Pages: 3

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses the problem of fake news, its negative societal consequences, and how it might be regulated. It discusses how social media users avoid gaining exposure to alternative perspectives, rendering online moral, social, and political discourse incomplete or rife with bias. The book details steps that social media firms and users can take to make online discourse more constructive. It addresses whether such technologies facilitate or undermine more traditional mental health interventions (e.g., therapy), including the stability of social values. The book addresses whether such technologies facilitate or undermine more traditional mental health interventions (e.g., therapy), including the stability of social values. It investigates how our use of technology can aid or undermine our cultivation of the virtue of honesty, an important virtue for the promotion of stable and healthy online interactions.

Pages: 56

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 8

Hardware or machines are more than physical objects. Many of the vibrations of a washing machine or a railroad train are just as much physical phenomena as the circular motion of the washer’s water or the rotation of the train’s wheels, but in terms of technology, they are simply extraneous imperfections which undermine the efficiency of the machine. Means-end activity is the core of technology. Efficiency of means is the primary value in the technological society. Other values, aesthetics, ethics, and religion are displaced by the emphasis on efficiency. In recent decades, the systems definition has been used by the so-called social constructionists and the so-called postmodernist philosophers of technology. The social constructionist emphasizes the extent to which the development of knowledge and ideas at the basis of a technology and the building of the hardware of the technology are both made up or constructed.

Pages: 4

There has been a long-standing debate over whether or not technology is value-free. There are two sides to the debate. One side argues that technology is embedded in some way with values. The other side claims that technology is value-free. Part of the reason for the duration of the debate has to do with the way the question was formulated. Asking whether technology is value-free assumes that there is something out there called “technology.” When I look around, I see many technologies from pencils to computers to automobiles to refrigerators to lawn mowers, etc. But nowhere can I find Technology simpliciter. This situation is similar to the one facing science. We are told that science shows us this, or that science has discovered that. But when we look for Science, we find biology, physics, astronomy, chemistry, microbiology, etc. – but no Science simpliciter.

Pages: 8

In this chapter, the author argues that the Value-Neutrality Thesis is false: a non-negligible number of technologies can have bad consequences even if morally decent people use that technology with full knowledge of the bad consequences of doing so, while other technologies have good consequences even if none of the users have particularly praiseworthy preferences with respect to them. A collective action problem occurs when a group of people could achieve some good outcome (or avoid some bad outcome) by acting cooperatively, but each individual has a self-interested incentive to behave uncooperatively. Smartphones and social media mean that there is always something more immediately appealing than whatever long-term investment people might be making in ourself. Thus, these technologies make it more likely that people will act in ways that bring about bad consequences.

Pages: 8

Technological determinism often presents a utopian view of technology as progress, emphasizing the benefits of technology for humanity as, for example, when politicians claim predictive algorithms will reduce crime. The simplicity of technological determinism can explain its endurance. It is also what makes most sense of people’s everyday experiences, as the peoples buy and use technological devices with very little grasp of where they came from and how they work. Patients are mainly cast as sources of attitudinal data, as beneficiaries of the technology or even as obstacles to be overcome”. Such a view has consequences for the eventual usefulness of such devices, and even for whether they will be successfully incorporated into complex sociotechnical contexts, involving people with epilepsy, their families, friends and professional care workers.

Pages: 8

In this chapter, the author sketches Heidegger’s vision of the interplay between danger and salvation while also noting some of the shortcomings of that vision. Heidegger connects enframing to the idea of challenging: as positioned resources, things are persistently refined, redesigned, and repurposed so as to optimize their use as resources. Heidegger’s emphasis on the violence and rapaciousness of modern technology – of enframing – aligns his views with more familiar concerns about the environmental impact of modern industrial technology: the destruction of ecosystems and habitats, pervasive pollution and contamination, and, most ominously, the rising threat posed by climate change. As Heidegger puts it, human dwelling involves things thinging, brought forth as distinctive, meaningful things rather than as flexible, disposable resources.

