Day 0 Event #197 Ethical Networking Sustainability and Accountability

Summary

This IGF workshop focused on ethical networking, sustainability, and accountability in computer science and mathematics, bringing together academics, researchers, and activists from various backgrounds. The discussion centered on how to ensure that mathematics and computer networking practices align with ethical principles including privacy, transparency, and accountability. Participants emphasized that ethical considerations cannot be treated as optional add-ons but must be fundamentally embedded throughout the development process from the beginning.

A key theme emerged around the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and diverse perspectives. Speakers stressed that engineers and mathematicians working in isolation cannot foresee all implications of their work, making it essential to include social scientists, ethicists, and affected communities in the development process. The discussion highlighted how narratives around hyperperformance and optimization in computer networks often go unquestioned, potentially misaligning with ethical principles that require time for thoughtful consideration.

Participants addressed the challenges of emerging technologies like AI and IoT, emphasizing that positive impacts are subjective and vary across cultures and regions. Alexander Isavnin provided insights from Russia, illustrating how technologies claimed to be ethical can actually serve surveillance purposes. The conversation revealed tensions between technological advancement and genuine ethical implementation, particularly in less democratic contexts.

The role of the IGF was discussed as a crucial convening platform that breaks down silos between technical and non-technical experts, enabling essential dialogue across diverse stakeholders. However, participants noted that assembling the right people is only half the challenge – translating awareness into action remains difficult. The workshop concluded with emphasis on continuous oversight and the need for humans to actively participate in ensuring technology serves positive purposes rather than assuming technology alone can solve ethical challenges.

Keypoints

## Major Discussion Points:

– **Embedding Ethics in Technology Development**: The need to integrate ethical considerations from the ground up rather than as an afterthought, with emphasis on moving beyond traditional narratives of optimization and performance to include responsibility, sustainability, and human impact in computer networking and mathematics.

– **Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Perspective**: The critical importance of breaking down silos between technical and non-technical experts, bringing together diverse stakeholders including computer scientists, mathematicians, social scientists, and affected communities to ensure comprehensive understanding of technological impacts.

– **Cultural and Regional Differences in Ethics**: Recognition that ethical standards and definitions of “positive impact” vary significantly across different cultures, regions, and political systems, with particular attention to how authoritarian governments can abuse technology for surveillance and control.

– **Role of IGF as a Convening Platform**: Discussion of how the Internet Governance Forum serves as a crucial space for connecting diverse global stakeholders, facilitating dialogue between different perspectives, and translating awareness into actionable governance frameworks.

– **Human-Centered Network Evaluation**: The challenge of assessing networks as socio-technical systems where human and technical components interact, emphasizing the need for continuous oversight, citizen participation, and understanding of failure modes at human-machine interfaces.

## Overall Purpose:

The discussion aimed to explore how ethical principles can be integrated into computer networking, mathematics, and emerging technologies, while examining the role of international governance forums in promoting sustainable and responsible internet development. The workshop sought to bridge technical expertise with ethical considerations and cultural perspectives from different regions.

## Overall Tone:

The discussion maintained a collaborative and academic tone throughout, characterized by thoughtful analysis and mutual respect among participants. While the conversation remained constructive, there was an underlying sense of urgency about the need for ethical oversight of rapidly advancing technologies. The tone became slightly more pointed when discussing regional differences, particularly regarding authoritarian uses of technology, but returned to a collegial atmosphere focused on finding practical solutions through international cooperation and interdisciplinary dialogue.

Speakers

**Speakers from the provided list:**

– **Alexander Isavnin** – Member of the Council of the Russian Pirate Party, mathematician by education

– **Sara Hjalmarsson** – Vice chair of the European Pirate Party, workshop moderator

– **Audience** – Online participant reading questions from chat

– **Dennis Mueller** – Research associate at the University of Cambridge and University of Cologne, co-founder of the Ethics and Mathematics Project, works on mathematics education for sustainable development and extreme technological risks related to AI and the Internet

– **Marc Bruyere** – Researcher at Airbus (10 years), has Ph.D., works on ethical implications of research and innovation

– **Keith Goldstein** – Chair of Pirate Parties International, involved in drafting research project on computer networking ethics

– **MODERATOR** – Technical moderator handling audio/video issues

– **Maurice Chiodo** – Research associate at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, principal investigator and co-founder of the Ethics and Mathematics Project, research mathematician specializing in computability theory and abstract algebra, ethics and safety consultant in AI and blockchain technologies

– **Daphne Tuncer** – Academic researcher in computer science and computer networks, affiliated with Institut Polytechnique de Paris in France, works on responsibility in digital development

**Additional speakers:**

None identified beyond the provided speakers names list.

# IGF Workshop Report: Ethical Networking, Sustainability, and Accountability in Computer Science and Mathematics

## Executive Summary

This Internet Governance Forum (IGF) workshop examined the intersection of ethics, sustainability, and accountability in computer networking and mathematics. Co-moderated by Sara Hjalmarsson (Vice Chair of the European Pirate Party) and Keith Goldstein (Chair of Pirate Parties International), the session brought together academics, researchers, and activists to address three key questions: how mathematics and computer networking can align with ethical principles, how emerging technologies can be ethically developed, and what role IGF can play in promoting responsible internet governance.

The discussion featured Maurice Chiodo and Dennis Mueller (co-founders of the Ethics and Mathematics Project at Cambridge University), Daphne Tuncer (Institut Polytechnique de Paris), Marc Bruyere (industry researcher), and Alexander Isavnin (Russian Pirate Party, mathematician). Participants emphasized that ethical considerations must be embedded throughout technology development rather than added as afterthoughts, and highlighted the critical need for interdisciplinary collaboration across technical and social domains.

## Workshop Structure and Key Questions

The workshop was organized around three main questions that structured the discussion:

1. **How can mathematics and computer networking align with ethical principles?**

2. **How can emerging technologies be ethically developed?**

3. **What role can IGF play in promoting responsible internet governance?**

The format included both on-site and remote participants, with audience questions addressed at the end of the session.

## Question 1: Aligning Mathematics and Networking with Ethical Principles

### Historical Context and Current Challenges

Alexander Isavnin provided crucial historical perspective, noting that “at the beginning of the internet, there was no privacy considerations or security considerations because scientists have created internet for their own needs. They thought that only such good guys with scientific approaches will exist on the internet. But actually, a lot happens since that. A lot of people came here, evil people, bad people, governments, corporations, and so on.”

This observation established why current ethical challenges exist and influenced the discussion about moving from reactive to proactive ethical frameworks.

### Technical Decisions with Ethical Implications

Marc Bruyere offered a concrete example of how technical design choices have real-world consequences. He explained how IPv4’s design, placing source addresses before destination addresses, forces routers to wait for the destination field, resulting in significant energy consumption over time. IPv6 corrected this by putting destination first, demonstrating how seemingly minor technical decisions can have massive environmental implications.

### Embedding Ethics from the Start

Dennis Mueller argued that “ethics is not an optional extra or a bolt-on. It’s something that we must fundamentally embed within everything we do… principles like safety and sustainability cannot be bolted on at the end of a project, especially with decentralised technologies such as the internet, where retrospective fixes can be very difficult or even impossible.”

## Question 2: Ethical Development of Emerging Technologies

### The Imperative of Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Maurice Chiodo emphasized that “from an engineer’s viewpoint, there are three key aspects to ethical development here. Perspective, perspective, and perspective… We work deep within technical systems, but technologies like AI, in the internet of things, are fundamentally human endeavours.”

