I attended the graduation of my stepson, Joshua Gisiger, last weekend at Rice University in Houston. He had two ceremonies, the awarding of the degree at Rice Stadium and the convocation of the engineering graduates on the prior day at the field house. The engineering students proceeded one by one to the stage to put their hands through a large metal circle on a table, then were awarded a ring that they are to wear henceforth as a sign of their fealty to the profession.
These words were read by the dean of engineering at Rice, as they are at other schools, and as they have been read since 1950. “As an engineer, I pledge to practice integrity and fair dealing, tolerance and respect, and to uphold devotion to the standards and dignity of my profession, conscious always that my skill carries with it the obligation to serve humanity by making the best use of the Earth’s precious wealth.”
The graduates in computer science took a similar vow, as they promised the following. “I am a computing professional. My work affects people’s lives, both now and into the future. As a result, I bear moral and ethical responsibilities to society. I pledge to practice my profession with the highest level of integrity and competence. I shall always use my skills for the public good. I shall be honest about my limitations, continuously seeking to improve my skills through lifelong learning. I shall engage only in honorable and upstanding endeavors. By my actions I pledge to honor my chosen profession.”
It is in this context that I recommend to all my readers The Thinking Game, a 2024 documentary on the life of Demis Hassabis, founder of DeepMind, now Google DeepMind. Hassabis is a child genius, designing a top ten video game at age 16, then founding the first artificial general intelligence company, DeepMind, on graduation from Cambridge University. His first goal was to develop a program that could beat the best in games ranging from PONG to GO. Within four years, DeepMind bested the Korean and Chinese GO champions. Then it was on to the real-life challenge of solving the “grand challenge of biology, the protein folding problem.” The AlphaFold AI system can predict the 3D structure of proteins, thereby speeding the development of drugs. Hassabis and his colleague John Jumper were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024 for this work. It should also be noted that Hassabis made a fortune selling to Google in 2017. I reference Hassabis because his work reflects the very ideals those engineering pledges are meant to uphold: innovation in service of humanity, guided by responsibility and ethics.
The vows taken by those graduates stayed with me as I read a recent New York Times article, “How a Secretive Firm Tried (and Failed) to Fix an Epstein Friend’s Tattered Image.” The piece examined the work of Terakeet, a reputation management firm, that worked to burnish the tarnished image of Kathryn Ruemmler, until recently the general counsel of Goldman Sachs. The Times article goes on to say that the firm “resorted to the furtive, algorithm-placating digital tradecraft that made it one of the most exclusive firms in the booming world of reputation management.” Mac Cummings, the owner of Terakeet issued this rebuttal. “Terakeet’s technology is built on a simple mandate: organizations must tell their own story. If they do not, third-party bias combined with generative AI will shape it for them.”
That explanation, however, speaks to a broader tension within the communications profession about the responsibilities that come with shaping public perception. The Arthur Page principles remain the proper guidelines for behavior in public relations: tell the truth, prove it with action, and conduct PR as if the whole enterprise depends on it. In a world where information reaches people directly as well as through media, and where the lines between fact and fiction are increasingly blurred, we have a responsibility to help people better understand the truth, not make it harder to find. Otherwise, the media will doubt our veracity, the public will rightly question our motives, and employees will feel betrayed when money is substituted for judgment.
Richard Edelman is CEO.
