Operationalizing Corporate Altruism via Digital Technology Development: A Proposal for a Large-Scale Experiment in Corporate Governance and Incentives

By McKim @ 2025-12-07T11:59 (+1)

Summary 

TechnoEthos is a project that we (1) believe could be appealing to some practicing [1] effective altruism (i.e., anyone who wants to, or is, using their resources to improve wellbeing and promote flourishing), and (2) think has a higher chance of doing genuinely useful and positively impactful work if people with this mindset got directly involved in driving it forward. 

I built TechnoEthos around the idea of developing a system that helps (or, in the best case, ensures) digital technology innovations[2] produce more equitable and thriving outcomes for all. While I acknowledge that good intentions alone do not guarantee a sound framework, I think TechnoEthos is timely and worth testing alongside other large-scale efforts to improve the world. Those who have joined my team think so too, and we are now seeking collaboration with more people. 

Therefore, the purpose of this article is to: 

We hope that, after reading, some will engage with us through feedback[3] and/or collaboration.[4] 

Introducing TechnoEthos

TechnoEthos is ultimately a hypothesis that if we (1) build a company whose internal profit incentives are structurally tied to public benefit, (2) provide technology firms with a decentralized, tool-based way to evaluate and improve the societal impact of their products, and (3) make those evaluations transparent through a credible score that companies can voluntarily publish, then a "Tech for Collective Good" ecosystem will emerge in which firms that adopt the tool and/or corporate model will outperform those that do not. This competitive dynamic can improve local and global wellbeing in two ways. First, firms using the tool would produce less harmful products. Second, other companies may replicate the same corporate structure and standards once they see a public-benefit aligned technology firm, which directs its excess gains to organizations addressing societal challenges, succeeding in the market. In the following sections, I will expand on TechnoEthos and the gaps it aims to address via the conditions of our hypothesis, and conclude by sharing where we are at and where we hope to go next. 

Condition 1: The Company - Institutionalizing Corporate Altruism[5]

TechnoEthos' legal structure is built to structurally tie its financial returns to advancing societal and global wellbeing. Ownership of the core intellectual property, final authority over major corporate decisions, and raising philanthropic funds for the for-profit's operating costs[6] are the responsibilities of the nonprofit entity, the TechnoEthos Foundation. Building the software, scaling adoption, and creating surplus for organizations working on societal and global wellbeing are the responsibilities (and legal mandate) of the for-profit, Community Contribution Company (C3), TechnoEthos C3. 

The crux of this dual-entity structure lies in the incorporation model and equity distribution of TechnoEthos C3. Community Contribution Companies are legally required to operate within public-benefit parameters. They may distribute no more than 40 percent of annual profit as dividends, at least 60 percent of assets must go to qualified community organizations upon dissolution, and they must submit an annual community contribution report that discloses financial statements, high-level remuneration, all dividends, and all significant transfers above prescribed thresholds. 

In addition to these statutory requirements, TechnoEthos C3 will use the following equity and voting structure: 

This incorporation model for the for-profit, combined with this equity and governance distribution, is what we posit could institutionalize corporate altruism by aligning stakeholder incentives with outcomes that support global wellbeing.

In addition to the external nonprofit organizations that TechnoEthos C3 is legally obligated to support, the TechnoEthos Foundation will also run its own community contribution pilots and programs. Some ideas we are exploring include:

Local Ecological Production and Trades

Public Impact Projects & Nonprofit Support

Third Spaces[7]

The range of community projects[8] TechnoEthos C3 can sustain is directly tied to the scale at which it operates. The following section outlines the product that is intended to create this scale. 