He outlined a framework focusing on three areas requiring scrutiny: ethical vision, tool integrity, and process robustness. This emphasis on multiple perspectives became a central theme throughout the discussion.

### Challenging Performance-Oriented Paradigms

Daphne Tuncer contributed a critical perspective on narratives driving technology development, particularly questioning assumptions around hyperperformance and optimization. She challenged the notion that “fast is good,” arguing that ethical principles require time for thoughtful consideration and may conflict with speed-oriented development paradigms.

Tuncer also emphasized the importance of working with social scientists and learning survey and consultation methods to better understand diverse perspectives and impacts.

### Cultural and Regional Considerations

The discussion revealed tensions around implementing ethical frameworks across different political contexts. Alexander Isavnin illustrated how technologies claimed to be ethical can serve surveillance purposes under authoritarian governments, emphasizing that “you are your own insurance” and stressing individual responsibility for oversight.

Daphne Tuncer challenged assumptions about universal ethical standards by questioning “positive for who and relative to what?… what one might consider as being positive might be well perceived as negative by another.” This insight highlighted that ethical frameworks must account for diverse cultural perspectives rather than imposing universal standards.

## Question 3: IGF’s Role in Promoting Responsible Internet Governance

### Platform for Diverse Stakeholder Engagement

All speakers recognized IGF’s unique role as a convener bringing together diverse global perspectives. Maurice Chiodo noted that IGF “serves as convener breaking down silos between technical and non-technical experts,” while Daphne Tuncer emphasized it “provides platform for worldwide audience to confront diverse perspectives.”

Keith Goldstein, drawing from his experience with Pirate Parties International, highlighted how IGF enables dialogue across different regional approaches to digital rights and internet governance.

### Bridging Technical and Governance Communities

Marc Bruyere noted IGF’s potential role in bridging gaps between internet governance discussions and traditional standards organizations like IETF and W3C, though he acknowledged this relationship requires strengthening.

Dennis Mueller emphasized that “IGF stakeholders must act as ambassadors spreading integrated perspective to their fields,” suggesting the forum’s impact depends on participants carrying insights back to their respective communities.

### Expanding Engagement Beyond IGF

Alexander Isavnin advocated for broader interaction with UN and intergovernmental organizations beyond just IGF, arguing for more comprehensive engagement with global governance structures.

## Collaborative Research and Future Directions

The workshop revealed ongoing collaboration between several participants. Keith Goldstein, Marc Bruyere, and Daphne Tuncer have been working together on a research project, including developing a questionnaire to study how humans learn new networking methods. This collaborative approach exemplifies the interdisciplinary cooperation the workshop advocated.

Maurice Chiodo and Dennis Mueller, as co-founders of the Ethics and Mathematics Project, brought complementary perspectives on integrating ethical considerations into mathematical and technical education.

## Areas of Agreement and Different Emphases

### Broad Agreement

Participants generally agreed on the necessity of interdisciplinary collaboration and the need to embed ethical considerations throughout technology development. There was broad acknowledgment of IGF’s valuable role as a platform for diverse stakeholder engagement.

### Different Emphases

While agreeing on core principles, speakers emphasized different approaches to implementation. Alexander Isavnin focused on individual responsibility and oversight, particularly in contexts where institutional safeguards may be compromised. Maurice Chiodo and Dennis Mueller emphasized developers’ and engineers’ responsibility to integrate diverse perspectives and build safety into systems from the start.

Speakers also brought different perspectives on technology’s role in addressing societal inequalities, with varying emphasis on the potential for technological solutions versus the need for constant oversight to prevent abuse.

## Human-Centered Network Evaluation

The discussion addressed challenges in evaluating networks as socio-technical systems. Maurice Chiodo argued that “humans and technical components cannot be assessed in isolation, their value and risks emerge from their interaction.”

This systems thinking approach moved beyond simple human versus technical distinctions to understanding complex interactions. Marc Bruyere contributed insights about fundamental differences between quantitative and qualitative evaluation spaces, while Dennis Mueller emphasized that human components have different motivations and characteristics than technical components.

## Unresolved Challenges

Several critical challenges require further attention:

– Practically democratizing ethical networking to ensure meaningful citizen oversight

– Bridging global north and south dynamics in ethical technology development

– Translating IGF insights into concrete action beyond the forum

– Balancing different cultural definitions of positive technological impacts

– Developing practical evaluation tools for human components in network systems

– Ensuring adequate time and resources for ethical considerations in fast-paced development environments

## Conclusions and Next Steps

The workshop demonstrated broad agreement on the need for ethical approaches to networking and technology development, while revealing significant implementation challenges. Participants committed to continuing collaboration through future research and publications, with plans to make interdisciplinary discussions routine practice.

The conversation reinforced that technology development is fundamentally a human endeavor requiring diverse perspectives, cultural sensitivity, and continuous ethical oversight. As Dennis Mueller noted, the goal is not to slow technological progress but to ensure it serves positive purposes through thoughtful, inclusive, and ethically-grounded approaches.

The workshop concluded with recognition that while IGF provides a crucial platform for these discussions, the real challenge lies in translating awareness into concrete changes within technical communities and organizations. Participants emphasized both individual responsibility and institutional change as necessary components of ethical technology development.

MODERATOR: ♪♪ ♪♪

Keith Goldstein: Okay, thank you everybody for coming. It’s a pleasure to see you all. This is the IGF workshop on ethical networking, sustainability and accountability. Rather than introduce everyone, I’ll turn over to my colleague Sara over here to ask our first question.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Thanks, Keith. First of all, my name’s Sara. I’m the vice chair of the European Pirate Party. We have a booth here if you’re on site, so if you like what we’re talking about, please feel free to stop by. I’d like to start by letting our speakers introduce themselves first before we start with question one. So I’d like to hand over to Daphne. Do we have Daphne with us? Welcome, Daphne. Please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you do. Tell me something about yourself, your project, and how it relates to ethical networking.

Daphne Tuncer: Hello?

Sara Hjalmarsson: Yeah, now we can hear you.

MODERATOR: Sorry, sorry. I couldn’t turn on my mic. Sorry about that.

Sara Hjalmarsson: That’s okay. It happens sometimes. Go for it.

Daphne Tuncer: Yeah. Hi, hi, everyone. Sorry, let me turn on the video as well. It should be working now. Yeah, great. So hi, everyone. Thanks a lot for joining this session. So my name is Daphne Tuncher. I’m academic. My research is in the domain of computer science, more specifically computer networks. I’m affiliated with Institut Polytechnique de Paris in France. So over the years, I’ve been trying to work on putting together kind of actionable resources, both for research and education on what I call responsibility in our digital development. So thank you.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Okay, wow. That’s a big responsibility. All right. Thank you, Daphne. Daphne. Next. Next, we have Marc Brouillere. Marc, are you with us?

Marc Bruyere: Yes. Can you hear me and see me? Yes. Yes. Loud and clear. Loud and clear. Okay, quickly. Actually, I did a Ph.D. when I was 40, like 10 years ago, coming from a long path from an industry and so on. And when you’re actually starting to do research and you know what implication it is in research, you are actually influencing things and innovating stuff and so on. And it always questioned me how to do this without hurting society with an ethical way. Then that’s what we, I was definitely had a very first conversation about it. And I’m actually working for a large company back for 10 years in research for Airbus, was everything do count in the choice you do. And it’s very valuable that we are actually all thinking

Sara Hjalmarsson: of the impact of the choices we do. And I really appreciate we are this time together. Oh, wow. So you’ve had a lot of insight to share there. Looking forward to it. Next, we have Keith. Sorry. Next, we have Maurice. Maurice, are you with us? Yes. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yep. Loud and clear. Loud and clear.

