© Copyright 2024 Creating Future Us. All Rights Reserved.
The Communication Services sector brings together companies that enable communication and offer connectivity services through telecommunications, media platforms, and interactive digital platforms.
The principal RTII concerns for this sector are:
Privacy: Collecting user data raises issues around transparency, consent, and how that data is used. Additionally, targeted advertising, data breaches, and data sharing with third parties engender complexities demanding careful management.
Digital divide: Unequal access to telecommunication hardware, software, and infrastructure, stemming from socioeconomic disparities, geographical constraints, and disabilities, threaten to marginalize lower-income populations in the digital realm.
Suppression of human rights: Surveillance, censorship, and the shutdowns of networks by authoritarian regimes can violate freedom of expression and assembly.
Intellectual property concerns: Digital piracy, illegal use, and the distribution of copyrighted entertainment content lead to losses for creators and media companies.
Misinformation: The speed and scale of information sharing make it easier for false or misleading information to spread on communication platforms.
Addictiveness: Certain apps or platforms are designed to be addictive through persuasive design techniques. Device addiction can also promote unhealthy lifestyles and psychological issues.
Child safety: Exposure to inappropriate content, predatory behavior, and excessive screen time can lead to significant child safety and safeguarding issues.
Consumer Discretionary sector encompasses industries that provide non-essential consumer goods and services – such as automobiles and leisure products – that are sensitive to economic cycles and disposable income levels.
The principal RTII concerns for the sector are:
Job losses: The widespread replacement of cashiers, drivers, warehouse workers, and other roles through digitalization and automation could displace many existing roles.
Surveillance concerns: Collecting personal data through loyalty programs, location tracking, smart sensors, and other apps may violate privacy expectations if transparency and consent are lacking on the consumer’s part.
Algorithmic bias: The use of AI in areas like credit eligibility, pricing, and recruiting could perpetuate discrimination against protected groups, particularly when data, algorithms, and code contain biases.
Planned obsolescence: Products can be designed to become outdated quickly to drive repeat purchases. In some cases, manufacturers restrict repair or bring lawsuits against repair shops and other third parties, increasing barriers to repairing existing devices.
Conflict Minerals: Metals used in manufacturing may be sourced from conflict zones where mining enables human rights abuses if supply chains are not managed ethically
Opaque reporting: A lack of supply chain transparency, documentation of sustainability initiatives, and reporting on ethics programs enables unethical or illegal practices to go undetected
The Consumer Staples sector comprises vital goods and services such as food and drink, household products, and prescription drugs.
The principal RTII concerns for the sector are:
Biometric marketing: Emotion detection, facial analysis, and biometrics can be used to target and manipulate consumers. This raises significant issues around privacy and informed consent.
Algorithmic pricing: Dynamic pricing driven by AI and advanced analytics could discriminate against disadvantaged groups.
Job losses: Due to warehouse robotics, cashier-less stores, and AI predictive ordering, significant job losses in the sector may result.
Safety and health: Insufficient testing or misleading marketing of innovations like synthetic food additives, nano-foods, and novel genetically engineered crops could endanger consumers.
Surveillance of workers: Increased monitoring of warehouse pickers, truckers, and store clerks via sensors, biometrics, and analytics can erode autonomy and privacy.
Labor conditions: When supply chains become opaque, there is the potential for worker exploitation and health hazards in packaging facilities and food processing plants – especially in developing countries.
Sustainability impacts: Innovation in the sector focuses on efficiency and consumer convenience, but consumption volumes continue growing, creating a host of sustainability issues.
Youth Protection: Targeting young people with hyper-personalized promotions through digital channels raises concerns about their protection and could create legal issues.
The energy sector involves the production and distribution of conventional and renewable energy resources.
The principal RTII concerns for the sector are:
Cybersecurity: The increased connectivity of grids, pipelines, and operational systems creates cyber risks that could endanger physical infrastructure and compromise customer data privacy.
Safety risks: Remotely controlled energy operations and automated maintenance introduce risks if human oversight is inadequate. Liability questions arise regarding accidents.
Consumer control: Customers may lack visibility into how private data is monetized and shared across a web of third-party partners, limiting recourse.
Adverse use: General-purpose automation equipment, materials science advances, AI, and sensor networks could potentially enable unethical weapons or authoritarian practices. Digital design files and production techniques could facilitate the proliferation of unsanctioned nuclear, chemical, and biological materials.
