[ssss11]

It’s just a tool. Like any other, it works for its master. A hammer can be used for good or bad. A knife, a brick, a gun and so on.

The problem is humans. We need people who refuse to govern using oppression. Corporate leaders who refuse to prioritise profit over human rights. And developers who have a moral compass of what should and should not be built.

But why would this technology be any different to prior new technologies…

[RetroTechie]

Exactly. It's not a faceless corporation or say, its IT systems doing good or evil. It's the (groups of) people running that corporation & wielding its resources as tools.

That said: what systems you encounter & how they behave, may tell you something about the ethics of the people that put them in place.

As a consequence: if corporation / system / product behaves 'evil', don't direct your anger at those. Instead, direct your anger (or praise!) at the people who created & manage them.

For convenience, "company Y did Z" remains a valid phrase. As long as you're aware that "company Y" is just a placeholder meaning "people working for company Y".

[vouaobrasil]

There is no such thing as a 'just a tool', because we have fundamnetal and basal instincts that cannot be stopped when we operate in a large group. Tools always interact with these basal instincts in predictable ways that cannot be stopped within our modern technological society that has an incredible amount of inertia.

To say that anyhting is 'just a tool' is exceptionally naive and only works in small group settings.

We will never find people who govern fairly or corporate leaders who refuse to priortise profit as long as we maintain and support a system that is conducive to their growth, just as we will never stop the growth of bacteria in a bacteria-rich medium.

Yes, a hammer can be used for good or bad, but it will always inevitably be used for bad in an environment that encourages such uses.

[AnimalMuppet]

> There is no such thing as a 'just a tool', because we have fundamnetal and basal instincts that cannot be stopped when we operate in a large group.

Empirically that seems to be true.

> Yes, a hammer can be used for good or bad, but it will always inevitably be used for bad in an environment that encourages such uses.

From your previous line that I quoted, that would be any environment that has humans in large groups. Now what do you propose? Short of returning to hunter-gatherers (with the death of about 7.9 billion people), I don't see how you're going to prevent that kind of environment.

[ssss11]

That’s why I wrote “But why would this technology be any different to prior new technologies…”

We don’t have the environment to change it