Paper short abstract:

This paper examines recent trends in the digital tech industry to create new jobs and structures that integrate ethical concerns into their tech development processes and products, and asks how these developments represent new opportunities and challenges for anticipatory governance.

Paper long abstract:

Since its inception, a key challenge facing anticipatory governance, and the related program of responsible innovation, has been engaging with and enrolling the private sector in efforts to steer innovation towards more just and sustainable outcomes. This paper examines the digital tech industry - an industry that is critically important with the renewed interest in AI - specifically recent trends to create new jobs and structures that integrate ethical concerns into their tech development processes and products, and asks how these developments represent new opportunities and challenges for anticipatory governance. Our data come from an NSF-sponsored project that collected a set of 30 semi-structured interviews with hiring managers who were looking to fill what we refer to as 'ethical tech' jobs (ethics related roles like ethical hacker, director of responsible AI), and 'tech critics,' a category that includes people who used to work in the tech industry and specifically in roles related to ethics or responsibility. Our findings show how organizational structures, job precarity, culture, and leadership can limit the power of those working in roles relating to ethics and responsibility. Yet, respondents also shed light on strategies for educating and training future ethical tech workers that may help them overcome those challenges and insights for building 'integration' capacities that are essential to anticipatory governance. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of our findings given some of the most recent trends in tech industry, including job contraction and more prominent focus on the regulation of AI.