A Method for Rapid Ethical Deliberation in Research and Innovation Projects

There are many and diverse methods available that can help researchers, designers, developers, and engineers integrate ethics in their research and innovation projects. In practice, however, they can find this challenging. They may believe that such methods are difficult and time-consuming, or that ethics hinders innovation and creativity. Borrowing from various methods, the authors created a lightweight method that researchers and designers can use to integrate ethics in their projects: rapid ethical deliberation. This research collaborated with four projects to assess this method in practice. The authors found that this method helped project team members in several ways: to envision the innovations they work in very practical terms; to look at these innovation from different normative, ethical perspectives; to look at their projects with fresh eyes and engage in creative and strategic thinking; and to articulate critical questions and associated actions to move their projects forward.

Value-Sensitive Design of Unmanned Aerial Systems

What happens when an engineer attempts to address the value-neutral paradigm and the holistic deficits in engineering science? This paper sets out to account for the interplay between an unmanned aerial system engineer acting as a “champion” of value sensitive design (VSD) and their more objectivist research organization. Action research methods are used by the authors in an attempt to implement VSD in a real-world research organization and thereby bridge the theory-practice gap. Primary empirical data are collected which indicate the engineer has internalized and often utilizes a VSD approach. Both barriers and catalysts to wider adoption of VSD within the organization are experienced, and recommendations for overcoming paradigmatic, strategic, structural, and cultural barriers are addressed. This work demonstrates how action research can be used to shift engineering away from a value-neutral paradigm towards the value-sensitive approach advocated by the authors.

Blurred Engineering Identities in Megascience

The scientific community engaged in research practices of high-energy physics in megascience laboratories is constituted by various subcommunities. These subcommittees are involved in engineering activities and preoccupied by phenomenal analyses. In recent decades, interdisciplinary accelerator and detector researchers, whose work is rooted in engineering, have replaced the experimentalists and instrumentalists of the 1970s; however, the role of pure theorists has remained essentially unchanged. In this article, the author clarifies the roles and specializations of these groups and explicate community members' blurred professional identities; the emphasis lies on engineering specialists and experimentalists. This research also attempts to clarify the reasons for the substantial imbalance of prestige among groups and how it is associated with access to highly valued epistemic practices such as articulating statements regarding natural phenomena. This paper applies an ethical theory framework to reveal how the lack of access to phenomenal knowledge expression—despite mediated contribution to knowledge production—creates participatory epistemic injustice. Finally, the author suggests ways to address this problem.

George the Chemist

The present paper is an attempt to answer Bernard Williams' classical dilemma of George the chemist, who is asked by a senior colleague to partake in a CBW research program. Both George and the colleague oppose the research, and George is advised not to publicize his attitude for George to get the job instead of someone more eager. On the one hand, George does not want to be involved in the research, yet on the other hand, he does not want to allow it to be completed faster. The author views George's potential actions as sabotage and argues that since the existing ethical codes demand putting safety ahead of the pressures of the employers, sabotage should not be out of the question. CBW endangers entire communities, and thus secretly sabotaging its research amounts to disaster prevention and should be considered a professional duty by consequentialists and deontologists alike, even if it may involve deception and furthermore deception about deception.

Phenomenology and Sex Robots

Engineering develops technologies that shape the way of relating to ourselves and others, and the last developments in robotics force us to focus on the effects of their introduction. New robots have been designed to be intimate and even potential sexual partners. Many studies work on the ethical implications of sex robots by providing a normative approach to ethically assess their introduction in the society. However, few works focus on the effects they have on the relations binding people in general, and even fewer works focus on these effects from a phenomenological perspective. This paper aims at analyzing how technologies shape the relationships from a phenomenological perspective by highlighting the process of the constitution of subjects in a love relationship. More specifically, this work shows what happens when a human being is in a love relationship while the partner uses sex robots through the analysis of texts by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. In conclusion, this paper wants to provide a novel application of phenomenological concepts to intimate relationships with robots.

