» By reinstating Sam Altman, OpenAI has chosen financial success over its altruistic principles
» When Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985, the board believed he wasn’t ready to be CEO
» Google was quick to fire ethicist Timnit Gebru when she challenged its lucrative search advertising business
» Desire paths spring up as users’ needs and goals change
» The effort paradox: the effort of forming a new path versus the desire to take the path of least resistance
» In digital products we use analytical tools to help us observe desire paths
» When a new desire path emerges, question your old assumptions — user behaviour is changing
» Thematic analysis identifies the main themes emerging from qualitative data, such as interview transcripts
» It can be a great activity to do with your team for establishing empathy with the users and their context
» Good research means being intentional, conscientious, and ethical at every step
» A mobile phone may be all you need to record an interview
» For in-person recordings, keep your setup simple and portable
» The simplest way to record video calls is to use the local or cloud recording option
» Consider carefully whether to record an interview or to have a dedicated note-taker
» When there is a financial incentive, people will industrialise technology to automate money-making activities
» Authoritative-sounding yet factually inaccurate content generated by AIs is harmful
» Product managers should be primarily concerned with what is best for users from an ethical point of view
» Data ethics studies and evaluates moral problems related to data, algorithms and corresponding practices, in order to formulate and support morally good solutions
» Product managers have ethical responsibilities that transcend career, company and profit
» Organisations need to assess and build their trust and trustworthiness
» Mitigate biases in your product that may have unintended discriminatory effects on individuals and social groups
» Product managers must understand the impact of their products on society as a whole
» Now is the time to push for broader product management accountability
» No company, individual or set of activities, yet provides a clear-cut example of ethical best practice
» What we build must not be at the cost of another group’s needs
» Nothing in traditional product training prepares you for making ethical decisions
I perhaps naïvely assume that a company’s stated product vision and corporate mission are what the organisation is actively working towards. Disappointingly, this is not always the case.
I’ll have the pleasure of visiting L’viv in Ukraine again this Saturday to give a talk on ethics in product management. Hope to see you there :-) Update: Slides from the talk are available after the break.
