Big Tech’s Capitalization of AI Ethics: Reflections on the Politicization of AI Ethics

The efforts of Big Tech to promote trustworthy Al have been associated with “ethics washing” and self-regulation as means of combatting new legislative measures introduced by governments and international communities. A new form of “virtue economy” has been built around Al ethics, within which Big Tech acts as a “buyer,” while university ethics labs work as “suppliers.” This paper examines Big Tech’s efforts to harness Al ethics for its own rhetorical use and the response of the academic world to this effort to capitalize ethics. Drawing on political theory, we call this process the politicization of Al ethics. This paper sheds light on critical discussions of tech ethics that examine the combined power of capitalism and technology and its societal implications. By diagnosing the tech industry with political intentions, critical tech ethics therefore assumes a crucial task: restoring the credibility of academic ethics so that it can provide remedies for the problems in society caused by datafication and algorithmic systems.