The Onus is on Us

I’m a powerful male producer with an unethical past with beautiful women models wanting to be actors begging me to help them become stars, and the studio owner says to me, “The onus is on you to behave responsibly.” 

I work alone with vulnerable adults. I have a violent past with anger control problems and my manager says to me, “The onus is on you to behave responsibly.”

I own a gun. My license says, “The onus is on you to behave responsibly,” including those with access to my gun.

I’m an active alcoholic in charge of taking young mentally ill children out into the woods for a camping trip. My booze is packed and my supervisor instructs me that, “The onus is on you to behave responsibly.”

I work in a bank with no preemployment screening, no ethical training, and piles of cash around, with no audit or security functions. I’m in debt, can barely make rent, and I have three hungry young children at home. In an all staff meeting, the bank president says to us, “The onus is on you to behave responsibly.”

I have a gambling addiction. Every time I charge my debit card to place a bet, there’s an attached disclaimer from the casino that says, “The onus is on you to behave responsibly.”

I’m a famous celebrity who likes to party hard with fans fawning all over me, including impressionable young people. I’m supposed to remember the onus is on me to behave responsibly. 

I’m a police officer who has been known to act on bigoted beliefs. My sergeant says that regardless of provocation, real or imagined, “The onus is on you to behave responsibly.” 

These are my thoughts when I was reading a New York Times instruction article for using the latest AI image editing and generating tools, written presumably by their technology writer, Brian X. Chen (who is a real person). It gives helpful directions on how to immediately use these tools for our entertainment (let’s punch up those family photos) using a free seven day trial or $10 monthly subscription so we can immediately generate or alter any image regardless of our intentions, ethics, morals, or religious or political beliefs. His concluding paragraph contains this priceless sentence, “Whichever tool you use, bear in mind that the onus is on you to use this technology responsibly.” Remarkably, this is because there is no oversight, regulation, or technical limitations to keep you from using them injuriously or destructively. (Gasp, who would ever do that?!) I know this will work well because people with drivers’ licenses never do things out of poor judgement or with bad intent that cause catastrophic results to others. We know this. Humans are great at self-regulation.

I am terrified because I work in human resources, and I know what employees do even with reasonable safeguards (no offense to employees), and I know what they would do if we told them their only guiding principal is that the onus is on them to behave responsibly.

I’ve given extreme examples of unethical behavior and avarice. But it’s a slippery slope that even the well intentioned can use to a bad outcome. We are all complicit in our behavior. Each use of these tools increases their overall impact on us by inserting them ever more invisibly in our daily lives. These tools are used to make judgements, identify humans, and target individuals rightly or wrongly. They are not benign and cannot be persuaded by human appeal. A robot is not moved by being told how much I love my dog. Its judgement is final. 

So get your affairs in order, tell love ones how much you love them, treat people with kindness, and be prepared to meet whatever end you believe in because the onus is on us to behave responsibly.

Reporting from Life’s front.

Joceile

6.2.2023

[Image of wild eyes with multiple colors was drawn by the author’s hand on an iPad using a stylus. This essay was not generated using any AI tools except for a spellcheck and dictation function which, it could be argued, is an AI type tool.]