Regulatory lag: Innovation in areas like small modular nuclear reactors may outpace oversight.
Climate risks: Short-term optimization algorithms that underweight sustainability factors reinforce path dependency on fossil fuels and undermine climate resilience.
Labor displacement: Increasing data-driven automation and analytics promises to bring significant efficiencies to the sector. Transition planning, job training, and alternative employment are imperative, given workforce automation threatens jobs across solar, oil and gas, grid management, and customer service functions
The Financials sector encompasses a wide range of institutions and services that facilitate monetary transactions, investments, insurance, and risk management.
The principal RTII concerns for the sector are:
Privacy: The increased collection of client data, digital transactions, and the use of AI profiling raises cybersecurity risks if systems are vulnerable to the hacking of sensitive personal information.
Bias: If not designed carefully, algorithmic decision-making for loan eligibility and insurance coverage could perpetuate discrimination against protected groups.
Access: Reliance on robo-advisors, mobile banking, and automation could disadvantage segments of society like the elderly or poor with limited digital access or financial literacy.
Transparency: Lack of transparency around AI and data-driven insights used in financial decision-making undermines trust and accountability. Clients may lack visibility or agency regarding how private data is monetized and shared.
Regulatory lag: The rapid pace of fintech innovation may outpace regulatory oversight, demanding proactive governance to ensure consumer protections are upheld.
Security: Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology enable the potential for higher levels of cybercrime, fraud, and illicit activity.
Market volatility: Sub-second algorithmic trading dynamics enabled by software leave financial markets susceptible to volatile swings if risks like asymmetrical liquidity, feedback loops, and faulty logic are not preemptively assessed
The healthcare sector includes organizations – including medical services, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare technologies – that are primarily focused on the maintenance, improvement, and restoration of human health.
The principal RTII concerns for the sector are:
Patient privacy: Electronic health records and telemedicine raise cybersecurity risks if systems are vulnerable to hacking of sensitive medical information.
Access disparities: Costly precision medicine and genetic testing innovations may only benefit affluent patients if coverage and subsidies lag behind advances.
Transparency: The use of AI in diagnostic, predictive, and treatment decision tools must be explainable to patients and healthcare providers to support a mutually trusting relationship. AI diagnostic models can be built with biased data using an unrepresentative or skewed sample.
Informed consent: Patients may not fully grasp health data collection methods or how their information is used and shared with third parties.
Gene editing: Technologies like CRISPR raise ethical debates around human germline editing and unnecessary procedures marketed solely for enhancement or profit motives.
Automation bias: An over-reliance on AI diagnostic and screening tools could lead to medical errors if human oversight is inadequate to detect incorrect predictions.
Job losses: Workforce automation using robotics, AI, and advanced analytics could displace certain healthcare roles.
The Industrials sector incorporates a diverse range of companies engaged in the production and distribution of tangible goods and infrastructure development.
The principal RTII concerns for the sector are:
Labor displacement: Automation, robotics, and AI pose a considerable threat to manufacturing workers and contractors.
Safety risks: Remotely operated equipment and autonomous systems could endanger workers if human oversight is inadequate. Liability concerns could also emerge.
Cybersecurity: Connected vehicles, IoT devices, and control systems are vulnerable to hacking, data theft, and sabotage.
Proliferation: There are a number of potential harmful uses of automation, materials science advances, or AI for unethical military or surveillance purposes.
Environmental impacts: While industrial tech can optimize efficiency, the scale of operations drives substantial resource use and emissions.
Competition: The capital intensity of emerging technologies could disproportionately benefit large firms over smaller suppliers, impacting market competitiveness.
Cyber resilience: Increasing system interconnection and digitalization in the sector expands vulnerabilities and raises the risk of disruptive cyber-attacks on essential infrastructure. In-depth cybersecurity protections and redundancy across various environments are critical.
Responsible Sourcing: Vetting supply chains and materials sourcing for electronics, batteries, and raw materials helps prevent the use of conflict minerals and the infiltration of unsafe counterfeit components into industrial hardware.
The Information Technology sector is made up of organizations developing, implementing, managing, and using technology and information systems to process, store, transmit, and retrieve data.
The principal RTII concerns for the sector are:
Privacy: Collecting user data across devices and services raises significant privacy concerns if transparency, consent, and security protections are inadequate.