Pages: 10

In this chapter, the author explains the post-phenomenological approach to ethics of technology. He introduces post-phenomenology itself, as a specific way to analyze technology and its role in society and discusses the various dimensions of the moral significance of technology that become visible from the post-phenomenological approach. The author explains how technologies mediate moral actions and decisions, how they help to shape value frameworks, and how they challenge the concepts. He moves the discussion from theoretical philosophy to practical philosophy, by explaining the approach of Guidance Ethics, which grew out of post-phenomenological ethics of technology. Post-phenomenology leaves the romantic opposition of humans and technologies behind, and approaches technology as constitutive for human existence. Instead of taking ‘Technology’ as its object of investigation, it focuses on actual technologies and the ways in which they help to shape the relations between human beings and their world. The Guidance Ethics Approach derives its normative content from the people who follow the approach.

Pages: 9

The concept of extended mind involves the idea that the use of various tools, artifacts, or aspects of the environment can facilitate, enhance, or even constitute cognition. In the original version of the extended mind hypothesis (EMH), the relevant technology is treated in parity with processes that occur in the head or brain, in conformity with the parity principle. The most contentious objection to the EMH concerns the idea that the use of an external artifact or piece of technology “constitutes” cognition, or more controversially put, constitutes the mind. A friendlier, or one might say, internal objection to EMH’s parity principle leads to a revised version of the extended mind, often referred to as a “second wave” of extended mind theory. Although, in some cases there may be an epistemic-functional similarity or parity between internal neural processes and external tools and technologies.

Pages: 69

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 11

This chapter provides an overview of influential normative ethical theories and how they can be applied to particular cases in the ethics of technology. By contrast, normative ethical theories assume that some moral standards (e.g., happiness, equity, and freedom) are universal and articulate criteria for moral goodness based on these assumptions. Applied ethics is the application of normative ethical theories to specific cases (e.g., abortion and capital punishment). Social contract theories offer useful resources for evaluating complex ethical cases where the interests of different groups conflict. Such theories emphasize identifying and justifying moral that are fair and impartial. Rawlsian analyses are most relevant to issues of the social justice and the state within liberal and democratic societies, which is an important, but narrow aspect of ethics. Scanlon’s contractualism is most relevant for questions concerning our moral obligations to one another.

Pages: 10

Regulation exists for good reason, because the interests of technology firms are not always aligned with ours. However, it still can be extremely difficult to predict when a particular regulation would be good for the public. In 1962, the US Congress required testing to determine that new drugs would be effective at treating whatever they purported to treat, to keep patients from wasting money and—much worse—precious time when they might have avoided needless suffering or even death by using a treatment that was more effective. Rosling has a point: technology is about more than gadgetry. It changes the frontier of possibilities for what the peoples might do with our lives and who peoples might become.

Pages: 10

In this chapter, the author looks at some of the recent empirical data on honesty and technology, and considers some of the ethical issues that often come up. Deep-fakes are intentionally manipulated pictures, videos, and audio files which substitute someone else’s image or words for the original. The vast majority of deep-fakes are used in the pornography industry, where, for instance, a celebrity’s face is switched with that of a pornographic actor or actress. Current remote proctoring technology has become more sophisticated, combining artificial intelligence, automated proctors, wearable cameras, environmental scans, keystroke tracking, gaze and eye tracking, and head movement detection. To grow in honesty, one does need to act dishonestly less and less, but one also needs to do the honest thing more and more for the right reasons and motives.

Pages: 9

This chapter briefly discusses how Confucianism as an important non-Western intellectual resource can provide useful insights into discussions in the ethics of technology. It provides a concise introduction to Confucian ethics with a specific focus on three interrelated key concepts: roles, rituals, and the harmonious society. The chapter then discusses the implications of Confucian ethics for the design of technological artifacts, including emerging technologies. While both deontology and consequentialism place a strong emphasis on the value of following rules for moral actions, Confucian ethics argues that the key to become a good person is to live and reflect on the social roles one assumes in specific communal contexts. In contrast to Western philosophies, which often romanticize robot rights or agency, Confucian ethics is more flexible in assigning personhood to robots insofar as these robots have put efforts to cultivate virtuous tendencies among themselves and others.

