Read part 1 of this post here.

Impact of Ethics

Ethics is needed because the present situation and status quo in this area are so alarming (e.g., technology-based totalitarian surveillance, digitally enabled manipulation of democratic opinion-forming- and decision-making processes, …).

Ethics is needed as well because those who have created the fundamental problems and challenges, those who continue to boost the fundamental problems and challenges, and those who have benefitted and continue to benefit from the fundamental problems and challenges impose themselves as voices in the public discourse – with pseudo-ethical contributions serving again only their particular self-interests.

Ethics is needed to pose the question of who we want to be as humans and what should and shouldn’t be in these transformational times. Ethics is needed to counter the spreading of indifference and so that we don’t simply get used to everything that seems to overrun us due to the mutual reinforcement between the globalized economy and digital transformation. Ethics is needed so that digital transformation does not simply happen, but that we humans can shape it.

AI? Data-Based Systems!

An ethical argument might, thus, suggest another term for “artificial intelligence”, such as “data-based systems”, would be more appropriate. It would serve to remind everyone that what is actually involved in “artificial intelligence” is generation, collection, and evaluation of data; data-based perception (sensory, linguistic); data-based predictions; and data-based decisions. The term “data-based systems” would usefully highlight the main strength and the main weakness of the present technological achievement in this field: the mastery of an enormous quantity of data. Pointing to its core characteristic—being based on data and relying exclusively on data in all its processes, its own development, and its actions (or, more precisely, its reactions to data)—would do much to dispel the inappropriate attribution of the myth of “intelligence” covering substantial problems and challenges of data-based systems. This allows for more accurateness and precision in the critical reflection of data-based systems.

At the same time, ethics can limit technology as well. For example, health and safety guidelines, patents, intellectual property rights, competition policy, consumer protection, and ethical codes of conduct belong to this category. This impact of ethics can be perceived as blocking and hindering technological innovation. In reality, ethics is only informing the innovation process that not everything that is doable is ethically good and should be done.

New Approach in Business and Management

For business leaders and managers, conceiving the relationship of ethics and technology as reciprocal means in practical terms to define an ethical framework at the outset of a venture within which this endeavor has to be undertaken. Moreover, they need to create contexts and working-environments where an ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue between the tech-teams and ethicists should be an essential ingredient of innovation-processes right from the beginning. Ethics should be involved because only the precise identification of ethical opportunities and ethical risks of technological progress offers the required clarity and eventually allows for using the first and mastering the latter. Ethics with its own complexity is needed, so that digital transformation will neither be reduced to economic calculations and increasing efficiency nor to a pure instrument of marketing and “artificial stupidity”, but can really rise to its potential. Finally, at the beginning of a venture, decision-makers should address the following 5 questions: 1) Which purpose do we serve with this venture? 2) What are the ethical opportunities and the ethical risks of this venture? 3) Do we contribute to the sustainable flourishing of humans and of the environment with this venture? 4) Would we like to find an ethical analysis of the internal setup and the working-conditions of this innovation-process in the news? 5) Would the generation of our potential great-grandchildren be proud of us because of this venture?

Which Ethics? Ethics of Human Rights!

Perhaps you are asking yourself at this point: what exactly is the set of moral principles that should guide us in innovation? Which ethics should advice technological process? There are certainly different options, but consider the urgent importance in today’s society of climate change and also the persistence of human rights violations linked with technology progress – for example, in the process of exploiting natural resources necessary for technologies or in the value chain of technological products. In this context, the ethics that could be organizations’ best frame of reference are the ethics of human rights. Human rights as ethical frame of reference could provide as a minimum requirement the necessary normative guidance. Human rights offer the major benefit of being based on a simple concept and focusing on the essentials: Besides the ethical justifiability of human rights and their universality, they define the minimum standards guaranteeing that all humans – always, everywhere – can physically survive and lead a life with dignity – a life worth living. They also encourage and foster innovation by protecting people’s freedom to think, express their opinion, and access information, as well as promote pluralism by respecting each person’s right to self-determination.

Putting ethics of human rights at the start of innovation-processes and implementing an interdisciplinaryinteraction between technologies and ethics throughout the entire lifecycle of venture will allow humanity and the planet to flourish and to enjoy a humane and sustainable future.

Peter G. Kirchschlaeger is Ethics-Professor and Director of the Institute of Social Ethics ISE at the University of Lucerne, Visiting Professor at the ETH AI Center of the ETH Zurich, and author of Ethical Decision-Making (Baden-Baden: Nomos-Verlag, 2023) and Digital Transformation and Ethics: Ethical Considerations on the Robotization and Automatization of Society and Economy and the Use of Artificial Intelligence (Baden-Baden: Nomos-Verlag, 2021).

Read more on this topic in the Business and Human Rights Journal.