Condition 2: The Tool - A Decentralized System for Evaluating Technology Impact and Enabling Better Decisions[9]

Our product is the TechnoEthos Ethics Engine and Dashboard (TEED). TEED provides product developers with transparent, traceable feedback and concrete suggestions for improving alignment with applicable hard laws, soft laws/international standards, and responsible-tech[10] principles. Leveraging a combination of agentic AI systems and human-led distillation of laws and principles, it classifies products into relevant sectors, identifies the laws and frameworks that apply to them, and evaluates the extent to which a product aligns with those requirements. It then produces an aggregate score based on the proportion[11] of laws, frameworks, and principles a product satisfies, and provides action items that teams can take to address any misalignments. 

TEED consists of two components: a backend evaluation engine (the "ethics engine") and a frontend dashboard. 

The Backend Ethics Engine

The ethics engine is built by a cross-disciplinary team across policy, law, philosophy, and ML engineering. Public-policy analysts, legal experts, and philosophers review each relevant clause, requirement, or principle within a law or framework, distill it into its underlying purpose, and convert that purpose into if/then logic relevant for digital products. ML engineers then configure this logic into the system that collectively generates the aggregate score. 

The Frontend Dashboard

The frontend is a dashboard that displays the aggregate score, along with provision-by-provision alignment for each law or framework. It provides concrete, implementable suggestions for closing gaps and a prioritization matrix that helps teams choose which changes to make. The matrix highlights the type and level of risk associated with leaving a provision unaddressed and the estimated effort required to resolve it (including factors such as cost, staff time, documentation requirements, and degree of implementation complexity). 

During the early development stage, TEED runs on manual entry through a short form that collects the information needed for evaluation (e.g., Data Retention/Privacy Policies, Vendor Registries, ToS, CloudTrail/IAM Access logs, Axe audit results.) 

In later stages, TEED will allow developers to: 

and, potentially

Companies using TEED may choose to publicly publish their aggregate score via a badge, which will also appear on a TechnoEthos-run public registry of digital products with published TEED scores. The registry will provide a high-level summary of how the product aligns with applicable laws and responsible-tech principles and will highlight areas where the product performs especially well (for example: user agency and control, data-deletion integrity, protections against manipulative UX designs). 

The ability to publish their scores, receive integrated workflow feedback, and stay continuously updated on changes in law and best practices forms the basis of TEED's monetization model, which will be explored in the next section. 

Condition 3: The Score - The Incentive Layer and Revenue Generator 

The final component of the TechnoEthos hypothesis is the score itself. TEED's aggregate score functions as a decentralized, firm-directed governance mechanism: companies use it to understand how their products perform against hard laws, soft laws, and responsible-tech principles, and they can choose to publish their score to share their alignment status publicly. 

TEED's revenue model comes from annual subscriptions. Subscribing organizations gain access to three core benefits: 

  1. a dashboard that monitors alignment in real time and draws on a corpus of laws across the U.S., Canada, and E.U., along with updates to international standards, research on digital harms, and moral frameworks;
  2. workflow integrations that surface alignment issues as developers build; and
  3. the ability to publish their score to the public TEED registry, which provides a standardized, credible way to communicate alignment to customers, investors, and partners. 

We expect four primary customer groups[12]:

Subscribers collectively create and sustain the incentive environment our hypothesis depends on: firms compete not only on speed and profitability, but also on demonstrable alignment with the societal outcomes their technologies create. 

Conclusion/Where We are At - Building the Capacity to Test the Hypothesis 

We believe TechnoEthos has a higher chance of doing genuinely useful and impactful work if people committed to the same goals take part in driving it forward. TechnoEthos began as a solo project in 2024 and is now a six-person team working in our free time. We have three founders (myself, an engineer, and a legal and philosophy scholar) and three builders (two ML engineers and one master's in public policy graduate). 

Our founding team has worked at Yale Law School, Meta, Credo AI, DapperLabs, Fission, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, World Economic Forum, and the United Nations. 

Our builders have worked at the New York Civil Liberties Union, Thales, IBM Quantum, XSENSOR Technology Corporation, the University of Windsor, and the National Research Council of Canada. 