Pages: 10

This chapter offers a moral argument that the peoples should make and take drugs (of a certain sort) to make ourselves happier. The notion of a “disposition” means something like a tendency to happiness or unhappiness. People with a happy disposition tend to have more frequent positive moods and emotions, while people with an unhappy disposition tend to have more frequent negative moods and emotions. Scientists have found the causal relation—happiness causes success—across our social lives, work lives, and health. In terms of work, a happy disposition leads to better success at securing the job interviews and jobs, to being better evaluated by supervisors, to success at managerial jobs, being more creative, and earning a higher income. In terms of social life, a happy disposition leads to having more friends, better friendships, and more cooperative, prosocial, and charitable behaviors.

Pages: 10

For Marx, the freedom from personal domination that in principle sets capitalism apart from slavery or feudalism is accompanied by the rule of an impersonal power over human life. In capitalism, producers must sell their output for money or else lose their investment and be unable to continue operating. One of the most striking examples of the commodification imperative in the contemporary economy is the commodification of knowledge goods through the extension of intellectual property rights in scope and enforcement. Knowledge goods are inherently collective, a point Marx emphasized in his discussion of “the general intellect”. Marx concluded that technological change in capitalism tends to systematically reproduce severe global inequality. Interestingly, a leading mainstream theorist of economic development agrees with this thesis, still overlooked by most philosophers of global justice. Technological change can then be a means to the full and free development of every individual, rather than a means for an insane end, “the unceasing movement of profit-making”.

Pages: 8

Kant states that good will is motivated by respect for the autonomy of rational agents. He had a view of virtue as the strength of will to act according to the demands of morality, which is not fully in keeping with standard virtue ethics but draws out the significance of moral character for being trustworthy. Nancy Potter argued that the Kantian approach misses the important particularity and depth of a trusting relationship and cannot provide an adequate account of trust. She admitted that one can “reasonably be able to be well-treated by a Kantian moral agent, but it would seem not to have to do with her or his attitudes or feelings toward me or with the particularities of who I am”. Modern society is a highly complex lifeform demanding advanced institutions, sophisticated infrastructures, and technologies that ideally improve life conditions for people in general.

Pages: 64

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 9

This chapter argues that ethical values are inextricably embedded in Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. AI systems assist in driving our cars and screen job applications for companies looking to hire new employees. In developing an AI system, researchers must make decisions about which problem is to be addressed and how this problem is to be framed. AI systems that involve the collection, use, and storage of data about human beings – including social media platforms, personal digital assistants, and contact tracing systems – have design features that significantly impact privacy. In creating an AI system that classifies individuals into categories, designers must decide which type of fairness they wish to encode into the system – which conceptions of fairness they wish to prioritize and which they are willing to violate. In creating an AI system that classifies individuals into categories, designers must decide which type of fairness they wish to encode into the system.

Pages: 11

In this chapter, the author argues that Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy can provide an important part of the answer. She criticizes what her regard as a misguided approach to the problem of reasonable disputes in machine ethics, which is to build agents that act in accordance with what most people would prefer the agents to do in controversial cases. The author sets out Kant’s approach to the problem of reasonable disputes. Machine ethics traditionally has been approached from one or some combination of three main moral theoretical frameworks: Consequentialism, virtue ethics and deontology. Freedom is thus “independence from being constrained by another’s choice,” and the right of freedom is that freedom systematically limited by everyone else’s equal freedom under a universal law. Kant elaborates that the innate right of freedom includes a number of constituents such as “innate equality” that are “not really distinct from it”.

