The car to carry the engine
- or - Why product is the key to responsible tech
So. You want to get from Point A to Point B, and the distance to travel is significant. Your very intelligent colleague says they can help you, and they give you a car engine.
You look at the engine. You look at Point A and Point B on a map. And you’re not seeing how that engine is going to transport you over that distance.
You turn to your intelligent colleague and ask them to explain. They assure you the engine is what you need. Then they go home for dinner.
How’s an engine going to get you from Point A to Point B?
As you scratch your head in confusion, you call your practical colleague and explain your situation. They chuckle to themselves for a minute. Then they say not to worry and promise to help you get to Point B.
The next day, you wake up worried about whether your practical colleague can actually help. But it turns out there’s no need to worry! You find your practical colleague standing next to the engine – but now the engine is under the hood of a car that’s gassed up and ready to roll.
You high-five your practical colleague, send a quick text of thanks to your intelligent colleague (after all, they did provide the engine powering the car), and set off to Point B.
You arrive safely, and all is well.
So… what does this silly little story have to do with responsible tech?
As things currently stand, many of us tend to focus on principles, frameworks, and requirements as we embark on the journey toward building responsible tech. These elements – principles, frameworks, requirements – are critical.
But they are like the engine in our story.
They won’t get you from Point A to Point B. Just like we needed the car (product) to make use of the engine (technology), we need responsible tech products to make use of these ‘technologies’ (i.e., principles, frameworks, requirements). Otherwise, we end up with teams scratching their heads in confusion when they’re asked to be ‘transparent’ or ‘fair’ or ‘privacy-protective’ – especially in high-context, low-precedence use cases.
Today, the main responsible tech ‘product’ is advice from subject matter experts. This approach works well in theory, especially for addressing novel questions. This way, teams get comprehensive advice that’s tailored to the specific details of a particular use case.
But this advisory model has a flaw: The only way to effectively scale advice is to hire more advisors. That’s not usually a sustainable model for organizations.
It creates operational inefficiencies like bottlenecks, overlapping areas of responsibility, etc.
It introduces new risks resulting from inconsistent advice.
It incentivizes unwanted behaviors like ‘forum shopping’ (in-house advisors know what I’m talking about!).
We could think of the advisory model like a bicycle. It will get us from Point A to Point B, but with a lot of labor that’s not easily repeatable (remember, the distance between is significant). A bicycle is not an optimal solution by any means. It’s an MVP at best.
We need a more sustainable, scalable solution.
So what are we to do?
We need to approach responsible tech with product-led thinking.
To do this, organizations must develop responsible tech product development capabilities (whew, that’s a lot of words… Improve Branding is officially on the backlog!). BigTech is increasingly investing in these capabilities. In the meantime, companies across all industries, including tech itself, have the benefit of learning from BigTech’s often-painful lessons and can get ahead on this investment.
The engine is critical, but it’s the car – the product – that’s ultimately going to get us where we’re going!
Gassed up and ready to roll!