Algorithmic bias: Machine Learning models that underpin many software systems may perpetuate race, gender, or other discriminatory biases if training data and code are not vetted carefully.
Cybersecurity: Internet-connected devices and digital ecosystems open massive attack surfaces for hacking and cybercrime to compromise sensitive personal data.
Labor practices: Hardware manufacturing facilities may involve exploitative, unsafe working conditions and suppression of labor organizing, especially in developing countries.
Planned obsolescence/ device right to repair: Hardware can be deliberately designed to become outdated quickly to drive repeat purchases. In some cases, manufacturers restrict repair or bring lawsuits against repair shops.
Harmful use: General-purpose semiconductor, AI, and cyber tools can potentially enable unethical surveillance, autonomous weapons, and authoritarianism.
Inclusivity: Many products and services insufficiently address accessibility, digital literacy divides, or fail to follow universal design principles that support diverse user capabilities
The Materials sector covers a wide range of industries involved in the development, production, and distribution of physical goods and resources.
The principal RTII concerns for the sector are:
Environmental damage: While tech can optimize material usage, the production scale means sustainability challenges persist regarding resource extraction, emissions, and pollution.
Labor displacement: Automation and AI threaten low and medium-skilled workers across manufacturing, processing, and extraction roles.
Safety risks: Remotely operated or autonomous systems could endanger workers if human oversight is inadequate or fails. Liability concerns also emerge.
Cybersecurity: Digitization exposes industrial control systems, sensitive data, and supply chains to potential cyberattacks, hacking, and sabotage.
Privacy issues: The collection of employee, customer, and operational data raises informed consent issues if transparency and rights are not respected.
Resource access: The capital intensity of emerging technologies could disproportionately benefit large firms over smaller suppliers, impacting competitiveness.
Harmful use: There is potential for unethical uses of automation, materials science advances, or AI, such as weapons proliferation.
Regulatory lag: Innovation in areas like synthetic biology and biomaterials may outpace regulatory frameworks if not adaptively governed with prudence. International guidelines and oversight are still evolving in this complex area
The Real Estate sector encompasses a broad range of activities, including property development, management, and investment.
The principal RTII concerns for the sector are:
Labor displacement: Increased automation like self-showings and automated rental document processing could force job losses for administrative staff and brokers.
Cybersecurity: Connected systems and devices are vulnerable to hacking, ransomware, or denial-of-service attacks that could jeopardize physical security or compromise sensitive data.
Tenant privacy: Smart sensors, facial recognition, and data collection in properties could infringe on reasonable privacy expectations if consent is not obtained.
Transparency: The use of AI and predictive analytics for tasks like property valuations needs to be explainable and unbiased to maintain public trust.
Regulatory lag: Innovation may outpace oversight, requiring proactive governance to ensure ethical deployment of emerging real estate technologies.
Discrimination and Exclusion: Algorithmic decision-making in areas such as tenant applications or property valuations may exhibit biases against minorities. Similarly, some technology innovations, like cashless rent collection, could disadvantage lower-income populations lacking digital access or literacy. Users with disabilities may also be excluded unless inclusive design considerations are made.
Contractor oversight: Increased reliance on external tech vendors raises potential accountability challenges regarding service quality, costs, and data handling.
The Utilities sector includes critical infrastructure and services such as energy, water, and waste management.
The principal RTII concerns for the sector are:
User privacy: Smart meters and grid sensors collecting household data raise privacy concerns if transparency, data protections, and consumer controls are lacking.
Cybersecurity: Increased connectivity exposes operational systems to hacking risks that could endanger physical safety, cut power, or compromise personal data.
Access and Accessibility: Costly smart tech could widen inequality if mainly higher-income customers can adopt such technologies while others face rate hikes without benefits. Similarly, some tech may not fully consider users with disabilities or special needs unless inclusive design practices are followed.
Safety: Remotely controlled utilities and automated maintenance introduce risks if human oversight is inadequate. Liability questions arise.
Transparency: The use of AI and predictive data should need to be transparent to users, or else it could undermine trust and accountability.
Environmental justice: While technology improves efficiency, underlying infrastructure decisions influence which communities bear environmental burdens.
Regulatory lag: Innovation may outpace oversight, requiring adaptive governance to ensure customer protections and ethical risks are proactively addressed.