Pages: 8

This chapter examines some of the ethical issues concerning the use of Chat_Bots. It reviews what Chat_Bots are and the contexts in which they are used, with some examples. The chapter critically evaluates the promises of the proponents of Chat_Bots technology and address the ethical concerns lying therein. Instead of detecting and then treating mental disorders in the clinic, artificial intelligence technologies promise to detect and intervene in mental states before anomalies become full-blown mental disorders. In other words, the goal is to preempt mental illness and intervene before the illness fully develops. Digital phenotyping is made possible through digital sensing, i.e., the activity of digital devices in collecting and storing da.

Pages: 9

In this chapter, the author argues that none of the argument strands, considered individually or taken together, are strong enough to override individual privacy rights. Privacy also includes a right over the downstream use of bodies, locations, and personal information. If access is granted accidentally or otherwise, it does not follow that any subsequent use, manipulation, or sale of the good in question is justified. While privacy may be a cultural universal necessary for the proper functioning of human beings, its form – the actual rules of association and disengagement – is culturally dependent. The kinds of privacy rules found in different cultures will be dependent on a host of variables, including climate, religion, technological advancement, and political arrangements. Big data analytic software can analyze a small set of disparate data points, containing no personal identifying information, and then re-identify some particular individual.

Pages: 6

The screen is the place that draws us in and somehow demands our attention—hence the saying ‘glued to the screen.’ In an important sense, screens are increasingly the ‘world’ that matters, the world that calls for us to (re)present ourselves there, to be first and foremostly in-the-screen. Moreover, being-in-the-screen frees us from the material weight of a body, a located place and time, and many of the social norms that such material rooted-ness implies. Screen communication is dominated by the instantaneous, emotive, multitasking, the intuitive, and ongoing improvisation. Moreover, in surfaciality and plasticity of the screen, disembodied subjects can play with their identity. Traditional categories such as gender, race, socio-economic class, loose their definitive authority. The physical screen is just one element of the relational whole that makes ‘being-in-the-screen’ possible. The screen in its screening always and already facilitates certain patterns of perception, structures of attention, models of thinking, and thus alter our lives independently of individual analysis or opinions.

Pages: 10

This chapter engages with some of the recent social media scholarship in order to discuss what the #BlackTikTokStrike reveals about how Black creators, and in particular Black women and girls, have to navigate visibility and labor on the TikTok app and social media as a whole. During the summer of 2020 and in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests erupted around the United States in response to the police killing of George Floyd, a Black Minnesotan man. Activists and community groups utilized digital platforms and social media to organize local protests, amplify their events, and network with other organizers. The exclusion of Black creators and especially Black women and teenage girl creators from the opportunities to profit from their own work is unfortunately part of a long tradition of cultural appropriation and exploitative labor practices that extends back to the transatlantic slave trade.

Pages: 10

The COVID-19 pandemic, which wreaked havoc from 2020 onward, showed that fake news in the form of medical misinformation – e.g., peddling veterinary drugs as ‘miracle cures’ for COVID-19 – could pose a serious public health hazard. Indeed, some critics have denied the need for a separate category of ‘fake news’ for precisely that reason: as Joshua Habgood-Coote writes, the term ‘fake news’ has at best ‘a use as a catch-all for bad information’, which is why the peoples should ‘stop talking about fake news’. Other potential characteristics of fake news – e.g., its use for propagandistic purposes – could easily be added to this list. As with any new term that emerges spontaneously from our messy social and political world, there is bound to be some degree of vagueness, and any attempt to settle the issue through stipulation will necessarily be controversial.

Pages: 55

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 8

Adam Smith is widely credited as a “founding father” of the discipline of economics and one of the first modern supporters of a market economy, and his work has had tremendous influence on the subsequent development of economics and of political-economic policy. But he wrote before the advent of the internet, not to mention computers, televisions, radios, and even electricity. And yet some of Smith’s principles might be applicable today. Smith argues that the moral sentiments a mature adult has are not the product of any rational deduction, from, say, transcendent first principles or from an apprehension of God’s will. Smith may not be able to tell one how to remedy the situation or how exactly to avoid such an unfortunate fate, but the first step toward prescription and eventual healing is proper diagnosis.

