The Inner Life of a Responsible Tech Practitioner — Benjamin Olsen (Humans On The Loop Ep. 02)

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When technology gets byzantine, when the heady early years of cybernetic mysticism give way and our software engineers become the new priests of the Catholic institutions of Big Tech, maybe we can learn a thing or two from a Byzantine Catholic who’s made Responsible Technology their life. This week’s guest is just that person. Benjamin Olsen is the Head of Windows Responsible AI & Data Compliance at Microsoft, where he also pioneered their first AI & Ethics education programs. He’s also an advisor for AI and Faith and has worked as co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Responsible Learning & Education program and member of their Responsible Development and Deployment of Technology steering committee; the former Responsible Innovation Lead at Meta; and a part of the IEEE’s working group on Responsible AI. His online courses in Analytics, Data Science, and Responsible Technology have been taken by millions of students in more than 120 countries.

But it’s his writing at the intersection of religion, spirituality, technology, and human flourishing that caught my eye. I met Ben through Andrew Dunn of the School of Wise Innovation, where I was on the faculty for a course on Embodied Ethics in The Age of AI with Josh Schrei, and was immediately taken by the clarity and heart he brings to places I have always guessed were, frankly, soulless. Speaking with him gave me hope that maybe all this hype is actually the evidence of earnest and concerted effort — in some corners, anyway — to do the future right and not just big. I hope that you enjoy your conversation.

Links

“The Inner Life of Responsible Innovation” by Benjamin Olsen

“Monsters and Moderation in Respsonbile AI” by Benjamin Olsen

“Super-responsible AI” by Benjamin Olsen

“Mission Impossible: Perfectly Responsible AI” by Benjamin Olsen

Learn more about this project and read the essays so far (1, 2, 3, 4).

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Chapters

0:00:00 – Teaser Quote

0:01:34 – Episode Intro

0:03:58 – Introducing Benjamin Olsen

0:08:20 – Toward Omni-considerate Corporate Ethics

0:17:18 – Practicing Super-responsibility

0:27:32 – Between The Scylla of Censorship and The Charybdis of Underblocking

0:36:26 – Doing The Lord’s Work inside The Leviathan

0:43:09 – Consent between Company & Customer

0:54:07 – How Do We Exercise Agency Within Social Constraints?

0:58:10 – Who Does Benjamin Recommend?

1:00:21 – Closing Remarks

Mentions

• Yolanda Gil

• Kevin Kelly

• Martin Luther King Jr.

• Henry David Thoreau

• William Gibson

• Stafford Beer

• James P. Carse

• Hans Moravec

• Father Walker Ciszek

• Catherine Dougherty

• Larry Muhlstein

• Danny Go

• Timothy Morton

• Carl Jung

• Amber Case

• Michael Zargham

• Chip and Dan Heath

• Bayazid Bastami

• Shannon Valor

•  Dan Zigmund

• Zvika Krieger