Ethics and technology
What do ethics and technology have to do with each other?
In recent years, especially with the improved accessibility of technology and the appearance of AI, ethical questions in relation to the usage of technology have become more and more prominent. I (the author) will be using Harvard, a prestigious university in America, to prove this.
The appearance and improved accessibility of modern technology, especially AI, has made ethical questions far more important, even in fields like Computer Science. Since 2017, Harvard has been bringing philosophers into Computer Science classrooms to teach students about ethics when using technology and AI, at least partially, because of the rise of unethical use of technology and AI and because of some ethically questionable circumstances involving these. Harvard finds it necessary that professors and students alike should immediately have ethical questions when thinking of the different uses of technology. As an example, if a student feels like building a website to spread information around his school, he must think of any ethical implications doing so must have. Maybe it’ll be used to spread false information. Maybe someone would use the website to bully a certain group of students or a certain student, or at least single them out. They must ask themselves whether the ethical risks of building such a website still make building it valuable. The same goes for other projects concerning technology. The builder/user must ask themselves whether or not building such a product or using such a product would result in benefits that outweigh potential ethical risks. To answer this question, they must first think of potential ethical implications their actions may have. This is what Harvard is trying to teach its students (since 2017). Another example can be found in data recovery. Whoever is trying to recover data must consider any ethical implications. The most important one to consider would be privacy- they must ask themselves if they would violate anyone’s privacy or data protection rights before recovering the data and act accordingly.
Technology ethics are becoming more and more popular because it is a large issue. Technology can be helpful- anyone who comes to VIS knows so- but technology can also be harmful, which is why technology ethics are so important and why top universities (not just Harvard) have started teaching their students and teachers these, including ethical reasoning skills and ethical reflection. Stalking someone on the internet may seem harmless, building a new product like a website or a blog may seem harmless. Creating a useful robot may seem harmless. One must ask themselves: Is it really?
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Note that I have also used my own reasoning.