The decline of moral integrity
Every time we skip past an EULA (end-user license agreement) and just click the checkbox we give up something and probably more than we realize. We have given up:
our data
our privacy rights
our software ownership
the content we create
and other things that may not be in our best interest.
But more than all of those, we have given up our moral integrity.
This doesn't mean these practices were necessarily illegal or in violation of any government regulation. However, slowly but surely, we have agreed to practices that in some cases were arguably unethical, unjust, unfair, and unwarranted.
Even the act of not reading the EULA but signing it anyways has ceded moral territory. We reinforced by our actions that these licenses don't matter and what we are giving up doesn't matter as well. We were implicitly being asked to "just trust."
And here's the thing, by agreeing to what is unethical we become more unethical ourselves. Over-time we lower our standards, our values and our morality. And for what?
Who knows what else we might agree to knowingly or unknowingly for the promise of a shiny new application, platform or AI chat-bot. How far are we willing to lower our standards?
There is more at stake then access to software; we are at risk of losing our souls.
With the rise of Artificial Intelligence systems, the demand for data and access to our digital representations are growing without bounds. Many have already naively given up confidential corporate and private data to AI chat-bots putting themselves and their businesses at risk.
We are placing our trust in something where trust was not earned. We haven't performed our due diligence. We did not ask critical and important questions. We just clicked the box.
How did we get here?
It's not hard to believe that years of skipping EULAs has trained us to just trust in technology and the organizations behind them. Don't look too closely or ask too many questions, and don't read the small print. Just click the box and everything will be fine.
We may believe we don't have any choices, but we always do.
Don’t accept anything that weakens your ability to live by your higher standards or might otherwise comprise your moral integrity.
