The Luddites' Veto

BEWARE OF ACTIVISTS TOUTING "RESPONSIBLE RESEARCH AND INNOVATION." THE SENSIBLE-SOUNDING SLOGAN MASKS A REACTIONARY AGENDA.

- RONALD BAILEY

NO SENSIBLE PERSON could favor irresponsible research and innovation. So RRI—“responsible research and innovation”—may sound like an innocuous idea. As it takes hold in Europe, though, the term has clearly become a cover for what amounts to a Luddites’ veto. Now the notion is percolating among American academics. If it finds its way to the halls of state, RRI would dramatically slow technological progress and perhaps even bring it to a grinding halt.

That wouldn’t be an unexpected byproduct. Several RRI proponents have explicitly argued for “slow innovation,” even “responsible stagnation.” One of them—Bernd Carsten Stahl, a professor of critical research in technology at De Montfort University in the United Kingdom—has even compared technological breakthroughs to a pandemic. “We should ask whether emerging technologies can and will be perceived as a threat of a similar level as the current threat of the Covid virus,” he wrote in 2020. If so, he added, they would require “radical intervention.”

AN OVERABUNDANCE OF CAUTION

BEFORE WE EXPLORE RRI, we should take a look at its precursor, a pernicious notion known as the precautionary principle. This concept is often summarized as “better safe than sorry”—but there’s a bit more to it than that.