amble up to the feeder. We hold our breaths and take smeary photos as they drain the Red Bird Food. Later a lone rat snake, boustrophedon and fast diving into the conifers, whitetail dragonflies with box-square wingtips and, as I pack to leave, fireflies peppering my parked car, cigarette ash flicked upwards towards extinguishment.
American impressions: Elon University
Reflections on my time as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Elon University, North Carolina.
1. Elon University · 2. Flora and fauna · 3. Teaching technology ethics · 4. The sport · 5. Being a Fulbrighter · 6. Life in the North Carolina Piedmont · 7. The national future.
First: no relation. Elon University’s misfortune to share a name with that man renders most of its merch unwearable. Dreading having to tell people I’m not advertising the world’s richest edgelord, I insist any item I buy also carries the word ‘University’.
The other thing people know Elon for, correctly this time, is its campus. The grass is flush and hillocky like a resort fairway, studded with cartoon-bright flowers. Buildings are neoclassical: porticos and atria, white paint and red bricks in which students pay to have their names immortalised. The lake has ample shade. There are hammocks and cygnets. Soft drifts of blossom in overlooked corners are the only hint of disorder.
Elon University is curated. The campus is itself a brochure as much as a site of learning, with the bubblier students employed as tour guides for binder-clutching high-school seniors and – equally important, you sense – their parents. The excellent, cheap dining halls are an important stop-off. Again: curated. The university understands the value of student experience, both current and future.
It is also expert at juicing alums and parents for donations. I joke to folks back home that even the fire escapes have plaques: Thanks to the Kind Generosity of Doug and Michelle S—, Class of ’09. Mystifyingly, someone thought Margaret Thatcher was the right person to open the new student centre in 1995, so her name too is stamped in iron.
Elon’s story is one of bouncebacks. It burned down almost entirely in 1923, inspiring its mascot today, the Phoenix. But the 1970s found Elon College poorly run and academically sluggish. Its subsequent turnaround – and universitification – raised administrative eyebrows nationwide and inspired a book, Transforming a College. The secret sauce: a focus on teaching, which now sees Elon ranked #1 in the US for undergraduate tuition.
Whatever else my future holds, I want to teach. So given a chance to sharpen my skills, assembling a syllabus from scratch, teaching and assessing a cohort for several months, and learning from peers at the top of their pedagogical game, how could I say no? I’m also intrigued by the promises of the US liberal arts system.
‘The main job of a liberal arts college, it seems to me… is to allow a heroic narrative of the self to be written, so that in subsequent years there are the remains of a proud monument against which the sands of life can wash up.’ —Lydia Millet.
With campus living, small classes, and a broad four-year curriculum, the intention seems to be to disgorge rounded, thoughtful graduates, not mere workers. So I find myself arriving at Elon all in on lofty ideals. I hope to truly know my students and yes, maybe even influence the occasional heroic self-narrative.
The university has given me a place to live, a house it owns up the road. Pollen-tinged clapboard and screen doors; a small porch with paint peeling from the handrails. Its layout is faintly Escheresque – doors into doors into doors – and former residents agree it’s a little haunted for sure, but it’s spacious and the AC works great and it’s free. The washing machine and dryer are revelations, leaving clothes bone-dry and creaseless at impossible speed. I can only assume these miracle contraptions use amounts of energy that make them illegal in Europe. My office is twenty minutes by foot, for which a sidewalk is available – a rarity around here. (I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the university funded it.) I also get the keys to what staff affectionately dub ‘the boat’, a 17-year-old Chevy Impala with 120,000 miles on the clock. The first car I’ve ever had. I drive it as little as possible.
Elon U is in North Carolina but not of North Carolina, with most students from affluent Northeastern stock. I can see why they’re seduced – great weather, idyllic campus life, Southern hospitality – although the ‘Greek life’ of frats and sororities, also somehow key, is rightly opaque to me. Before term begins the corridors are conquered by squealing young women dressed in outdated frocks, taking part in the sorority recruitment cycle. It also becomes clear the student body is politically inert. Marches and encampments at universities across the state and nation protest the horrors of Gaza, but only in early May do I hear a mutter of dissent from Elon students. Then term ends and everyone goes home.