Bridging the Theory-Practice Gap

Many of the choices that designers and engineers make during a design process impact not only the functionality, usability, or aesthetics of a technology, but also impact the values that might be supported or undermined via the technology design. Designers can actively design for values, and this awareness has led to the development of various ‘ethics by design' approaches. One such approach is capability sensitive design (CSD). Thus far, CSD is only developed from a theoretical-ethical point of view. This article aims to bridge the theory-practice gap by entering into dialogue with various design-experts on ethics by design in general and CSD in particular. An empirical study, consisting of thematic interviews with nine design-experts, was conducted in order to explore design-experts' experiences with designing for values, what they regard as the strengths and weaknesses of CSD, and if CSD could be of practical use to their design (research) practice.

Designed to Seduce

Up to 70% of all watch time on YouTube is due to the suggested content of its recommender system. This system has been found, by virtue of its design, to be promoting conspiratorial content. In this paper, the author firstly critiques the value neutrality thesis regarding technology, showing it to be philosophically untenable. This means that technological artefacts can influence what people come to value (or perhaps even embody values themselves) and change the moral evaluation of an action. Secondly, he introduces the concept of an affordance, borrowed from the literature on ecological psychology. This concept allows him to make salient how technologies come to solicit certain kinds of actions from users, making such actions more or less likely, and in this way influencing the kinds of things one comes to value. Thirdly, he critically assesses the results of a study by Alfano et al. He makes use of the literature on affordances, introduced earlier, to shed light on how these technological systems come to mediate our perception of the world and influence action.

AI4People

This paper presents the work of the AI4People-Automotive Committee established to advise more concretely on specific ethical issues that arise from autonomous vehicles (AVs). Practical recommendations for the automotive sector are provided across the topic areas: human agency and oversight, technical robustness and safety, privacy and data governance, transparency, diversity, non-discrimination and fairness, societal and environmental wellbeing, as well as accountability. By doing so, this paper distinguishes between policy recommendations that aim to assist policymakers in setting acceptable standards and industry recommendations that formulate guidelines for companies across their value chain. In the future, the automotive sector may rely on these recommendations to determine relevant next steps and to ensure that AVs comply with ethical principles.

Confounding Complexity of Machine Action

In this article, the core concepts in Thomas Hobbes's framework of representation and responsibility are applied to the question of machine responsibility and the responsibility gap and the retribution gap. The method is philosophical analysis and involves the application of theories from political theory to the ethics of technology. A veil of complexity creates the illusion that machine actions belong to a mysterious and unpredictable domain, and some argue that this unpredictability absolves designers of responsibility. Such a move would create a moral hazard related to both (a) strategically increasing unpredictability and (b) taking more risk if responsible humans do not have to bear the costs of the risks they create. Hobbes's theory allows for the clear and arguably fair attribution of action while allowing for necessary development and innovation. Innovation will be allowed as long as it is compatible with social order and provided the beneficial effects outweigh concerns about increased risk. Questions of responsibility are here considered to be political questions.

Development and Psychometric Analysis of Cyber Ethics Instrument (CEI)

This study developed and validated the psychometric properties of a new instrument, cyber ethics instrument (CEI), for assessing cyber ethics. Items related to cyber ethics were generated from a review of both scholarly and practitioner literature for the development of the instrument. The instrument was administered to university students. A sample of 503 responses was used for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to extract the factor structure. The results of EFA suggested a six-factor structure (cyber privacy, computer ethics, academic integrity, intellectual property, netiquette, cyber safety), explaining 67.7% of the total variance. The results of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed acceptable model fit indices. Therefore, the results established the viability of CEI for measuring cyber ethics. The instrument is essential for advancing the field of cyber ethics research as it will serve as a tool educators and researchers can use to measure the current stage of cyber ethics. The results obtained from using CEI can help identify and recommend cyber ethics interventions.