Degree 6 · Unit 6.5
Ethics as a daily decision
People usually discuss the ethics of AI at conferences, in high language about the future of humanity. I do not deny that this matters. But the ethics that actually changed anything in my professional life were always much smaller than that, and much heavier: one decision, in an ordinary office, on an ordinary Tuesday, with nobody watching.
You delete a line from a report because it weakens your position. You tell a client that a machine produced part of the work you are handing over. You turn down a profitable project because what it will do to people does not sit right with you. That is what practical ethics looks like. It is not a doctrine you hold, but a habit you repeat until it hardens into character.
Three places where it is really tested
Disclosure. When do you have to say that AI took part in the work? My own rule is simple: if telling them would change how they judge what you are handing over, then telling them is a duty. As long as the tool stayed a tool in the hand of a responsible person who signs the result, you do not owe anyone a note on every line.
Attribution. Do not put your name on what is not yours. That covers the idea you took from a colleague, the phrasing AI wrote for you, and the work your team did while you were somewhere else. Taking credit that belongs to someone else is the fastest way to pull down a reputation you spent years building.
Silence. When you see your organisation using this technology in a way that harms people, staying quiet is a position you have taken, not neutrality you have preserved. I am not asking you to be a hero. I am asking you to put your objection in writing at least once. That is the smallest thing that clears your conscience, and it is also the thing most likely to change the course.
Technology multiplies whatever intention you bring to it. A person who was useful becomes more useful. A person who was harmful becomes more dangerous. It amplifies what is already inside you, and it never stops to weigh whether that thing deserves amplifying.
Do this
1 — On paper. Recall a professional decision you hesitated over this year and run it through the four questions. Would your answer have changed?
2 — In writing. Write your disclosure rule in one sentence, and share it with your team.
3 — The hard one. Write down one use around you that you believe is wrong and have not spoken about. Then decide: do you speak, or let it stand? Both are decisions.
Ethics that needs no policeman
Everything I wrote in the fifth degree about policies and controls assumes that somebody is watching. This unit assumes the opposite. You will spend a good part of your career in rooms where nobody sees what you decide and nobody will ever call you to account for it, and those rooms are the ones that decide who you are professionally.
I know only one way to build that. Make your judgements as though you will one day have to explain them to someone whose opinion of you matters. Put that person in the room whenever you hesitate: your teacher, or your child, or whoever taught you the work. You will find that most of the decisions that looked ambiguous settle themselves in about a second.
Where to after this unit? One unit is left, and it is the reason I wrote the whole programme in the first place.