White Paper Responsible Use of Technology

The document argues that the responsible management of disruptive technologies requires a synergistic combination of ethical frameworks and international human rights standards. It outlines a three-phase technology life cycle—design and development, deployment and sale, and use and application—and provides specific actions for vendors and customers to mitigate adverse impacts. The paper introduces the 'Act–Enable–Influence' framework to help companies move from internal governance to broader systemic influence through policy and regulation.

• The responsible use of disruptive technology is best achieved by combining ethics-based approaches, which address fairness and social justice across different cultural contexts, with human-rights-based approaches, which provide a universal, legally grounded baseline for dignity and protection.
• The technology life cycle consists of three distinct phases: design and development, deployment and sale, and use and application. Each phase requires different questions and actions to ensure responsible use, involving a range of actors from R&D teams and board members to end users and regulators.
• Technology vendors can mitigate human rights risks through three primary strategies: establishing 'acceptable use policies' to define permitted conduct, using whitelists or blacklists to restrict who they sell to, and providing training and guidance to customers on best practices.
• During the design and development phase, companies should employ multidisciplinary approaches, including stakeholder engagement with vulnerable groups, adversarial 'red-team' testing to uncover blind spots, and the use of representative datasets to reduce algorithmic bias.
• The 'Act–Enable–Influence' framework suggests that companies should act internally on governance, enable responsible use by building relationships with external stakeholders, and influence the broader environment by advocating for legal and regulatory reforms.
• Individual company actions are insufficient due to the 'substitutability problem,' where a less scrupulous company may fill the void if a responsible company refuses a sale, necessitating systemwide regulatory approaches and professional codes of conduct.

APA

World Economic Forum (2019). White Paper Responsible Use of Technology. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Responsible_Use_of_Technology.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. White Paper Responsible Use of Technology. 2019. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Responsible_Use_of_Technology.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=White Paper Responsible Use of Technology |date=August 2019 |url=http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Responsible_Use_of_Technology.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2019white, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{White Paper Responsible Use of Technology}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2019}, month = aug, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Responsible_Use_of_Technology.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }