No, it was not my fault that my technology fucked up the world

SO when they told me to cross the road into the larger building, twice as much salary, a better position, lots of people working for me and potentially infinite budget for the super secret project we were about to embark on, I didn't give it a second thought. It's going to be great for humanity I thought, great for me yes I'd finally be able to afford the nice top apartment with four bedrooms each with attached bathroom and two kitchens and have my parents live with us. And get a nice car for dad, finally. Things would be great, and yes the project too. I wasn't too positive on that, it was a pie-in-the-sky type of a project, the preliminary research had suggested what we were about to do was only theoretically possible but only just. It may or may not make sense economically, the environmental, human, social impacts of our product making through were beyond the scope of consideration.

Did I care?

Yes, yes I did very much, and I did bring that up. I know the media likes to portray myself as either a coldhearted robot who is greedy and doesn't consider the impact of one's actions on others, or a stupendously stupid code money who doesn't have the vaguest idea what's going on and will do whatever he's told to work on. I insist I was neither, at least in those days. I had them form a sizeable ethics committee, and an impact analysis group, to fully understand what our work would do to societies and people, and evaluate how we would move forward. I wasn't in it just for the money or the profits, it was legitimately the belief that it was good for the society, good for everybody, that drove me.

The preliminary reports came in positive two years into the project, everyone was so excited by that. We had a massive party, all weekend long. It wasn't one of those crazy silicon valley parties they tell you in the media, the sort they might show in the movie they're making about this whole thing...I'm told it's...not good. Let me tell you, and my coworkers will vouch for me, it was really quite an amazing nice party. We reserved this large ranch, and employees came in with their spouses and children, even old parents and grandparents. Large tents all around the compound for people to spends nights in. Concerts, barbecues, meditations, yoga sessions. There was drugs, yes, but if you take any random sampling of the same people you would find just as much elsewhere, it wasn't us that encouraged us. Plus it was all natural and everything, none of those synthetic crap, trust me.

That year was the absolute pinnacle of the project. So much potential, the groups were working overnight and through the weekends evaluating what we could do and should do. How much poor countries would be able to save, how space travel could finally become affordable for everybody. We wouldn't have to worry about global warming anymore, desertification would be a thing of the past, heck we would now have the ability to turn deserts into green lush forests without compromising on the ecological balance. There were no bounds on the positive outcomes. We had unleashed a yet new era of human advancement, we thought.

Little did we know.