Maurice Chiodo: Excellent. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be able to speak here today. So my name is Maurice Kioda, and I’m a research associate at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. I’m also the principal investigator and co-founder of the Ethics and Mathematics Project. So a research mathematician by training, I specialized in computability theory and abstract algebra. My work now looks at the ethical challenges and risks posed by mathematics, mathematicians, and mathematically-powered technologies. I’ve been working on this for over nine years and have insights and industry experience as an ethics and safety consultant in AI and blockchain technologies.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Oh, wow. You’ve done a bit of everything. Thank you, Maurice. Thank you, Maurice. Dennis. Dennis Mullow. Dennis, are you with us?

Dennis Mueller: Yep, I’m here. Thank you very much. It’s an honor to be here. I’m also a co-founder of the Ethics and Mathematics Project. I’m currently a research associate at the University of Cologne, where I work on mathematics education for sustainable development. And I work with Maurice at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk, where I study extreme technological risks related to AI and the Internet. Overall, my work sort of connects to ethics, education, mathematics, and I’m particularly interested in studying how mathematics and mathematically-powered technologies are shaping our world.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Okay, wow. All right, very good. Great to have you with us. Next, we have Alexander Isavnin. Alexander, are you with us?

Alexander Isavnin: Yeah, for sure. Hello, I’m Alexander Isavnin. I’m a member of the Council of the Russian Pirate Party, where we live in very difficult countries, and our party and citizens of our country constantly need to face ethical and sustainability challenges. I’m also a mathematician by education, but have no relations to ethics and mathematics projects.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Thanks. Okay, welcome. Next, we have Keith.

Keith Goldstein: And I’ll just introduce myself. I’m Keith Goldstein, chair of Pirate Parties International. I also have been involved with Daphne and Mark here on drafting a research project on computer networking ethics and looking at how humans are able to learn new systems. Okay, thanks. So why don’t we move on to the next question?

Sara Hjalmarsson: So let’s start with the first question there. We’re sharing a little bit. So how can we ensure that mathematics and computer networking practices align with ethical principles, including privacy, transparency, and accountability?

Keith Goldstein: So Daphne, would you like to start?

Daphne Tuncer: Yeah, sure, I’m happy to start. So as I said earlier, I’m a computer scientist. But in the recent year, I started working a lot with people from social science. And through this collaboration, I got to learn a lot about the role of narratives in how this contributes to how we approach and develop new technologies. And if you take computer network research as an example, so a lot of the narratives that we have today have to do with hyperperformance, optimization, measurements. So of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. But my point is that very often, these things are just taken for granted. We never really question these narratives. And so it does subconsciously, us, like researchers in computer networks, influence the way we think. So to me, spending time on talking about these narratives to make them explicit and also having a space to confront them is an essential part and also ingredient to get an alignment between our practices, for example, in computer networks and ethical principles. So I think what is really important is to reserve time for that. So today, and I think this has been driven a lot by all these developments in the computing technologies, we tend to value high speed as something good. So it’s fast, it’s good. But to some extent, I believe this is not really aligned with ethical principle where we require time to think. So I think time is very key here.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Thank you. Next, Maurice. What are your thoughts on this?

Maurice Chiodo: Sorry, thank you. Let me just pull that up. So the question was… Yeah, yeah, no, that’s a fair thing. Right, so ensuring that analytical practices align with core ethical principles, it requires us to address three distinct but ultimately interconnected challenges of the alignment problem. So from the perspective of ethics and mathematics, we must first define what we want to achieve. Second, we must determine how to achieve these outcomes by developing the right mathematical tools, technologies, and practices. This involves examination of the methods we use. For instance, the commitment to privacy requires not just policy, but the implementation of privacy-preserving mathematics from the ground up. The third, and most crucially, sticks. This is the long-term challenge. To get this right, we must scrutinize three areas simultaneously. As I said, the ethical vision of our outcomes, the integrity of our tools, and the robustness of our processes. Any one of these can undermine the others. For example, an ethical process can still lead to a harmful outcome if the underlying technology is flawed. Therefore, we must move beyond just analyzing intent and design aims. We have to rigorously investigate the technologies and the technologists’ ability to do good or cause harm. We must understand not only what they want to do, but also… Oh, we have a bit of a lag there. We missed the last thing you said, Maurice. Oh, sorry. So I was saying that, therefore, we must move beyond just analyzing intent and design aims. We have to rigorously investigate the technologies and the technologists’ ability to do good or cause harm. And we must understand not only what they want to do, but also what they can do. Okay.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Yeah, that’s a big point. Let’s see. We have Alexander. You have a slightly different cultural environment. What’s your perspective?

Alexander Isavnin: Let me give perspective, not just from my cultural environment, but from my experience. We all know that technology and instrumentation and tools are being developed much faster than regulations or even spelling norms of what’s going on. At the beginning of the internet, there was no privacy considerations or security considerations because scientists have created internet for their own needs. They thought that only such good guys with scientific approaches will exist on the internet. But actually, a lot happens since that. A lot of people came here, evil people, bad people, governments, corporations, and so on. So I think that our idea of sustainability and ethical networking should be the most important. It should go towards understanding of what people need, first of all, and only then such formulated needs need to shape technology developments. Back to my cultural background, in Russia, it’s happening always. The state and the state-controlled corporations are developing technologies. They are announcing that technologies are for the good of the people, but lately it appears that even network applications are developed for surveillance or control of people’s activities. Thanks.

Sara Hjalmarsson: All right, very good. We’ll actually get into that topic in a moment. In the meantime, we have, sorry, Dennis. What’s your perspective?

Dennis Mueller: I think to truly align our practices with ethical principles, we must understand that ethics is not an optional extra or a bolt-on. It’s something that we must fundamentally embed within everything we do. And so principles like safety and sustainability cannot be bolted on at the end of a project, especially with decentralized technologies such as the internet, where retrospective fixes can be very difficult or even impossible. And I think that achieving this requires a fundamental systemic shift in how we work. We need to communicate, hire, and train with ethics as a core competency. Technical success must sort of be balanced with success from an ethical and sustainability perspective. And this can be quite challenging from my experience and from working with other engineers. And it requires sort of like an adjustment because engineers can be accustomed to viewing their work as sort of like a technological optimization problems. And this perspective demands that technical and non-technical experts and the affected communities of those technologies must find a common language and build a shared understanding of the goals and risk involved. And so ultimately technical expertise and ethical expertise are sort of like two sides of the same coin. And only by fostering a community that sort of like equally values forward-thinking responsibility and backward-looking accountability, we can ensure that this happens.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Okay, very good. Thank you, Dennis. And finally, we have Marc.

