Advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), distributed ledger and cloud computing, are at the heart of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. These technologies, deployed appropriately, can reinvent government services, education, healthcare, and the way businesses interact with their customers. In the process, they can also unlock moral value and benefits to individuals and society. If not responsibly directed, however, Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies have the potential to erode trust, exacerbate inequity, and cause harm to people and the environment.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has brought uncertainty to all facets of society, one thing is certain: the importance of technology in daily life has never been greater. In the past year alone, AI has been used to accelerate the pace of vaccine research, the application of distributed ledgers to securely deliver digital health passports, and the availability of speech-to-text transcription in every online classroom. With so much at stake, it is essential that we, as a society, continue to advance the practice of infusing ethics and responsibility through the entire life cycle of technology. To this end, the World Economic Forum Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution has been leading the Responsible Use of Technology project, which brings together a community of experts from civil society, governments and companies to provide practical tools for leaders for how they might: 1) educate and train their employees to think more about responsible technology; 2) design their organization to promote more ethical behaviour and outcomes; and 3) design and develop more responsible technology products. Since the inception of this project, we established the need for both the human rights-based and ethics-based approaches to the responsible use of technology. We adapted concepts of behavioural economics to help leaders design organizations to drive more ethical outcomes with technology. We also convened numerous workshops and public discussions, during which practitioners shared their experiences in applying ethics to technology.

To continue the knowledge sharing and advance the practice of responsible technology, the World Economic Forum and the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University are collaborating to publish a series of case studies highlighting processes, tools and organizational constructs that facilitate the responsible design, development and implementation of technology. This document, “Responsible Use of Technology: The IBM Case Study”, marks the second in a series, following a White Paper on Microsoft. We would like to thank IBM for sharing their ethical technology governance structure, practices, tools, activities and research expertise for this effort. It is our hope that this document and the Responsible Use of Technology project will enable other organizations to learn from the insights of our community and take steps to incorporate ethics into their design, development, adoption and use of technology.