Tech needs to clean up its own mess, Apple CEO Tim Cook tells Stanford grads

Mike Murphy for MarketWatch:

Tim Cook offered a cautionary message to Stanford University graduates Sunday, urging them to remember that with great power comes great responsibility.

“If you’ve built a chaos factory, you can’t dodge responsibility for the chaos.” — Tim Cook

“Too many seem to think good intentions excuse away harmful outcomes,” the Apple Inc. chief executive told about 5,200 graduates during Stanford’s commencement ceremony in Palo Alto, Calif. “But whether you like it or not, what you build and what you create define who you are.. Taking responsibility means having the courage to see things through.”

While he did not mention companies by name, his criticisms could be interpreted at taking aim against Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc., and YouTube, a unit of Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

MacDailyNews Take: Cook also said, “If we accept as normal and unavoidable that everything in our lives can be aggregated, sold and even leaked in the event of a hack, then we lose so much more than data. We lose the freedom to be human.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook’s full 2019 Commencement address at Stanford University on Sunday, June 16 (Cook’s remarks begin at the 1:12:25 mark:

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