American Scientist

The sheer pace of change makes it ever harder to anticipate both the bad and the good effects of new technologies. In her 2017 book, Technology and the Virtues, technology ethicist Shannon Vallor coined the term acute technosocial opacity to name this phenomenon and argued, rightly, that it requires of us that we double down in our efforts to be as alert as possible to the consequences of technological innovation. That brings us to some core questions: Are scientists and engineers, both individually and collectively, morally responsible for the uses to which the products of their work are put, and, if so, what kind of action is called for in order to discharge that responsibility?