What is Techno-solutionism and Why is It Kinda Bad?

When the technology is more important than the solution, you might have a problem.

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I recently had an unfortunate interaction on LinkedIn. Someone had posted a controversial opinion about the use of AI in the mental health crisis, supporting the idea that hyper-personalized chatbots to fill the roles of friends and therapists would help solve the crisis. I replied back that they were proposing a techno-solutionist mindset to the problem, and ignoring the root issues of the mental health crisis. The OP wasn't enthused with my response, and after a brief back and forth, stopped responding to my commentary. 

The original poster had a problem with my characterization of their proposed use of AI as part of the mental health crisis as "techno-solutionist," describing me as uncharitable towards the intent of their post. While I apologized for some of the stronger language I used, like "reek" I maintained my statement that what they were proposing was techno-solutionism. 

At the root of this interaction is a difference in understanding of what techno-solutionism means. It's a dense concept if you aren't familiar with it, but it's prevalent everywhere, especially since AI rocketed to the forefront of the public mind. Based on that interaction, I decided to write this article about techno-solutionism. 

Why is Techno-Solutionism? 

Techno-Solutuionism is a concept that was originally introduced by Evgeny Morozov in the book, "To Save Everything, Click here. At its most basic, techno-solutionism is the mindset every problem can and should solved with technology. The techno-solutionist mindset values the use of technology over materially solving the problem. It strips nuance and context from thorny issues transforming them into one-dimensional problems that are easily quantified and solved through technology while ignoring and downplaying alternative lower-tech or no-tech solutions. 

An Example 

A police commissioner in Australia proposed creating an app to log "consent" to engage in sexual relations as a solution to solve growing rates of sexual assault in his district. If he had better ways of tracking consent, he could more easily identify sexual assaults (those without consent). 

On the surface, it seems like a decent idea. You have a log of consent and it's crystal clear whether both parties consented to the interaction. But the solution falls apart quickly. If inebriated victims are unable to give consent reliably, how is giving consent over an app any different than giving it verbally? What's to stop the offender from taking the victim's phone to fake consent? How would the app know if consent was legitimate and not faked after the fact? How would an app capture that consent was freely given and not coerced? 

An app was never going to solve the problem of increasing rates of sexual assault, but the commissioner saw phone apps as a "solution", and he went looking for problems he could solve with his technology-based solution. 

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Is Techno-solutionism bad? 

Most of the time techno-solutionism isn't inherently bad. Valuable technological solutions have come from techno-solutionist approaches, a techno-solutionist approach isn't automatically bad. The problem isn't in the technology, it's in how we talk about the technology: how we frame the problems, describe the solutions, and measure success. Techno-solutionism is a mindset when creating and deploying a technology, not the technology itself. 

The techno-solutionist mindset becomes unethical because it values using the technology more than materially solving the problem. It starts with a solution in mind and looks for problems that it can solve with that solution. It can shift our focus away from the root problem to focusing on solving things that tech is really good at solving, and ignoring things technology can't solve. It can limit our ability to identify other, viable less technical solutions by framing the technology as the "easy" solution, and lower tech or non-technical as cumbersome, error-prone, and archaic. 

How to identify a techno-solutionist mindset? 

There are a few common behaviors to look out for when folks are using a techno-solutionist mindset. As you read, you'll notice a common thread, a quality across all the behaviors. They all boil down in one way or another to making the technology successful over materially solving a problem. 

Values the technology over the solution

The techno-solutionist mindset always starts with the solution in mind - technology. The police commissioner wanted to use a phone app and he found a problem he thought fit the technology. Addressing the actual issue of sexual assaults was secondary to the fact that it was using an app. 

Frames technological solutions as any Easy Button. 

Like the title of Morozov's book, the techno-solutionist mindset frames the technology solution as the Easy button. It's simple, and straightforward, with no downsides. Because the mindset always starts with the solution, it will always choose problems that are easy for the technology to solve. It will focus on a particular aspect and intentionally ignore gaps or challenges in the technology approach because it doesn't fit the "easy button" narrative and the technology solution. 

Values achieving a metric over solving a problem

Techno-solutionism involves simplifying complex and complicated issues down a simple set of metrics that are easily solved by technology. However, making real-world problems fit a technology solution always mandates a loss of information and critical context. It focuses on achieving that simple metric and using that as a proxy for solving the problem. When the techno-solutionist starts with the solution in mind and focuses on problems that can easily be solved in the technology, they will choose metrics that make it easy to demonstrate their success, regardless of whether that metric actually represents a material solution to the problem. 

In the Consent App example, the issue of rising sexual assaults is a complex problem. By optimizing to address a particular metric, "consent gained," the commissioner expected to be able to say that he had positively impacted the rising sexual assault issue his community was experiencing.

Ignores less technical solutions in favor of technical 

The techno-solutionist mindset paints any non-technical or not-technical-enough solution as archaic, cumbersome, and virtually impossible to use. The result of this framing is that both the techno-solutionists and others in the space stop looking at non-technical solutions because we assume they must be inferior to technical solutions. In truth, lower-tech or non-technical solutions often carry more context, information, and nuance than high-tech solutions. The less that context, information, and nuance can be quantified and cleaned into numbers, the less likely a high-tech solution is the best option. 

To the police commissioner, the easy technical solution was to document consent. But the actual issue here is that offenders thought sex without consent was acceptable. That's the real problem, and that one is difficult, if not impossible, to solve through a phone app. So they ignore the root issue, which is "maybe people shouldn't think sexual assault is acceptable," for the much easier to solve, "well, if we capture consent we'll know who consented and who didn't." Then, they use their metric of consent gained to assert their success in materially impacting sexual assaults. 

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Is techno-solutionism unethical?

The answer is really, it depends. Starting with technology as a solution and looking for problems isn't bad if using the technology materially solves the problem. If someone is framing and reframing a problem to be something that is easily solved by technology, or measured by technology, they should definitely check themselves and ask if their solution still addresses the problem or not. 

Most people start out with good intentions, they want to do good. The police commissioner wanted to address the increase in sexual assaults and went looking for a way to do that. He landed in techno-solutionism when he started saying, "I should figure out a way a phone app can help with this," and never asking whether the problem he was solving actually addressed the root problem. 

Some folks take the techno-solutionist mindset too far and make it toxic. They treat criticism of technology solutions as personal attacks, they call people names who challenge their solutions, say things like they just don't get it, or they are living in the past, and find other ways to discredit their critics. 

At its best, techno-solutionism is something that unintentionally happens. It's a series of decisions that when you get to the end you realize you aren't where you thought you were going to end up. At its worst, techno-solutionism is intentional, designed to exploit our biases toward technology to make money, gain prestige, to kick off a hustle. 

Going to back to my LinkedIn interaction - I stand by my assessment that using AI in a mental health setting is a techno-solutionist approach. AI and Chatbots are amazing tools that unrelible, unpredictable, and still very much in their infancy. Humans are those things that have lots of nuance, context, and thorniness to them. Trying to back problems like loneliness and increased anxiety and burnout into a problem that can be solved today by AI just doesn't make sense. In a few months, or years maybe the answer will be different but today, AI at best can only address the symptoms of the crisis, not the root problem.