Tech and Society Solutions Lab

The Tech and Society Solutions Lab draws on Omidyar Network’s long-standing belief in the promise of technology to create opportunity and social good, as well as our concern about unintended consequences that can result from technological innovation.

We are at a critical juncture to ensure that technology is a force for good amid rising concerns. Our team aims to help technologists prevent, mitigate, and correct societal downsides of technology—and maximize positive impact.

We are co-creating solutions with technologists and civil society to advance these goals. Examples include partnering with tech companies and others to find metrics that better track their contributions to the health of the public sphere, reinventing how we educate the next generation of technologists so that they think actively about these issues, developing a set of principles for responsible data usage among data scientists, and supporting change agents who are tackling emerging problems such as smartphone addiction. We are also advancing interventions that support more inclusive tech cultures and product design practices, and helping employees more effectively identify and prevent harms.

Our hope is that these efforts help technologists build responsibility into core business and product decisions and contribute to a thriving tech industry.