Ethical/moral impacts around technology

Key terms

  • Ethics - the set of rules of right and wrong, defined by an organisation as a whole, combining the morals of everyone
  • morals - an individuals rights and wrongs, in their opinion
  • Intelligent software agents - autonomous programs that can be aware of and interpret data and then take action to achieve goals, all without permanent input from a user
  • bot - and autonomous program that can interact with systems or users
  • machine learning (ML) - the process of getting computers to learn, think, and act like humans.


How does technological use impact businesses

Changes in face to face communication

  • online work can limit or even completely remove face to face communication
  • Emails can be used, however tone of the message can be not as clear, it ca also lead to emails being sent to wrong people, leading to confusion
  • video calls for meeting can be put in place, but they are not as good as regular face to face communication - they do however alloy for international meeting
  • this could lower the sense of community within a company, and leave employees not feeling as if they matter within the company
  • on the other hand, online work does allow people to stay at home and work, leading to more free time to spend doing other things
  • it can even allow people to work on holiday, allowing employees to travel more often, as they could still be getting paid after annual leave, as long as they work while away 

Increase in reach and scale

  • companies can have websites, to allow people to access information about their products from anywhere in the world
  • due to the rise of social media, it is easier than ever to get advertisements out, for many people to see, and to the right people, due to large companies using data to show you products it thinks you would like. the term for the number of people seeing your adds is called reach, this can be:
    1. organic - the number of people seeing a businesses content for free, eg in a social media post
    2. paid - the number of people seeing paid advertisements
    3. viral - the number of people seeing your advert due it it being shared around in groups
  • however, due to people seeing more adverts than ever this backfires on businesses as people become immune to advertisements
  • there can also be more sketchy advertisements such as unspecified paid promotions, fake reviews, etc

increase in expected productivity outputs

  • people can use technology to do tasks more efficiently and better, eg excel, software predicting trends in data, software top plot graphs automatically, etc
  • this increases the work that they can do, and allows them to finish tasks sooner, removing some pressure on employees, as they wont need to put as many hours in
  • however, this could also allow company owners/managers to force workers to do even more work, or even use technology to work from home in addition to regular office hours, overworking them

increase of staff monitoring

  • an increase on monitoring may allow higher ups to catch any employees who may be trying to infiltrate the company from the inside
  • however this also decreases employee privacy, especially if mobile phones can be monitored, and employees may not feel safe at the company
  • it is important that companies inform their employees if they are being monitored

Adaptive working practices

  • online work allows people to have more flexible working hours and even stay at home to work, leading to more free time to spend doing other things
  • it can even allow people to work on holiday, allowing employees to travel more often, as they could still be getting paid after annual leave, as long as they work while away 

Shifts in skill requirements and skills redeployment

  • due to new machinery and autonomous operation, many people have to learn new skill as their old skills can be replaced with robots
  • some people would not like to work with machinery, so may leave the job

Autonomous operation

  • this is where businesses can replace workers with bots it can be
    1. Industrial automation - physical activities being carried out by robots
    2. where computer based tasks are carries out automatically
  • Intelligent software agents aka "bots" are designed so they can identify and map business processes using machine learning (ML) algorithms to help with the process, such as assigning rolls for people, and optimising work processes
  • it is cost effective, can enhance QA, increase productivity, and reduce risk as there are no actual employees
  • However, this also dehumanises the service people loose their jobs, and human empathy is lost, to become more productive in the bots eyes. also skilled staff is needed to repair robots, code their programs etc, it also requires a high upfront cost to buy the machinery.

The role of Intelligent software agents, bots, and Machine Learning in Autonomous operations in Commerce and Manufacturing

In commerce, bots can be used with ML and ISA to help to sell/advertise products, machines can analyse trends in data to figure out what works to make the most profit, without the need for humans to tell it what to do

In manufacturing, they can be used to speed up the manufacturing process, making it more efficient, and faster

Growth vs Scale

  • Growth - when in revenue increases equally as fast as the cost of additional expenditure
  • Scale - when revenue increases at a faster rate than expenditure

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