We are actively developing a prototype of TEED for EdTech products operating in the United States and Canada. The prototype is on track for completion by the first week of January 2026. 

We have also mapped the structure of TechnoEthos and a two-year plan [13] for the funding, operations, and milestones required to deploy v1 and begin scaling efforts. 

We want to move from prototyping in our free time to incorporation and full-time execution as soon as possible. In addition to feedback from people practicing effective altruism on how to strengthen this project, we are looking for: 

End

If you see the value in testing our hypothesis, we welcome any form of engagement that helps us strengthen and carry this project forward.

 

  1. ^

    I am intentionally not using the term "effective altruists" or language around membership because, after spending time trying to understand effective altruism before posting, my understanding is that it is not a specific ideology or centralized group. Rather, it is a collection of people who are taking action on the question "How can I do the most good with the resources available to me?" Therefore, I am speaking to the collection of people tackling this question and not to any particular identity or group. 

  2. ^

    The broad term of "digital technology innovations" is used intentionally. TechnoEthos is not limited to AI; it aims to target the wider ecosystem of software products, platforms, and data-driven technologies. 

  3. ^

    While this is not prescriptive, the kind of feedback we are looking for in particular is the relevance of this project to anyone on this forum as well as what we can add or tweak in our approach to have an even bigger and better positive impact. 

  4. ^

    Ideas include, but are not limited to, partnerships, team members, funding, and thought leadership. 

  5. ^

    The gap in firm-level altruism was identified by András Miklós 10 years ago, with Peter Singer acknowledging that "corporations have an important role to play in effective altruism." 

  6. ^

    This is done so that the for-profit company, TechnoEthos C3, will not be dependent on revenue or investments to cover its basic operations. 

  7. ^

    A third space is a community space that is neither home nor workplace but serves as a shared, public infrastructure where people can gather, learn, or create. 

  8. ^

    Our community contribution project ideas focus on local impact because this is the domain where our team has direct expertise. The intended extent of TechnoEthos' relevance to EA lies in its contribution of a model that institutionalizes corporate altruism and a decision-support tool for improving firm-level choices in technology development. If our incorporation model is established as effective, we hope others will adopt it and direct their surplus toward their own highest-priority cause areas, including those emphasized currently as core priorities within EA. As TechnoEthos scales, the scope of supported work may widen, which could include supporting founders building companies that apply corporate-altruism principles in cause areas currently prioritized within EA.

  9. ^

    In May 2025, Lukas Finnveden highlighted the need for projects which provide epistemic assistance. One of the projects suggested includes creating good organizations or tools. 

  10. ^

    In this article, "responsible-tech" refers to a consolidated set of non-statutory guidelines that integrate industry best practices, contemporary research on digital harms and wellbeing, and widely cited moral or human-centered design frameworks. All Tech Is Human’s guide is one example of this broader set of principles.

  11. ^

    Proportions are calculated based on weighted importance, where weights reflect legal impact (e.g., fines or lobbying costs), corporate impact (e.g., PR crises), and human impact (e.g., addictiveness, conflict-instigating design, safety risks). 

  12. ^

    We hesitate to pursue direct partnerships with national governments because we do not want TEED to be associated with any one nation-state or its geopolitical priorities. Our legal corpus reflects the jurisdictions where our anticipated customer base builds and deploys technologies, not a normative allegiance. The intention is to anchor TEED in a commitment to human and ecological wellbeing rather than any particular government agenda, and our customer strategy reflects this aim. 

  13. ^

    In full transparency, our two-year plan includes and starts with the amount that we hope to raise to get this project off the ground, which is 100M CAD/71M USD. 

  14. ^

    This project is fit for donors who pursue hits-based giving or large experimental bets with significant uncertainty. It is not designed to draw funding away from established, evidence-rich areas such as global health or animal welfare, and we encourage those already committed to these areas to continue supporting them without splitting their contributions.