A fairly prominent guy on LinkedIn—11,518 followers, 500+ connections—posted this the other day:

This Reddit confession is brutal:

‘I automated my mom out of a job’

Developer creates AI recruiting tool, gives it to mom’s company, entire team gets laid off 2 months later.

It raises an uncomfortable question: Should family ties influence our innovation decisions?

Would you pause development if you knew your technology could eliminate jobs at your spouse’s company? Your parent’s workplace?

Where do we draw the line between progress and personal responsibility? 🤔

[Let me tighten that last sentence up a little bit: “I automated my own family out of work.”]

I basically never respond to things on LinkedIn, but this time I couldn’t help myself. So I waded in with this:

I hope these questions are aimed at promoting ethical reflection. If they’re straight up, they’re utterly sociopathic.

The poster replied with:

yes, these questions were meant to spark ethical reflection, not to suggest a lack of empathy. 😃 The goal is to highlight the human side of innovation and the responsibility that comes with it.

Fine. I’ll accept this. All I know about the guy is that he’s a well-connected business owner on LinkedIn, so I have no reason to doubt his good faith.

But … come on.

Should family ties influence our innovation decisions?

Would you pause development if you knew your technology could eliminate jobs at your spouse’s company? Your parent’s workplace?

Where do we draw the line between progress and personal responsibility?

Should family ties influence our decision about whether or not to eat babies?

Would you pause development if you knew your technology would introduce a murderous terminator into your spouse’s company? If you knew it would render your family homeless?

Where do we draw the line between progress and homicidal sociopathy?

And, for that matter, should this sort of thing only apply when it’s your mother?

I’m a big fan of thoughtfulness, but … aren’t some questions pretty obvious?