I just heard a news report on OpenAI developing technology to make deep fakes easier. They realized this could cause harm. So they’re only releasing it to a few educational institutions.
This is harm reduction. And I realize corporate ethics is something of an oxymoron. But something along these lines was what the original person was meaning by a harm reduction approach by microsoft. If they’re aware their technology is going to cause harms to democracy, they have an ethical duty to reduce those harms. Unfortunately, corporations often put ethical duties to increase shareholder value first. That doesn’t mean they don’t have other ethical responsibilities too.