Faculty and staff are deeply competent and near-sickeningly welcoming. When there’s a snag with accommodation, another professor – a man I’ve never met – puts me up in his elegant home for a fortnight. I grow particularly fond of professors Derek Lackaff, who directs my interactive media programme, and Kenn Gaither, dean of the school of communications. Kenn is a deliberate man, his words worth waiting for, and he handles the occasional gripes of his staff astutely, balancing his obligations both down and up the chain. The admin-faculty antagonism so common in UK academia seems milder here at least.
Everyone warns me Elon is an easy place to be busy. I set out spongelike anyway. I attend workshops at the conjunction-heavy Center for Advancement of Teaching and Learning and the (re)launch of Elon’s Imagining the Digital Future Center. My own school of communications is genuinely interested in students’ pathways to industry, hosting Figma workshops and helping seniors run a local AIGA chapter. But it’s the non-denominational gatherings that are the most charming. The Strawberry Festival comes with plant donations and queues for free ice-cream. At the Maker Fair students show off ingenious textiles, stickers, and robots. The physics department hosts a viewing of the solar eclipse – 81% in Elon, disappointingly unnoticeable in mise-en-scènic practice – showcasing technology both high (refracting telescopes) and low (colanders). A physics grad myself, I chat with excited professors about how the shadows are getting sharper: with the moon sliding across its face, the sun becomes more a point source than a extended source.
Interrupting my fairly successful career (temporarily or otherwise, I’m still not sure) leaves me feeling vulnerable right now. Desperate for a break from the treadmills of commerce and the ironies of online living, my guard is lowered. It feels, then, almost as if Elon has targeted my weak spots. It’s a university that knows what it’s for and leans into that role with a touching earnestness. Students are given an acorn on their first day, and a sapling upon graduation – hokey, yes, but a perfect example of the place’s sincerity. Sometimes, if the planets align, you end up where you’re meant to be.
La Ética del Futuro
Estoy encantado de anunciar que hoy sale a la venta La Ética del Futuro, la traducción al español de mi libro Future Ethics.
Desde que publiqué el libro hace unos años, muchas personas me han dicho que La Ética del Futuro es uno de los libros más perspicaces y prácticos que han leído sobre el tema. Las críticas también parecen confirmarlo. Si Future Ethics ha desempeñado un pequeño papel en el despertar ético de nuestro sector, estoy encantado. Pero los impactos sociales de la tecnología emergente son globales, y no sólo dominio de Silicon Valley o de los tecnólogos londinenses. Así que una versión en español del libro ha sido durante mucho tiempo un sueño para mí.
He tenido la suerte de trabajar con Silvia Calvet y Gaby Prado, que han traducido el libro con diligencia y entusiasmo, y Ariel Guersenzvaig ha contribuido con un generoso prólogo para esta edición, que se suma al original de Alan Cooper.
El libro sale hoy a la venta en Amazon (formato rústica y Kindle) y Apple Books. Por favor, comparte la obra con tus amigos y redes de diseño, producto e ingeniería de habla hispana. Mejor aún, si has leído el libro y te gustaría dejar una breve reseña en la página de ventas de Amazon, te lo agradecería enormemente. Las reseñas positivas influyen mucho en la difusión y las ventas.
Por último, estoy disponible para entrevistas (en inglés), apariciones en podcasts o invitaciones a clubes de lectura, por si alguien quiere hablar del tema o de mi trabajo posterior en este ámbito. Por favor, escríbeme si te interesa, y espero que disfrutes leyendo La Ética del Futuro.
I’m thrilled to announce that La Ética del Futuro, the Spanish translation of my book Future Ethics, is out today.
Since I published the book a few years ago, many people have told me they found Future Ethics to be one of the most perceptive but actionable books they’ve read on the topic. Its reviews seem to bear that out too. If Future Ethics has played a small role in the ethical awakening in our sector, I’m delighted. But the social impacts of emerging technology are global, not just the domain of Silicon Valley or London technologists. So a Spanish version of the book has long been a dream of mine.