Marc Bruyere: I think multi-decisionary groups and thinking is always a benefit. And then that’s something in the discipline of engineering, design, and so on, or does imply choices as well with no ethical thing, ideas and thoughts are actually have placed sometime in industry, even in research and so on. That’s very important. We have also feedback and time to give proper response and ideas, review from other people with other field of research or activities and so on. For a simple story to illustrate this, and I just verify using IPv4 to communicate through Zoom. Think of a teeny details who has very profound impact today. Then the design on that IPv4, they actually place the source address before the destination address. What do you do when you are actually checking where the packet need to go? You expecting the destination, not the source to be first. And this teeny details is actually using a lot of power and electricity every time for very long time, big impact on the consummation of electricity and so on. Because all the routers have to wait, have to wait to the destination field before having the source. Kind of a teeny mistakes, but big impact. Then obviously reviewing and so everyone and all disciplinary things for such things is very difficult. We don’t know, they didn’t know that actually that design they did will remain for that long. And in IPv6, destination come first.

Sara Hjalmarsson: All right, thank you very much. And I think that’s actually a wonderful segue into our next question. So we’ve already… Mark, sorry. Mark has mentioned the technology that we’ve had for quite a while now and how we’ve learned from that and made things more efficient. But we’re also seeing emerging technologies. How can these emerging technologies such as automated language models, an artificial intelligence, the internet of things and so on be ethically developed and deployed to ensure they have positive social, cultural, political, academic, and environmental impacts? Take 10 minutes for that one. So let’s go back to Mark for that one. Well, everyone will have a chance to answer, but we’ll just do it in kind of the opposite order this time. Go ahead, Mark.

Marc Bruyere: It’s a hard practice to have all the view and impact of what we do. But what I actually, when we started to open up ideas and thoughts with Daphne, we did find people are working hard on those questions from the root practice of what we call computer science today, which is the digital world. mathematicians, or both of you, Maurice and Dennis. They put together a lot of questions, a lot of way of asking yourself, it is a good project, and so on so on. That practice needs to be every time for everything, mostly. It was very hard to have the time for this, but it’s necessary. Giving time for this kind of practice is essential, and it does, it has to cover a minimum of different payouts that’s been introduced by their works, and I think we rely on actually kind of future project on their approaches, and it’s very valuable, and that’s why, yes, I let all the people already spend a lot of time thinking of

Sara Hjalmarsson: it. Okay, very good. Thank you, Marc. Do you want, Alexander, you have

Alexander Isavnin: something specific, go ahead. Yeah, you ask a really broad question about impact to very, very difficult fields of human society, but I would like to point two issues. First of all, for technologies, development of technology is something funny, so that’s more than young people who are rushing into technology, into education, into testing something. They don’t think about impact of their activities at all, so that’s why we have script kiddies, we have young hackers, and so on. That’s, I think, the lack of education, overall general education, not technology education. That’s an issue, and I remember myself when I was young, the Internet was a university, and so on. I definitely can confess I did some unethical things which I would not do now, having understanding all this impact. So, first of all, we need to educate young. The second approach, and this is actually a kind of experience from local, from Russia, because officials, corrupted officials, or corporations which have ties to the government, stating nearly the same things, that technology needs to be ethical, technology needs to provide sustainability and be available for everyone. But, in contrary, technology does not develop. For example, in Russia, we do not have 5G cellular networks, because all their frequencies are stockpiled by few companies or militaries under the name of protecting common resource, and so on. So, the development of 5G networks is not possible, not because of sanctions, not because of some retrospective things, but just because somebody tries to keep us sustainable. So, I think that’s two points I would like to bring to the table and maybe discuss later. Thanks.

Sara Hjalmarsson: All right. Thank you very much, Alex. That’s an interesting point. And, of course, we also invite questions from our online participants. Next, we have Maurice. Go ahead, Maurice.

Maurice Chiodo: Thank you very much. So, I’m going to sort of try and give this from an engineer’s viewpoint. So, from an engineer’s viewpoint, there are three key aspects to ethical development here. Perspective, perspective, and perspective. Even the most conscientious engineers cannot ensure positive impacts on their own. We work deep within technical systems, but technologies like AI, in the internet of things, are fundamentally human endeavors. They connect people and the object people use. Therefore, human insights and a range of perspectives must be central throughout the entire development and deployment process, not just as an afterthought. This requires a shift in resources. Ethical development isn’t free. It takes dedicated time and effort to consult with domain experts, conduct impact assessments, and engage with impacted communities. This work must be budgeted for as a core project requirement, not an optional extra. Furthermore, our motivation must be scrutinized. We should focus on applying our skills to solve recognized societal problems, rather than inventing new problems to fit a fancy technological tool. With every step forward, we have to ask a critical question. Who wins and who loses? True ethical networking requires us to see and account for everyone.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Absolutely. So, very good. Thank you, Maurice. And Daphne, what are your thoughts?

Daphne Tuncer: So, I think, kind of, the key word here in this question is positive impacts, because positive for who and relative to what? I mean, everything is subjective and that relates to, I mean, what Alexander, you were saying about the situation in Russia, because what one might consider as being positive might be well perceived as negative by another. And by mean by one can be, of course, a person, but it can be a community, a group of interest, can be a government, etc., etc. So, as the question shows, impact is multidimensional. So, we can’t expect there will be one group of people that will decide what positive impacts are. So, maybe here, I will answer as a researcher, because that’s my community, but I think as a researcher, the very important thing for us now is ready to engage in a practice that goes beyond this kind of mode of organization and silos that we’ve seen for research. So, you are a computer scientist, you are a mathematician, you are a biologist, you are a sociologist, but at the end, what really matters is that we really work together, so that we agree or at least we get some shared value on what positive impacts we are aiming at, but also how we assess these impacts.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Okay, thank you, Daphne. And Dennis, of course, go ahead.

Dennis Mueller: The development of technologies like large language models or the Internet of Things hinges critically on understanding the interconnected nature. So, from an engineer’s perspective or from a management perspective, that means that we cannot compartmentalize ethics within single sub teams, because things will just get overlooked. Nor can we sort of like overlook that sort of like the social, cultural, political and environmental aspects are deeply intertwined. So, we cannot usually address one without affecting the other. And so, that means for developers, there’s sort of a dual responsibility here, building safety into the technical architecture or into the technical system, and also earning the public’s trust. One does not necessarily imply the other in an interconnected world. And we cannot assume that engineers or mathematicians or computer scientists by default understand how to navigate this complexity or how to raise the right questions. They need to be taught this and given the space to think beyond immediate, localized, often monetary incentives. And they need to be taught how to do this in a way that earns trust from society. And once again, this sort of like requires balancing technical expertise and technical incentives with non-technical knowledge and non-technical incentives. In this sense, I can only reiterate what Maurice said. Perspective is really what matters here from my perspective.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Okay, thank you very much. I think we have quite a few overlaps there. I think a common thread is education. Education and integration with our interdisciplinary teams and interdisciplinary working environments. And in that sense, we kind of have this big interdisciplinary environment with the IGF. And that leads us to the next question. What role can the IGF and its stakeholders play in promoting sustainable and responsible internet governance? So let’s start with Daphne this time. Go ahead, Daphne.

Daphne Tuncer: Thanks. Well, I think that raising the IGF is a platform to connect and get the visibility on what’s going on. So as I said earlier, I really think that understanding for who and relative to what technology, a model, a development demonstrates certain qualities is not simple. So to me, the IGF really has the ability to reach out to a very worldwide audience. So it must capitalize on that to provide, I think, a medium through which we can confront our perspective, especially coming from different parts of the world. Because this raises perspectives that we need to embed into sustainable and responsible Internet governance. I don’t think we should get a top-down approach where a small group of people will decide on the definition of these qualities for governance. So I really believe that the IGF has a key role to play in supporting the diversity of background, cultural heritage, point of views that are really necessary to design and build this governance framework.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Okay, thank you, Daphne. Maurice, what’s your perspective? What do you think?