Pages: 11

This chapter considers how social media users can isolate themselves from exposure to alternative views, and the effects of doing so. The recent flurry of growth in social media has catalyzed “people’s growing power to filter what they see”. The chapter examines the nature and ethical implications of these forms of blocking, the echo chambers that result, and what can be done to mitigate their bad effects. Sunstein develops an account of the import of social media echo chambers in a democratic society. Social media give democratic citizens access to valuable information about social and political life. Social media firms have accordingly come under scrutiny for how and how far they control the dissemination of information. Individual consumers can modify their behavior by searching more actively for information across diverse social media. Consumer groups can influentially shape public discourse.

Pages: 9

Over the last half-century, nearly every aspect of our lives has been transformed by information technology. Recently, an important part of information technology – the rapidly evolving field of data science – has begun exerting great influence on societies in a wide variety of ways. In business, government, and education, for example, it is becoming rare to conduct a meeting without the phrase data-driven decision making (DDDM) being invoked at least once. Data science can be performed only on knowledge amenable to its methods, which is knowledge that can be codified in data sets. Increasing emphasis on DDDM involves a growing tradeoff between the benefits of greater analytical power exercised on codifiable knowledge and the benefits of knowledge that is impossible to codify in a data set. Decision makers know that not employing the most scientific methods available might appear irresponsible.

Pages: 8

Firms in Silicon Valley have made the news for their purported intolerance of employees who support politically conservative views. In this chapter, the author argues that the causal mechanisms that plausibly explain a connection between identity diversity and profitability also suggest that ideological diversity increases profitability. There is ample evidence that diverse workforces are good for business. Cedric Herring uses data from the 1996–1997 National Organizations Survey to show that there is a statistically significant relationship between a firm’s racial or gender diversity and its business performance, measured as sales revenues, number of customers, or profits relatives to competitors. Cognitive diversity is a boon only for problems with certain features. The problem must be sufficiently complex such that the range of relevant skills needed to address it cannot be possessed by any one mind. As an example, consider the gains from diversity to be had in a surgical team.

Pages: 10

The literature on Big Tech companies has now become so voluminous to constitute its own field of research. This is unsurprising when one considers the impact that the “Gang of Four”—Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon—have had on our lives. This chapter explores a different aspect of the rise of Big Tech: their growing role as key political players and the implications that this has for the central democratic principle of political equality. The corporate law literature has framed a new trend as just an expansion of corporate social responsibility (CSR), with this expansion being prompted by a change in stakeholder moral preferences. CSR is largely viewed as a private contribution to the production of public goods—that is, a market-driven response to government failures. Now, it is evident that corporate conformity is not formally compatible with the requirements that operationalize the principle of political equality.

Pages: 8

Nick Bostrom, a Swedish philosopher, proposed a simple thought experiment involving a paperclip maximizer (the “PCM”). The PCM thought experiment reveals a predicament. Part of the reason AI can be so powerful is that it doesn’t follow human commands. It uses massive data sets to uncover complex solutions that no human could anticipate. But by freeing AI from the constraints of low-level programming, AI like the PCM will inevitably harm people in unforeseeable ways. This chapter issues a challenge to technology ethicists, social ontologists, and legal theorists: How can the law help mitigate algorithmic harms without overly compromising the potential that AI has to make people all healthier, wealthier, and wiser? Ordinarily, the law imposes liability directly on the source of concerning conduct. For algorithmic harms, that would mean holding algorithms themselves liable. Presently the law doesn’t allow this because the law doesn’t recognize algorithms as potential defendants.