I’ve been fortunate to work with Silvia Calvet and Gaby Prado, who have translated the book with diligence and enthusiasm, and Ariel Guersenzvaig has contributed a generous foreword for this edition, to sit alongside Alan Cooper’s original.
The book is out today on Amazon (paperback and Kindle formats) and Apple Books. Please share the work with your Spanish-speaking design, product, and engineering friends and networks. Even better, if you’ve read the book and would like to leave a short review on the Amazon sales page, I’d be extremely grateful. Positive reviews strongly influence sales.
Finally, I’m available for (English-language) interviews, podcast appearances, or bookclub invitations should anyone want to discuss the topic or my subsequent work in the space. Please drop me a line if that’s of interest, and I hope you enjoy reading La Ética del Futuro.
Major new work: harmful design in browser choice
For a few months I’ve been working with the esteemed Harry Brignull to investigate design patterns in the browser space. Finally we can reveal the fruits of our labour: a major report, ‘Over the Edge: How Microsoft’s Design Tactics Compromise Free Browser Choice’.
User behaviour has become a battleground. In pursuit of competitive advantage, many tech firms employ various design techniques to encourage users to act in certain ways. Some of these strategies are acceptable, such as persuasive designs that merely provide information and leave the user in full control of their decision. However, some design techniques are problematic or even harmful.
Examining these patterns first-hand, and referring to a harmful design taxonomy evolved over many years and supported by academic research, we find Microsoft repeatedly uses harmful design to influence users into using Edge. The report describes how in significant detail.
Of all Microsoft’s tactics, the most objectionable for me is their dissuasive messaging injected directly into the Chrome download page. As we write, ‘for a browser vendor to interfere with the contents of a competitor’s website – or indeed any website – with neither due cause nor user consent is highly irregular and ethically indefensible.’
Harry and I go way back. Aside from being erstwhile Clearleft colleagues, I was tech reviewer for his book Deceptive Patterns and contributed some thoughts for his first presentation on the topic. We work well together. He knows the domain and its design strategies like the back of his hand, and performed a comprehensive job auditing the relevant software. I provided writing support, input on the ethical problems these patterns pose, and help connecting our findings to real-world harms.
Of course, we had to be mindful of ethics ourselves. The study was commissioned by Mozilla, who as a browser manufacturer clearly have interests in certain findings. But they were superb clients, and showed a deep respect for research integrity. They were understandably keen to share their previous findings with us, but there was never any doubt: as independent researchers Harry and I had full control of the report.
We’re proud of the result. I’m particularly pleased with how the report connects Microsoft’s behaviour patterns to harms, describes how these harms are likely to fall harder upon those already vulnerable, and provides deeper ethical grounding by describing these patterns’ reliance upon coercion, deception, or manipulation.
As far as I know, this is one of the most in-depth case studies of harmful and deceptive date to date. I hope it advances the debate on the topic and helps others do similar work. But more importantly, I hope Microsoft and regulators alike take note – and take action.
Links
Mozilla Research post: Over the Edge: The Use of Design Tactics to Undermine Browser Choice
A slide deck showing our primary findings: https://pitch.com/v/over-the-edge-ecyggr/
Press coverage
Microsoft Deploys 'Harmful Design' Tricks to Push Edge, Say Mozilla Researchers
Mozilla slams Microsoft for using dark patterns to drive Windows users toward Edge
(Note that, whatever a journalist might write, I am not a Mozilla researcher, nor have I ever been. Nor do we use the outdated term ‘dark pattern’ in the report.)
Our Future Health tech advisory board
I’ve joined the technology advisory board at Our Future Health, the charity partnering with the NHS (and other stakeholders) to develop new ways to prevent, detect and treat disease.
I’ll be offering them input on ethics and privacy across the innovation process, and I’m looking forward to learning from my fellow advisory board members on a range of topics from ML to security.
