Why we need to rethink the story around responsible innovation
High on mountain above Oslo you can see the strange angular shape of Holmekolbakken — the famous ski jump site which has dominated the horizon since 1892. In its current form, designed and built to host the 1952 Winter Olympics (and continually upgraded) it offers a terrifying glimpse of over 100 metres of cold, thin air before you land.
Which is a great metaphor for innovation, exciting, full of promise but also seriously uncertain and unpredictable.
It’s also a great location for a conference. As I discovered, visiting to speak at the AFINO conference which brings together researchers and practitioners concerned with the challenges around what has come to be called ‘responsible innovation’ (RI). The aim was to look at the concept, how it’s changed over time and to look ahead to challenges in the future. Which got me thinking — and wondering out loud in my keynote — about where we’ve got to.
Looking back is a bit misty, like the cloud which periodically wrapped itself around us at the conference. If we take a loose definition of RI it’s about thinking through and trying to anticipate the unexpected in innovation — the potential down sides or hidden angles to the picture we see when innovation emerges. To pause for thought before we plunge headlong into the exciting new world opened up. To go back to our ski jump metaphor, to look before we leap.
Today’s very visible example is, of course AI and you don’t have to look far to realise that this incredibly powerful technology comes with a lot of baggage. Not a day goes by without on the one hand new announcements about the huge potential of the technology but on the other the very real challenges it is throwing up around ethics, skills and employment, privacy, intellectual property and a hundred other concerns.
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