Are We in Control?

This chapter introduces the problem of accountability and control in technology development. Traditionally, technology has been understood to emerge from deliberate, top-down, intelligent decisions by humans. More recently, it has become clear that a chaotic evolutionary process plays a major role. This chapter addresses the questions of to what extent humans are in control of technology development, how accountability changes with increased use of AI, and how society may need to adapt. In particular, technology coevolves with human society, and even if every deliberate design decision made by humans is ethical, this provides little assurance that bad outcomes will be avoided.