Most significant positive evidence
The strongest positive evidence concerns products that expanded access to computing, communication, creative tools and assistive technology, as well as exceptional long-term product vision.
Person
Steve Jobs
The assessment covers Jobs's role in personal computing, digital media and mobile technology, product accessibility and design, together with closed-platform control, harsh management and supply-chain labour concerns.
This is a contemporary assessment current to 26 June 2026. It must be revised as later conduct and evidence become available.
Ethical assessment categories
Current published result
Overall ethical score
+11.98
Reasoned summary
Jobs produced major technological and cultural benefits and demonstrated extraordinary strategic vision. Those achievements are materially reduced by coercive management practices, closed control over users and developers and inadequate supply-chain responsibility.
This assessment presents six separate ethical dimensions rather than one overall moral score. Each result must be read with its evidence, plausible range, confidence, disputes, exclusions, severe-harm findings and sources.
Most significant negative evidence
The score is reduced by abrasive management, intense organisational control, limited transparency and insufficient protection of workers in global supply chains during rapid expansion.
Read the full Steve Jobs ethical assessment, evidence and sources
Six-dimensional ethical profile
The overall figure is the equal-weight average of the applicable dimensions. It does not replace the separate scores, evidence or uncertainty.
- Personal moral conduct
- +30.00
- Rights and dignity
- -8.96
- Nonviolence and harm
- -20.00
- Stewardship of power
- -35.00
- Wisdom and truthfulness
- +60.84
- Consequential legacy
- +45.00
- Severe-harm record
- No separate finding recorded
Assessment history
Ethical assessment: Steve Jobs (1976–2011)
1976–2011 · Published assessment · reviewed June 26, 2026
Result: Six-dimensional ethical profile