Pages: 48

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 9

One of the perennial preoccupations of philosophers thinking about the ethical implications of new biomedical technologies has been the prospect of using these technologies to improve human capacities beyond what is necessary to restore or sustain health. This chapter focuses on some of the most commonly encountered arguments against using biomedical tools for enhancement purposes. It examines the main arguments that are given in support of the anti-enhancement perspective. The chapter examines two groups of arguments that are common rationales for anti-enhancement perspectives. The first group of arguments make the accusation that using biomedical enhancements is just a way of “playing God.” The second group of arguments invoke the criticism that the use of biomedical enhancements is fundamentally a matter of taking “easy shortcuts” to achieve the user’s goals, and those shortcuts are morally problematic. The chapter returns to the question of whether the concerns expressed by defenders of the anti-enhancement perspective need to be based in reasons and argumentation.

Pages: 9

The Guardian article is typical of popular work on this subject; it invokes Brave New World and Frankenstein to induce uneasiness among readers. In Brave New World, bottle-grown people are genetically engineered into rigid economic castes. For instance, laborers are designed to be “semi-morons” who never resent their work. There would be little case for genetic enhancement it if were about creating rigid economic castes or resentful, murderous flesh golems. But genetic enhancement is not about that. Instead, if ever genetic enhancement becomes available, parents will probably pursue three kinds of goals: Interventions, Enhancements, and Modifications. Some people who believe that they are opposed to genetic enhancement might not be opposed to gene manipulation per se, but rather to other aspects of designer baby selection. Section “Treatment and Rescue” considers the easiest cases: using genetic manipulation to save one’s child from various illnesses or disabilities. Perhaps the most important critique of genetic enhancement is based on egalitarianism.

Pages: 9

This chapter presents some ethical concerns of particular interest to feminist scholars. When in 1978, the first baby was born after the use of in vitro fertilization (IVF), few would have predicted the rapid acceptance, expanding uses, and remarkable development of reprogenetic technologies. These technologies, which combine the power of reproductive technologies and genetic tools, are now a routine clinical practice in fertility clinics. Reprogenetic technologies involve remarkable technical achievements: they allow us to create, store, select, and genetically modify gametes and embryos. Reprogenetic technologies involve the combination of reproductive techniques and genomic tools. When aimed at reproduction, reprogenetic technologies all necessitate the use of IVF. Reprogenetic technologies directly involve questions about women’s reproductive choices. Indeed, one of the most touted benefits of these technologies is that they expand women’s ability to take control of their reproductive decisions.

Pages: 9

This chapter explores a technological case study that challenges presumptions of autonomy, agency, and the principles that guide bioethics in clinical settings. It addresses pharmacological developments in the treatment and prevention of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Drawing on insights from feminist science and technology studies (STS), the chapter suggests that biomedical technologies are not merely passive “objects” deployed in the treatment of HIV and “risky” sexual practices; rather, from an STS perspective, it argues that technologies are agentic in their own right and become embodied in the sexual practices of gay and other men who have sex with men (MSM). Since Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome was first recognized in the 1980s in North America among people with hemophilia, injection drug users, racialized communities, and, most prominently, gay, bisexual, and other MSM, knowledge about and technological advancements in the management of the HIV have advanced remarkably.

Pages: 11

Cheating by doping has done more than perhaps any other type of misconduct in elite and professional sport to erode public confidence in the credibility of athletic performances and the legitimacy of sporting results. Since the 1980s, a sophisticated and extensive infrastructure has developed to ensure that sport is doping-free. This includes the World Anti-Doping Agency, the World Anti-Doping Code, the Anti-Doping Division of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, national anti-doping agencies, national anti-doping policies, anti-doping education programmes, and, in some countries, even doping-related criminal offences. Imagine a drug that enhanced athletic performance significantly, was cheap to purchase, but presented a substantial risk of permanent harm to, or even the death of, the user. Perhaps the most common argument offered for the prohibition of doping is that performance-enhancing drugs are harmful to athletes. While health is an important aspect of athlete welfare, one might object that another important aspect of athlete welfare is autonomy.