Thoughts on harmful design
Last week, I was invited to be part of an ICO + CMA workshop on harmful / deceptive design, and gave a position statement for a panel with Sarah Gold and Google’s Abigail Gray. Here’s what I said, lightly edited:
The cause of ethics in tech has reached a difficult moment. There’s a backlash against the techlash. We’re told tech ethics, sustainability, and social responsibility are the enemies, preventing humankind from reaching a ‘a far superior way of living and being’. This has coincided – it is just a coincidence, right? – with the tech crash, which has eroded the worker power that has driven the tech ethics movement. Meanwhile, an AI landrush is incentivising companies to cut ethical corners in favour of grabbing market opportunities. So there’s good cause for pessimism.
Harmful patterns are common because they’re the exact outcomes the system rewards. While we talk about harmful design, design culture isn’t really the problem: designers tend to be user-focused, empathetic people who typically try to do the right thing. The problem is metrics-driven product management; it’s growth teams given carte blanche to see users as faceless masses to be manipulated; it’s the twin altars of profit and scale; it’s the idea that externalities – that harms themselves – are someone else’s problem, something businesses needn’t worry about.
So these are entrenched problems, which is why progress is so hard. Nevertheless, we are making progress. The ICO/CMA joint paper is a landmark and, I think, a warning shot. Academics have done a good job taxonomising and highlighting deceptive patterns. And deceptive design is now a recognised topic in industry, the subject of conference talks, books, and the like.
But harmful and deceptive practices are still prevalent, and I think fighting them will only get harder in the AI era. We need more approaches at more levels. There’s still a role for promoting these inside companies despite the headwinds, to corral the support of people who are motivated to make tech more responsible. That’s where I come in. But we also need we need activists and political theorists who can discuss the structures and business models that would better promote ethical practice. We need regulators to enforce against bad practice, and lawmakers who can protect users as new harms emerge. We need academics who can investigate these practices and offer new ways of thinking about them. We also need dialogue with the public, particularly vulnerable people most at risk from the harms of technology. In short, we have a long way to go. That’s where you come in.
World Interaction Design Day – London event
I’m helping out the IxDA London crew with an evening discussing ethics and responsibility, part of World Interaction Design Day, next Tue 26 Sep:
"We all want to be more responsible, ethical, and equitable in our design decisions, but it’s often hard to find the time or mutual support to develop these ideas. Please join us for a special World Interaction Design Day where we’ll dedicate an evening to diving into design ethics in practice.
We’ll begin with a discussion of the latest developments in the fast-changing ethical tech and design movements, before moving into three open conversation sessions. In the first, you’ll discuss a contemporary design ethics issue in detail, learning how to understand and argue ethical cases with compelling reasoning. Then, a chance to discuss your own professional ethical challenges with fellow designers in a private, confidential environment. Finally, we reconvene as a group to discuss how interaction, UX, and product designers can push for change in environments that don’t always prioritise ethics and responsibility."
Signups are open now: www.meetup.com/ixda-london/events/296203931
Taking aim: ICO & CMA on harmful design
Designers and product managers, I urge you to pay attention to this new publication on ‘harmful design’ aka deceptive patterns. It’s a joint position paper by the ICO and CMA, the UK’s privacy and competition regulators respectively.
I wasn’t heavily involved in this work – I had my hands full with the privacy design guidance – and I’m no longer at the ICO. So I have some leeway to give my own (strictly personal) interpretation of this paper in a way the authors and employees can’t.
Have no doubt: this is a warning shot.
Two powerful regulators have joined forces to put industry on notice over deceptive patterns. The language is carefully couched but IMO the implication is clear. This is step one. Step two will be robust. I won’t be surprised to see direct enforcement (i.e. legal action against companies that keep using deceptive patterns) or strict policy stances (essentially, outright prohibitions) in the near-ish future.
It’s rare and difficult for regulators to join forces like this. Two regulators expressing their joint disapproval of the same design patterns: that’s huge. Not one big stick but two.
Here are the five patterns the paper highlights:
Harmful nudges
Confirmshaming
Biased framing
Bundled consent
Default settings
The paper gives specific, mocked-up examples, and both regulators explain why they’re concerned about each pattern, pointing to UK laws already in effect.
