Ethics of Technology, 2 op

Please note that this course is different from the mandatory “Research Ethics” course: this focuses on the moral considerations in envisioning and designing new technologies, while the other focuses on ethics of carrying out research.

General description: The course outlines various ethical challenges and approaches regarding the design of new (information) technology. The lectures conceptualize and problematize various trends and approaches to technology and provide analytical perspectives that help direct the development of ethically sustainable future technologies. The practical assignment aims to cross-pollinate different ways of thinking, premises, and theoretical frameworks across various disciplines, allowing the students to reflect their own work and the research fields they represent.

Contents:

1. Conceptual overview and motivation: technoethics and other areas of applied ethics; engineering ethics and digital ethics; business ethics; ethics of design.

2. Topical techno-ethical issues and concerns: surveillance capitalism; attention economy; data ethics; bias and fairness in algorithmic decision-making; manipulation and fake news; information addiction; new data protection regulations; dehumanization; logic of digital platforms; ecological footprint of digital technologies.

3. Case examples from specific application areas: algorithmic socio-technical systems, social bubbles and polarization, mediatedness of social interaction, autonomous vehicles.

4. Governance: agency and responsibilities in shaping the future technologies; regulation vs. market fundamentalism.

5. Values in technology design: value systems and paradigms, unethical user interfaces, dark patterns.