Maurice Chiodo: Thank you. So in my view, the IGF’s most powerful role here is that of a convener. It provides the room and sets the tables for the essential multilevel ethical engagement that sustainable Internet governance requires. This is the space where dialogue is not just possible, but it’s the primary purpose. By its very nature, the IGF assembles a diverse array of stakeholders needed to generate genuine perspective from governments and corporations to academics and activists. As we’ve discussed, perspective is the single most critical ingredient for the ethical development of emerging technologies. An engineer in a lab cannot foresee and understand all the implications of their work, just as a policymaker cannot grasp all the technical nuances. The IGF is a place where these worlds connect. It breaks down the silos between the technical and non-technical experts that often exist in industry and governments, which is crucial for finding and nurturing a common language. In this way, the IGF already acts as the essential first step. It gathers the necessary people and perspectives, creating the foundation upon which responsible governance of a decentralized mathematical technology like the Internet can be built. Okay, thank you.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Thank you, Maurice. Next, Alexander. Go ahead.

Alexander Isavnin: Yes, for sure. But first, I would like to point out that ethics and sustainability might be really different in different parts of the world. So I think these locations where the IGF was conducted have completely different approaches to what is ethical and what is not ethical. And events like Internet Governance Forum allows, first of all, to understand each other. Not to synchronize, but to understand each other’s approaches. So that still Internet Governance Forum not just connects different stakeholders from the same group, but understanding of what’s going on in different regions, different countries, different regions. Overall, IGF allows to connect all positively thinking people who are looking forward for development of the Internet for good. I think not just IGF, maybe some other platforms like World Summit for Information Society, which actually spinned off IGF 20 years ago, still have forums which are more populated by governmental people. So I think we should continue not just in IGF, in our local IGF, in our local communities, but also have broader interaction within United Nations and intergovernmental organizations.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Okay, thank you, Alexander. Dennis, what about you?

Dennis Mueller: This is sort of a follow-up from Maurice’s answer. I think that assembling the right people is only half of the process. The IGF’s next crucial role is to ensure that the insights also radiate outwards. And the IGF is already highly effective at collectively identifying emergent issues. I think what can be done next is sort of like, how do we translate that awareness into action? Because our research on ethics and mathematics has demonstrated that many technical practitioners like mathematicians, computer scientists, network engineers, quite often view their work as separate from ethics, sustainability, and also from policy. So while sort of like many people who are in this room understand that technology and ethics or technology and sustainability are inseparable, the understanding is not very widespread from our experience. And so the primary role that we see here is sort of like for IGF stakeholders to act as ambassadors, championing this integrated perspective and spreading awareness within their respective fields, within their respective companies, and bringing it where are people who are not yet convinced that this is important. Very important point. Thank you.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Thank you, Dennis. And finally, Mark, go ahead.

Marc Bruyere: When we look into the story of IGF and why it is. And so when we talk about internet, that’s not something we initially come up from the ITU. ITU has been, I mean, the very beginning of ITU was it weren’t before United Nations. But in 47, that was the very first chapter out of the Second World War to be United Nations, before UNESCO and so on and so on. ITU is still there and so for standardization, for telecommunication. But come up in the meantime that we all know, internet, very different way of to be governed and coming origin. And so the way to decide the standards are very, very different. And then it is actually winning compared to ITU standards. What we call about RSC, ETF, ERTF, the different things that’s coming up from this community. Very different. Then United Nations created IGF because they realized that something is missing. It went out of ITU. Then IGF is the good place actually to get many, many people in a very different aspect to take over what we call internet today. But it’s not only in the tubes. It’s in the way the protocol has been designed and also the content that’s stored, all different aspects. And the thing that is very, very open and we have this occasion today is very important. It could be, and then the missing part of it is how we can influence a little bit more. And participating a little bit more from the IGF community, interacting with ETF, the design and the department of technological standardizations as it is. There is gateway. People coming a little bit more in IGF from ETF and vice versa. But I think it’s very important as well. And then W3C and all different aspects and so. Then I haven’t been participating much on understanding the relationship between standards and organization like this. But that’s very important. That could be for the future. So having those platforms in place gives us more leverage. Okay. Thank you very much, everyone.

Sara Hjalmarsson: Thank you, Marc and everyone. For the last, we’re doing okay time-wise. So we have time for one more question.

Keith Goldstein: Yeah, we have time for one more question. I’ll take that over as in sort of a question for myself as well. And then we’ll try and get some questions from the audience. So we have just about nine minutes left. And the last question is, how can we evaluate the human component of networks? We’ve talked a lot about the fact that these aren’t just systems. There’s people behind them. What can we do to learn more about how we learn new networks? What practical tools can we use to evaluate computer networking practices? So go back in reverse order maybe with Marc first.

Marc Bruyere: The human part of it is a good question. And we have I have some way of trying to understand this, but it’s social work and so on. The only things I’ve learned recently, and I mean it’s a fact, the quantitative space has nothing to see with the qualitative space. And trying to understand these two different spaces for deciding what quality we want to give some evaluation we do as an engineer to get a better optimization process or performance of whatever system and so on. Finding the right gap to be able to get the quantitative design we want as a good quality as a beginning. We need people or guiders for pushing to the questions and finding the right way of making finite choices.

Keith Goldstein: Really quick, so maybe go off to Daphne next.

Daphne Tuncer: I don’t know if I have much to add to this question. So I think that’s really kind of a typical question, that we need collaboration across disciplines. For us, people working on computer networks, that’s quite important, we understand the human perspective. But we don’t necessarily know or we don’t necessarily have the tools that we can use to actually access to human perception, human feedback on this. So I think that’s where we need to collaborate, for example, with social scientists. We started working with you on that purpose, to learn how we can run surveys, how we can do consultation, how do we analyze the feedback we get through this method.

Keith Goldstein: Okay. Since we’re short on time, Maurice, Denis, Alexander, would any of you like to chime in?

Maurice Chiodo: I’d be happy to at this stage. So I think the more pertinent question really to consider here is how to evaluate the network as a socio-technical system. So humans and technical components cannot be assessed in isolation, their value and risks emerge from their interaction. This becomes evident by looking at socio-technical systems’ potential points of failure. So they must assess the potential for a failure of the technical or AI component, or a failure of the human component, or a failure of the process or workflow they’re meant to follow. Crucially, we must also evaluate the human machine interface itself, as this is the primary site of miscommunication and error. And finally, we must account for failures caused by exogenous circumstances, acknowledging that no system operates in a vacuum. This method ensures a comprehensive socio-technical evaluation. And as you can clearly see, three-fifths of the problems listed above are neither purely human nor purely technical, instead stemming from their interaction.

Keith Goldstein: Great. Denis or Alex?

Alexander Isavnin: I just would like to add shortly that our main task is just not to lose our focus and continue observing developments. So in case we shortly stop paying attention to latest developments, to technological advances, they could and I think will go the wrong way. So just keep an eye and follow and communicate with each other. That’s important. Last thoughts, Denis? So I think the really big first step is to not view human components of a network similar to technical or mathematical components. Our experience of working with mathematicians, engineers, but also with users, is that their actions, their awareness and their motivation are almost equally important when it comes to eventual outcomes. And the failure modes that Maurice outlined are deeply connected to who a human is. So from that perspective, we really need to think about this question, how do we understand who the humans are involved in these networks?