So, my advice: if you work for a technology team in the UK or on a digital product with UK customers, act now. Read the document. Identify whether you’re using these deceptive patterns. If so, remove them now. If you don’t have that authority, show the document (and this post too, if you like) to your most senior product leader and your legal team.
This paper is the regulators cocking the gun. You don’t want the barrel pointing at you.
Ethics in Design course: edition 2
Announcing new dates for Ethics in Design, a three-week online course that Ariel Guersenzvaig and I ran with Service Design College earlier this year. Cohort two will begin 23 October. Over four 90-minute live sessions, we’ll explore:
why and how ethical issues permeate every design and technology decision;
how to transform moral hunches into more grounded, robust ways to think about ethics;
methods for kick-starting ethical conversations inside your organisation;
how to overcome common objections to ethical discussion;
how to navigate conflicts between your personal and professional spheres;
areas of emerging focus in responsible design.
The course costs $295, and it’s suited to anyone in a design-related role, including product, UX, and UI designers, DesignOps folks, researchers, and managers.. Hope to see you there.
Fulbright Visiting Scholar 2024
Many of you know this already, but at last I’m formally allowed to announce that I’ve been awarded a Fulbright scholarship and will spend the first half of 2024 as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Elon University, North Carolina.
It’s one of the most prestigious scholarships in the world, with a rigorous selection process, so I’m delighted to be one of the lucky recipients.
I’ll be researching anticipatory ethics – think ways to foresee & evaluate potential harms of emerging tech – and teaching a postgraduate module on ethics in interactive media. I also expect to visit other US institutions across academia and industry to give guest lectures and help advance discussion of this important topic. Please drop me a line if you might be able to host me for a visit.
Since the Fulbright programme is also focused on cultural exchange, I’ll also be going all-in on college sports fandom, BBQ wars, community pop-up chess nights, making Welsh cakes for confused Americans, etc.
I’m excited about this chance to participate in a scholarship programme that delivers real impact, advancing human knowledge and tackling global challenges, and I’ll be sharing more about my experience as I go.
Do the benefits of AI outweigh the risks?
I was kindly invited to a Raspberry Pi Foundation offsite to debate ‘Do the benefits of AI outweigh the risks?’ Here’s the short statement I shared:
Sometimes the role of an ethicist is to ask distinguishing questions. One such question is ‘for whom?’. Do the benefits of AI outweigh the risks? Well, the benefits for whom? The risks to whom? These two questions will probably have very different answers, right? The benefits and burdens of AI, as with almost every other innovation, won’t fall equally.
Technologies are always imprinted with values. This goes for even the crudest objects, things we don’t even think of as technologies. Think of razor wire. Razor wire is a shockingly opinionated object: it argues that someone’s right to private property is so important that we should injure anyone who violates that right.
AI people love talking about the value alignment problem: the idea that if we create a superintelligence we’d better make sure it holds the same things dear that we do, otherwise it might destroy them. But what happens before that? What values can we see imprinted within the AI systems we’re building today? When I look at modern AI, I see plausibility trumping truth. I see speed galloping ahead of safety. I see disruption hailed as inevitable, as destiny. Now, these may not be intentional design decisions but nevertheless, they have real-world impact. And the choice not to engage with the values and ethics of our technology is itself an ethical choice: an affirmation of the status quo, a vote to stay on our current heading.
AI could well be the largest force multiplier we’ve ever made. But we already feel society’s invisible, systemic forces acutely. Some people are elevated and empowered by these forces. Some are crushed. If we keep fostering the same values in technology that we do today, then I think these injustices will only increase. People who lack power today will end up further robbed of their autonomy and dignity. Entire creative classes may also find themselves dragged down by the technological undercurrents. It’s not hard to imagine a world in which the tech giants collect handsome royalties for their AI’s creations, while painters and novelists have to collect the recycling.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Technology doesn’t hold the reins. We do. If we can subvert the default values of today’s tech sector and instead build AIs that prioritise compassion, justice, respect then yes, I think the benefits of AI will far outweigh the risks. How we achieve this within the confines of growth and profit is perhaps another question.
Image by Alan Warburton / © BBC / Better Images of AI / Plant / CC-BY 4.0