Mark Logan’s review of the Scottish technology ecosystem championed a need for further tech education in Scotland.

He called on the Scottish Government to nurture local talent, at school, university, and startup/scaleup level.

As part of these suggestions, the next generation will need to be equipped with an understanding of the dangers of unethical uses of technology.

Some of the most prescient issues of the day around tech are based on things like inequality, biased algorithms, and a lack of understanding around how our data is used.

However, young people arguably don’t have all the tools available to allow them to spot and tackle these issues.

The ‘Tech We Trust’ project, led by Digital Skills Education, looks to promote education on ethics in technology through a new programme showing primary school pupils how personal data is used to make decisions that affect our everyday lives.

DIGIT sat down with Craig Steele, Digital Skills Education’s Director, to discuss the importance of ethical tech training, common issues with bias and ethics in tech and teaching future generations.

Digital Skills Education

Through the Digital Skills Education programme, Steele is looking to help people improve their personal cybersecurity, right through to topics about being creative with tech as well – all within a framework that promotes ethical use.

With his background in computer science, Steele has built apps, games, and websites in the past, but wanted to focus his attention more on knowledge exchange around ethics and technology to build knowledge and confidence in young people.

For the last 12 years, Steele has carried out projects that help to develop people’s digital skills. However, his next area of interest is not just digital skills, but the impact that tech could have on others.

“I wanted more people, specifically young people, to understand what the powers of technology are, and how it can be used to solve our problems and basically improve our lives.”

He continues: “I think the key to this is we are going to need the next generation, who are going to need be making things, to understand the dangers of things like unethical uses of technology.

“If we want to be able to fight back against inequality or biased algorithms, we need to know how to spot those things and what you can do about it as well.”

When asked about why such a project is important, especially right now, Steele notes how often technology is being used and interacted with, and that “technology and the algorithms behind that are being used to make important decisions that affect us,” he says.

“Whenever you’re thinking about something that affects people you must think about the ethics involved,” he adds.

Bias and ethical technology

It’s inevitable that, as we move forward, an increasing number of major decisions are going to be made using technology.

Due to this, people are going to be designing algorithms that allow these decisions to be made consistently and quickly, and that means ethics could be easily disregarded as the people that create the algorithms will inherently have their own biases.

“The two things I think we need to think about, and this is this is something everyone can ask themselves, is about the fairness and transparency of these algorithms because this is where it goes wrong.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a prime example of a technology that requires a degree of fairness and transparency to be incorporated into its use.

In Scotland, an opinion poll conducted by YouGov in 2021 found that only 2% of people residing here believe that AI technology is being developed in a trustworthy manner.

Additionally, 77% said that organisations need to be more transparent with how AI is used to make decisions and that only 37% of people lack trust in how AI is being used in Scotland.

Steele says: “Are we making technology that can be accessible and used by everyone? Could the technology be used to discriminate against people, even if that isn’t what it was intended to do?”

He continues: “I think the key thing for me is because we’re using more of these technologies to make important decisions, we need to make sure the algorithms and the people who design them are being transparent about who is designing them and what their motives are.”

Ethics in technology is currently an area of contention, which covers everything from social media discourse, to things like misinformation and fake news.

Steele says: “It’s such a wide-ranging area, but I think that people are becoming more aware of different types of technology and asking themselves, ‘are we doing the right thing here, and are we building technology that is actually helping us or hurting us?’

“I think that it’s an area that we’re not discussing because it’s difficult to talk about.”

Improving tech education

Our technology-focused society, and the increase in young people being exposed to things like social media from a young age, means it has become vital that we teach from the foundational level.

Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok are open platforms relatively unmoderated with regards to content, creating potential hotbeds of misinformation.

For an adult, the implications, and dangers, of things like data sharing will be more apparent. However, for kids, the issue is a little more complex.

Steele says: “With social media, a lot of people are aware of the idea of an algorithm. We’ve heard a lot more people talking about spreading of false information or misinformation, or even this idea of people being in a social media bubble where you only seeing what you’re going to see.”

He continues: “If we teach more people about what goes into designing an algorithm like that, they’ll have a better understanding of why they are suddenly seeing 100 pictures of dogs or why they are getting negative stories about one topic over something else.”

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Big organisations could be doing more in terms of their transparency, Steele says: “We need them [large organisations] to be much more upfront about how their technology is working and explaining it to people in a way that they can understand.”

Introducing the concepts and reasoning behind the ethical use of technology from a young age will not only help build a future where knowledge is foundational, but will ultimately lead to innovation in the future, Steele suggests.

He considers that whenever you must take an ethical problem into consideration, you’re putting yourself into a different mindset.

“You’re thinking about the problem from a different point of view, and you’re having to consider maybe a scenario that you’ve never been in, forcing yourself to think differently and to approach things from a different viewpoint. That is going to help you come up with new ideas and maybe a new approach to doing something.”

He adds: “The minute you stand back and look at a project from a different angle, in this case, from an ethical angle, that’s going to lead to new ideas that’s going to lead to more innovation.”

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