Keith Goldstein: Thanks. And just to chime in myself, that this workshop itself really began as a questionnaire that Mark, Daphne and I self-developed to try and learn about how humans are learning difficult new methods for operating computer networks. And just for our last four or five minutes, I ask Bailey, who’s with us online, to collect some questions from the audience, and maybe she can read them out to us.

Audience: Hello, everybody. So we do have a couple of questions in the chat here. I’ll start with the first question from Henan Zahir. I apologize if I mispronounce anybody’s name. But her question is, how can ethical networking be democratized to ensure meaningful citizen oversight over data-driven public systems?

Keith Goldstein: Would any of you like to quickly, quickly, three minutes and 30 seconds, half that time answer it? No? Alex, did you want to? Go ahead, Dennis.

Dennis Mueller: I think it goes back to what Alex says. We need to sort of like respect the different cultures and different regions of this world have different perspectives on this very question. So in this sense, the IGF should probably try to be even more international. And to really sort of like bring in these different cultures and perspectives. But it’s a hard question.

Alexander Isavnin: And I would like to reply to this question by noting that technology could not ensure you in something. You are your own insurance. You have to communicate. You have to oversight. You have to think about what’s going on with your data and how it’s being driven. So IGF is a good starting venue for discussions like this. But your participation is also really important.

Keith Goldstein: And Bailey, one more question, two minutes. Question and answer.

Audience: Yep. So there’s one more question here from Anna Gretel Ichazu, and she’s asking, I would like to know how do you think of global north and global south dynamics across the issues you are arising?

Alexander Isavnin: Yeah, let me answer this question, because I am from a country which for a long time pretended to be global north, but now it’s pretending to be global south. So Internet and these technologies actually could shorten the gap between what we called West world and the others, or north and south. But you also have to oversight really clearly, because in not very democratic developed countries, especially in countries of so-called global south, technology can easily be abused by the government, which will make gap to the north, economical gap, civilizational, well, not civilizational, societal gaps, democratic gaps much bigger than it exists. So I will repeat my answer to previous questions. Technology could not close gaps. You have to oversight really, really accurately and constantly and not releasing it.

Keith Goldstein: Thanks. Last 40 seconds. Any other ideas? Okay, well, then I will close off this session and thank everybody for coming. It was really interesting. I hope we can make a routine of this and produce some studies that also look into these very difficult questions. And hopefully we’ll have a publication or some other outputs for you all to read soon. So thank you, everybody, for coming. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you all in the audience. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Agreement points

Interdisciplinary collaboration is essential for ethical technology development

Speakers

– Daphne Tuncer
– Maurice Chiodo
– Dennis Mueller
– Marc Bruyere

Arguments

Positive impacts are subjective and require interdisciplinary collaboration beyond silos

Human insights and diverse perspectives must be central throughout development, not afterthoughts

Ethics must be embedded as core competency, not optional extra, requiring systemic shift

Multi-disciplinary groups and feedback processes are essential for ethical decision-making

Summary

All speakers agree that ethical technology development cannot be achieved in isolation and requires breaking down traditional disciplinary silos to incorporate diverse perspectives from technical and non-technical experts throughout the development process.

Topics

Development | Sociocultural | Legal and regulatory

Time and resources must be dedicated to ethical considerations

Speakers

– Daphne Tuncer
– Maurice Chiodo
– Marc Bruyere

Arguments

Narratives in computer network research influence development and need explicit examination

Human insights and diverse perspectives must be central throughout development, not afterthoughts

Actionable frameworks and time allocation for ethical considerations are necessary

Summary

Speakers consistently emphasize that ethical considerations require dedicated time and resources, cannot be treated as afterthoughts, and must be budgeted as core project requirements rather than optional extras.

Topics

Development | Legal and regulatory | Infrastructure

IGF serves as crucial platform for connecting diverse stakeholders

Speakers

– Daphne Tuncer
– Maurice Chiodo
– Alexander Isavnin
– Dennis Mueller
– Marc Bruyere

Arguments

IGF provides platform for worldwide audience to confront diverse perspectives

IGF serves as convener breaking down silos between technical and non-technical experts

IGF enables understanding of different regional approaches to ethics and sustainability

IGF stakeholders must act as ambassadors spreading integrated perspective to their fields

IGF bridges gap between internet governance and traditional standards organizations

Summary

All speakers recognize the IGF’s unique role as a convener that brings together diverse global perspectives and stakeholders, serving as a bridge between different communities and enabling cross-cultural understanding of ethical approaches.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Sociocultural | Development

Human components cannot be evaluated separately from technical systems

Speakers

– Maurice Chiodo
– Dennis Mueller
– Daphne Tuncer

Arguments

Networks must be evaluated as socio-technical systems considering human-machine interactions

Human components cannot be viewed like technical components due to different motivations

Collaboration with social scientists needed to access human perception and feedback

Summary

Speakers agree that humans and technology form integrated socio-technical systems where the interaction between components is as important as the individual parts, requiring specialized approaches to understand human factors.

Topics

Infrastructure | Sociocultural | Development

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize that current educational and systemic approaches are inadequate for addressing ethical technology challenges, requiring fundamental changes in how people are trained and how systems operate.

Speakers

– Alexander Isavnin
– Dennis Mueller

Arguments

Education gaps and government control create barriers to ethical technology development

Ethics must be embedded as core competency, not optional extra, requiring systemic shift

Topics

Development | Legal and regulatory | Sociocultural

Both speakers, coming from mathematics and engineering backgrounds, stress that technical expertise alone is insufficient and must be combined with broader human and social considerations from the beginning of development processes.

Speakers

– Maurice Chiodo
– Dennis Mueller

Arguments

Human insights and diverse perspectives must be central throughout development, not afterthoughts

Safety must be built into technical architecture while earning public trust

Topics

Development | Infrastructure | Human rights

Both speakers recognize that technology development often outpaces social and regulatory frameworks, requiring more deliberate approaches that prioritize human needs and diverse perspectives in shaping technological directions.

Speakers

– Alexander Isavnin
– Daphne Tuncer

Arguments

Technology develops faster than regulations, requiring people-first approach to shape development

Positive impacts are subjective and require interdisciplinary collaboration beyond silos

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Development | Sociocultural

Unexpected consensus

Critique of current technology development paradigms

Speakers

– Alexander Isavnin
– Daphne Tuncer
– Marc Bruyere

Arguments

Technology develops faster than regulations, requiring people-first approach to shape development

Narratives in computer network research influence development and need explicit examination

Multi-disciplinary groups and feedback processes are essential for ethical decision-making

Explanation

Despite coming from different cultural and professional backgrounds (Russian activist, French academic, industry researcher), these speakers converge on fundamental critiques of how technology is currently developed, all calling for more reflective and human-centered approaches.

Topics

Development | Legal and regulatory | Sociocultural

Individual responsibility in technology oversight

Speakers

– Alexander Isavnin
– Dennis Mueller

Arguments

Individual participation and oversight are crucial for data protection

Different cultures require respect for varying perspectives on ethical networking

Explanation

Unexpectedly, both the activist from an authoritarian context and the academic researcher emphasize individual agency and responsibility, suggesting that despite systemic challenges, personal engagement remains crucial across different political contexts.

Topics

Human rights | Development | Legal and regulatory

Overall assessment

Summary

The speakers demonstrate remarkable consensus on core principles: the need for interdisciplinary collaboration, the importance of dedicating time and resources to ethical considerations, the IGF’s role as a crucial convening platform, and the necessity of treating technology as socio-technical systems rather than purely technical ones.

