The Guardian view on machine learning: a computer cleverer than you? Editorial

Brad Smith, Microsoft's president, last week told the Guardian that tech companies should stop behaving as though everything that is not illegal is acceptable. Mr Smith made a good argument that technology may be considered morally neutral but technologists can't be. He is correct that software engineers ought to take much more seriously the moral consequences of their work. This argument operates on two levels: conscious and unconscious. It is easy to see the ethical issue in Microsoft's sale of facial recognition technology to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement while the Trump administration was separating children from parents at the US's southern border.