Technology companies touch nearly every dimension of human life, and with that scale comes outsized potential for harm, and an equally outsized obligation to account for it. We believe the intersection of technology and human rights is one of the most consequential, and most underexamined risks in contemporary investing.
Our position
At Zevin Asset Management, human rights impacts in the technology sector are investment risks. Technology products deployed for surveillance, censorship, or military use without adequate governance oversight create measurable legal, reputational, and governance risks. These risks have real-world impacts and can erode the social, institutional, and market conditions on which long-term investment returns depend. We engage companies directly, file shareholder proposals, and coordinate with global investor coalitionsto press for effective due diligence processes that mitigate impacts on people, society and markets.
Why now
As artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and platform infrastructure proliferate globally, the potential for misuse by state and non-state actors has expanded dramatically. Technology built for legitimate purposes can be repurposed to stifle dissent, monitor minority communities, or enable violations of international humanitarian law. The stakes have never been higher.
Assessing the risks
1. Harms to people
Technology's most immediate risks are felt by us as individuals who bear the consequences of systems designed without their interests in mind.
Surveillance & censorship. Technologies deployed to monitor populations, suppress speech, or enable authoritarian control domestically and across borders — including commercial tools repurposed for immigration detention and border enforcement.
Data privacy & surveillance capitalism. The harvesting, monetization, and third-party sharing of personal data — including location, biometric, and behavioral data — in ways users cannot meaningfully consent to or opt out of.
Content moderation labor. Outsourced moderation workforces, often located in the Global South, exposed to graphic and violent content with inadequate mental health protections or labor rights.
Labor displacement & economic harm. AI-driven automation that eliminates jobs without adequate transition support.
Child safety & vulnerable populations. Algorithmic systems that expose minors to harmful content, enable predatory targeting, or fail to account for the particular vulnerability of children and youth.
2. Harms to systems
Beyond individual harm, AI reshapes the institutions, markets, and democratic structures that societies depend on.
Weapons & lethal autonomous systems. AI integration into weapons targeting, lethal autonomous weapons systems, and military decision-making, where algorithmic errors carry irreversible consequences and meaningful human control over the use of force is eroded.
Conflict-zone presence. Presence in conflict-affected and high-risk areas (CAHRA), including potential facilitation of international humanitarian law violations through the misuse of a company's products and services.
AI bias & misinformation. Generative AI systems that amplify discrimination, spread disinformation, or operate without adequate human or board-level oversight.
Environmental footprint. The energy and water demands of AI infrastructure—data centers, model training, and inference (broad use) at scale—and the communities, often low-income, that bear the local environmental burden.
Concentration of power. A small number of companies controlling foundational AI infrastructure creates systemic risk to markets, democracy, and the diversity of the information ecosystem.
3. Governance failures
Governance structures that insulate decision-makers from scrutiny and leave investors with limited tools to drive change.
Governance & disclosure gaps. Dual-class share structures and weak board oversight can concentrate decision-making power, insulate management from investor accountability, and obstruct meaningful evaluation of human rights policy.
Regulatory & legal exposure. Emerging and evolving mandatory due diligence frameworks, including the EU CSDDD (Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive) and CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) and reputational risks when companies fall short of their stated commitments.
How we advocate
We file shareholder proposals demanding that companies report on how they determine whether their products are used for surveillance, censorship, or military purposes in conflict-affected regions.
We hold companies to their stated alignment with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). If companies claim alignment with international human rights standards, investors must be able to evaluate the effectiveness of those policies, not merely accept them at face value.
We engage Microsoft on the effectiveness of its human rights due diligence and Accenture on the conditions facing content moderation workers in the Global South who filter graphic and violent material before it reaches social media platforms. Our engagement with Alphabet addresses the misuse of technology infrastructure in high-risk contexts, while our engagement with Home Depot focuses on third-party data-sharing practices that may expose customers to downstream privacy violations, including access by federal agents for immigration enforcement.
We partner with coalitions, including the Investor Alliance for Human Rights (IAHR) and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), Racial Justice Investing Coalition, and Center for Monitored and Ethical Investment to amplify investor pressure at scale across the technology sector.
Why we stay invested in hyperscalers
Technology is weaponized when commercial products and services built to connect, inform, or transact are turned into instruments of surveillance, enforcement, or censorship — a risk concentrated in hyperscalers, the companies whose massive cloud and digital infrastructure platforms make them the foundational layer of that transformation.
Clients reasonably ask: given what we know, why do we remain invested in companies like Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft rather than exit? Our answer rests on four considered judgments.
1. Dual-use, not inherently harmful
Unlike fossil fuel companies, whose core business is the source of harm, hyperscalers—companies that operate massive cloud and digital infrastructure platforms—produce general-purpose infrastructure. The same cloud platform that enables surveillance also powers healthcare AI, financial inclusion, and climate research. The harm lies in the misuse of technology and therefore theoretically can be changed.
2. Divestment forfeits our voice
Shareholder status is the legal basis for filing proposals, demanding board responses, and speaking at annual meetings. Divesting eliminates that access. For companies of this systemic importance, where governance failures carry global consequences, we believe the investor's seat at the table is worth more than the moral signal of exit.
3. Risk drives accountability
Staying invested does not mean accepting the status quo. We treat unmitigated human rights exposure as a financial risk that warrants escalating pressure: from private dialogue to public proposals to coalition action.
4. Scale of influence demands presence
Hyperscalers increasingly constitute foundational infrastructure for global commerce, communication, and governance. Ceding investor influence over these companies to shareholders less concerned with human rights does not reduce harm; it simply removes a committed voice. Collective engagement by responsible investors is among the few mechanisms capable of reaching inside these structures.
Our Commitment
“Our framework distinguishes between companies actively suppressing accountability and those demonstrating credible, if imperfect, progress.
For hyperscalers that consistently obstruct meaningful human rights governance, divestment remains on the table as a last resort. ”
We are living through a period when the architecture of digital life is being constructed. The decisions made now about who controls it, who is protected by it, and who bears its costs will prove very difficult to reverse. Investment capital is not neutral in that process. It either reinforces the status quo or helps contest it. Continued investment is not unconditional.
The companies we hold are not simply firms with promising growth prospects; they are actors shaping the conditions under which billions of people work, communicate, organize, and seek redress. Our responsibility as shareholders is to make that power visible, to press for its accountable exercise, and to make clear that the right to profit from this infrastructure comes with an obligation to protect the people it reaches. That obligation is neither secondary to our investment mandate nor separable from it.
Disclosures: Registration with the SEC should not be construed as an endorsement or an indicator of investment skill, acumen or experience. Investments in securities are not insured, protected or guaranteed and may result in loss of income and/or principal.