Consensus level

High level of consensus with strong implications for the field. The agreement spans across different professional backgrounds (academics, industry, activists) and cultural contexts (European, Russian, French), suggesting these principles represent fundamental requirements for ethical networking rather than culturally specific preferences. This consensus provides a solid foundation for developing actionable frameworks and policies, though implementation challenges remain significant given the systemic changes required.

Different viewpoints

Role of technology in addressing societal gaps and inequalities

Speakers

– Alexander Isavnin
– Dennis Mueller

Arguments

Technology can either bridge or widen gaps between global north and south

Different cultures require respect for varying perspectives on ethical networking

Summary

Alexander emphasizes that technology alone cannot close gaps and requires constant oversight to prevent abuse, particularly citing government misuse in less democratic countries. Dennis focuses more on respecting cultural differences and making IGF more international, without the same emphasis on technology’s potential for abuse.

Topics

Development | Human rights | Legal and regulatory

Primary responsibility for ensuring ethical technology development

Speakers

– Alexander Isavnin
– Maurice Chiodo
– Dennis Mueller

Arguments

Individual participation and oversight are crucial for data protection

Human insights and diverse perspectives must be central throughout development, not afterthoughts

Safety must be built into technical architecture while earning public trust

Summary

Alexander places primary responsibility on individuals (‘You are your own insurance’), while Maurice and Dennis emphasize the responsibility of developers and engineers to integrate diverse perspectives and build safety into systems from the start.

Topics

Human rights | Development | Infrastructure

Approach to evaluating human components in networks

Speakers

– Maurice Chiodo
– Marc Bruyere
– Dennis Mueller

Arguments

Networks must be evaluated as socio-technical systems considering human-machine interactions

Quantitative and qualitative spaces require different approaches for system evaluation

Human components cannot be viewed like technical components due to different motivations

Summary

Maurice advocates for comprehensive socio-technical system evaluation with specific failure mode analysis, Marc emphasizes the fundamental difference between quantitative and qualitative evaluation spaces, while Dennis focuses on understanding human identity and characteristics as distinct from technical components.

Topics

Infrastructure | Development | Sociocultural

Unexpected differences

Speed and efficiency versus ethical consideration in technology development

Speakers

– Daphne Tuncer
– Marc Bruyere

Arguments

Narratives in computer network research influence development and need explicit examination

Multi-disciplinary groups and feedback processes are essential for ethical decision-making

Explanation

While both speakers advocate for more thoughtful technology development, Daphne specifically challenges the narrative that ‘fast is good’ and argues that ethical principles require time for consideration, while Marc focuses on the practical need for feedback processes without questioning the underlying speed-focused paradigm. This represents an unexpected philosophical divide about whether current performance-oriented narratives should be fundamentally questioned.

Topics

Infrastructure | Development | Sociocultural

Overall assessment

Summary

The main areas of disagreement center around the balance of responsibility between individuals versus institutions for ethical technology development, different approaches to evaluating human-technical system interactions, and varying perspectives on how technology impacts global inequalities.

Disagreement level

The level of disagreement is moderate but significant. While speakers share common goals of ethical technology development and inclusive governance, they have fundamentally different views on implementation strategies and responsibility allocation. These disagreements have important implications as they reflect broader tensions in internet governance between individual agency versus institutional responsibility, technical versus social approaches to evaluation, and optimistic versus cautious views of technology’s role in addressing global inequalities. The disagreements suggest that achieving consensus on practical implementation of ethical networking principles will require substantial dialogue and compromise among different philosophical approaches.

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize that current educational and systemic approaches are inadequate for addressing ethical technology challenges, requiring fundamental changes in how people are trained and how systems operate.

Speakers

– Alexander Isavnin
– Dennis Mueller

Arguments

Education gaps and government control create barriers to ethical technology development

Ethics must be embedded as core competency, not optional extra, requiring systemic shift

Topics

Development | Legal and regulatory | Sociocultural

Both speakers, coming from mathematics and engineering backgrounds, stress that technical expertise alone is insufficient and must be combined with broader human and social considerations from the beginning of development processes.

Speakers

– Maurice Chiodo
– Dennis Mueller

Arguments

Human insights and diverse perspectives must be central throughout development, not afterthoughts

Safety must be built into technical architecture while earning public trust

Topics

Development | Infrastructure | Human rights

Both speakers recognize that technology development often outpaces social and regulatory frameworks, requiring more deliberate approaches that prioritize human needs and diverse perspectives in shaping technological directions.

Speakers

– Alexander Isavnin
– Daphne Tuncer

Arguments

Technology develops faster than regulations, requiring people-first approach to shape development

Positive impacts are subjective and require interdisciplinary collaboration beyond silos

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Development | Sociocultural

Key takeaways

Ethics must be embedded as a core competency in technology development from the beginning, not added as an afterthought

Interdisciplinary collaboration across computer science, mathematics, social sciences, and affected communities is essential for ethical networking

Technology development outpaces regulation, requiring proactive people-first approaches to shape development

Networks must be evaluated as socio-technical systems considering human-machine interactions, not just technical components

The IGF serves as a crucial convener breaking down silos between technical and non-technical experts globally

Perspective diversity is the most critical ingredient for ethical development of emerging technologies

Different cultures and regions have varying approaches to ethics and sustainability that must be respected and understood

Individual participation and continuous oversight are essential for meaningful citizen control over data-driven systems

Narratives in computer network research (like hyperperformance optimization) subconsciously influence development and need explicit examination

Time allocation for ethical considerations and reflection is necessary but often undervalued in fast-paced technology development

Resolutions and action items

Workshop participants plan to produce studies and publications examining the difficult questions raised during the discussion

IGF stakeholders should act as ambassadors spreading integrated ethics-technology perspectives within their respective fields and companies

Researchers should engage in practices that go beyond organizational silos to work collaboratively across disciplines

The IGF should continue facilitating connections between internet governance and traditional standards organizations like IETF and W3C

Participants committed to making this type of workshop a routine practice for ongoing dialogue

Unresolved issues

How to practically democratize ethical networking to ensure meaningful citizen oversight over data-driven public systems

How to bridge the gap between global north and global south dynamics in ethical technology development

How to effectively translate IGF insights and awareness into concrete action beyond the forum

How to balance different cultural definitions of what constitutes ‘positive impacts’ in technology development

How to create practical evaluation tools for assessing human components in network systems

How to ensure adequate time and resources are allocated for ethical considerations in fast-paced development environments

How to prevent technology from widening gaps between different regions while promoting democratic oversight

Suggested compromises

Balancing technical expertise with ethical expertise as ‘two sides of the same coin’ rather than competing priorities

Using the IGF as a platform for confronting diverse perspectives rather than imposing top-down definitions of ethical governance

Focusing on understanding different regional approaches to ethics rather than trying to synchronize them globally

Integrating both quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods to bridge engineering and social science approaches

Combining technical safety architecture with public trust-building as dual responsibilities for developers

At the beginning of the internet, there was no privacy considerations or security considerations because scientists have created internet for their own needs. They thought that only such good guys with scientific approaches will exist on the internet. But actually, a lot happens since that. A lot of people came here, evil people, bad people, governments, corporations, and so on.

Speaker

Alexander Isavnin

Reason

This comment provides a crucial historical perspective that reframes the entire discussion about ethical networking. It highlights the fundamental disconnect between original design assumptions and current reality, showing how technological development often outpaces ethical considerations and regulatory frameworks.

Impact

This comment shifted the discussion from theoretical ethical principles to concrete historical lessons, establishing a foundation for understanding why current ethical challenges exist. It influenced subsequent speakers to consider the gap between technological development and governance, and reinforced the theme that emerged throughout the discussion about the need for proactive rather than reactive ethical frameworks.

Think of a teeny details who has very profound impact today. Then the design on that IPv4, they actually place the source address before the destination address… this teeny details is actually using a lot of power and electricity every time for very long time, big impact on the consummation of electricity… Because all the routers have to wait, have to wait to the destination field before having the source.

Speaker

Marc Bruyere

Reason

This technical example brilliantly illustrates how seemingly minor design decisions can have massive, unforeseen consequences at scale. It demonstrates the interconnection between technical choices and environmental sustainability in a concrete, understandable way.

Impact

This comment provided a perfect segue into the next question about emerging technologies and became a touchstone for the discussion. It grounded abstract ethical principles in tangible consequences, showing other participants how technical decisions have real-world impacts. Sara even noted it was ‘a wonderful segue,’ indicating how it shaped the conversation’s flow.

From an engineer’s viewpoint, there are three key aspects to ethical development here. Perspective, perspective, and perspective… We work deep within technical systems, but technologies like AI, in the internet of things, are fundamentally human endeavors.

Speaker

Maurice Chiodo

Reason

This comment cuts through complexity to identify the single most critical element for ethical technology development. The repetition of ‘perspective’ emphasizes its paramount importance, while the insight that technologies are ‘fundamentally human endeavors’ reframes technical work as inherently social.

Impact

This became a recurring theme that other speakers referenced and built upon. Dennis explicitly reiterated ‘Perspective is really what matters here from my perspective,’ showing how Maurice’s framing influenced the discussion. It shifted focus from technical solutions to human-centered approaches and established perspective-taking as a core competency for ethical development.

So, I think, kind of, the key word here in this question is positive impacts, because positive for who and relative to what?… what one might consider as being positive might be well perceived as negative by another.

Speaker

Daphne Tuncer

Reason

This comment challenges the fundamental assumption underlying the question about ‘positive impacts’ by exposing the subjectivity inherent in value judgments. It forces recognition that ethical frameworks cannot be universal and must account for diverse perspectives and contexts.

Impact

This observation deepened the analytical level of the discussion by questioning basic assumptions. It reinforced Alexander’s earlier points about cultural differences and influenced the later discussion about the IGF’s role in bringing together diverse global perspectives. It moved the conversation from seeking universal solutions to acknowledging the need for inclusive, multi-perspective approaches.

Ethics is not an optional extra or a bolt-on. It’s something that we must fundamentally embed within everything we do… principles like safety and sustainability cannot be bolted on at the end of a project, especially with decentralized technologies such as the internet, where retrospective fixes can be very difficult or even impossible.

Speaker

Dennis Mueller

Reason

This comment challenges the common industry practice of treating ethics as an afterthought and provides a compelling technical argument for why this approach fails with decentralized systems. It reframes ethics from a compliance issue to a fundamental design requirement.

Impact

This insight influenced the discussion about systemic change and the need for new approaches to technical education and development. It supported the emerging consensus about the need for interdisciplinary collaboration and helped establish the argument for why current approaches to technology development are insufficient for addressing ethical challenges.

The more pertinent question really to consider here is how to evaluate the network as a socio-technical system. So humans and technical components cannot be assessed in isolation, their value and risks emerge from their interaction.

Speaker

Maurice Chiodo

Reason

This comment reframes the final question by rejecting the premise that human and technical components can be evaluated separately. It introduces the concept of emergent properties from human-technology interaction, which is a sophisticated systems thinking approach.

Impact

This reframing elevated the final discussion by moving beyond simple human vs. technical distinctions to a more nuanced understanding of complex systems. It provided a framework that other speakers could build upon and demonstrated how the conversation had evolved from basic ethical principles to sophisticated systems analysis.

Overall assessment

These key comments fundamentally shaped the discussion by introducing historical context, concrete examples, and sophisticated frameworks that moved the conversation from abstract principles to practical understanding. Alexander’s historical perspective established why ethical challenges exist, while Marc’s IPv4 example grounded abstract concepts in tangible consequences. Maurice’s emphasis on perspective became a central theme that influenced multiple speakers, while Daphne’s questioning of ‘positive impacts’ challenged basic assumptions and deepened analytical thinking. Dennis’s ‘not a bolt-on’ insight reinforced the need for systemic change, and Maurice’s socio-technical systems framing provided sophisticated closure. Together, these comments created a progression from problem identification through concrete examples to sophisticated solutions, while consistently emphasizing the human-centered, culturally-aware, and interdisciplinary nature of ethical technology development. The discussion evolved from individual ethical considerations to systemic understanding of technology as fundamentally social and requiring diverse perspectives for responsible governance.

How can we better integrate interdisciplinary collaboration between computer scientists, mathematicians, social scientists, and other fields to address ethical networking challenges?

Speaker

Daphne Tuncer

Explanation

Daphne emphasized the need to move beyond silos in research and work together across disciplines to agree on shared values and assess impacts, but the specific mechanisms for achieving this integration need further exploration

How can we develop practical tools and methodologies for researchers to conduct surveys, consultations, and analyze human feedback on networking systems?

Speaker

Daphne Tuncer

Explanation

Daphne mentioned that computer network researchers don’t necessarily have the tools to access human perception and feedback, indicating a need for practical methodologies to bridge this gap

How can we better educate young people about the ethical implications of technology development to prevent unethical behavior?

Speaker

Alexander Isavnin

Explanation

Alexander highlighted the lack of general education about technology impact among young developers and hackers, suggesting this as an area requiring further research and development

How can we strengthen the relationship and interaction between IGF and technical standards organizations like IETF, W3C, and others?

Speaker

Marc Bruyere

Explanation

Marc noted that while there are some gateways between IGF and technical standards organizations, this relationship needs to be strengthened to have more influence on technological standardization

How can we translate IGF insights and awareness into concrete action within technical communities and organizations?

Speaker

Dennis Mueller

Explanation

Dennis pointed out that while IGF is effective at identifying issues, the challenge is how to spread this awareness to technical practitioners who often view their work as separate from ethics and sustainability

How can we develop comprehensive evaluation methods for socio-technical systems that account for human-machine interface failures and exogenous circumstances?

Speaker

Maurice Chiodo

Explanation

Maurice outlined the need for evaluation methods that go beyond purely technical or human components to assess the interaction between humans and technical systems, but specific methodologies need development

How can we ensure meaningful citizen oversight over data-driven public systems through democratized ethical networking?

Speaker

Henan Zahir (audience member)

Explanation

This question from the audience addresses the broader challenge of public participation in overseeing technological systems that affect citizens

How do global north and global south dynamics affect the implementation of ethical networking principles?

Speaker

Anna Gretel Ichazu (audience member)

Explanation

This audience question highlights the need to understand how different regional contexts and power dynamics influence the application of ethical networking principles

How can we continue the research project on computer networking ethics and human learning of new systems mentioned by Keith Goldstein?

Speaker

Keith Goldstein

Explanation

Keith mentioned an ongoing research project with Daphne and Marc on computer networking ethics and how humans learn new systems, suggesting this work needs continuation and development