Conference Agenda

Ethical Frameworks for Disruptive Technologies: Balancing Innovation, Privacy, and Value-Sensitive Design

Disruptive technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, synthetic media, persuasive platforms, and intimate systems like wearable devices and virtual assistants, are reshaping societal structures and values in profound ways. While these technologies offer immense potential in improving efficiency and personalization, they also introduce significant ethical and conceptual challenges. They exploit cognitive vulnerabilities, manipulate behavior, and threaten privacy, autonomy, and societal trust (Jorge, Amaral, & De Mateos Alves, 2022). The intrusion of these technologies into intimate spaces, personal data, health, and identity, raises crucial concerns about autonomy and personal integrity, particularly when individuals remain unaware of the extent to which their decisions are influenced by external systems (Van Est et al., 2014; Friedman & Hendry, 2019). As technology continues to evolve, the need for comprehensive ethical frameworks to address these risks becomes increasingly urgent. However, there is a fast growing body of frameworks and methods making selection daunting (Vandemeulebroucke et al., 2022)

This study explores both the ethical implications of disruptive technologies and the responsibility of engineers and designers in mitigating the associated risks. The research introduces two innovative frameworks: Bending Technology (Zamora, 2019) and The Humane Technology Compass (Bosch, 2022). These frameworks advocate for participatory, community-centered approaches to technology design. They encourage collaboration between users and designers to ensure that technological development aligns with ethical values.

In addition, the study integrates these frameworks with established ethical design approaches, such as Value-Sensitive Design (Borthwick, Tomitsch, & Gaughwin, 2022) and Calm Technology (Case, 2018). These frameworks provide concrete strategies for embedding ethics into the development of disruptive technologies, addressing critical concerns such as data privacy, algorithmic bias, and the balance between personalization and autonomy. Initial tests of these frameworks have shown potential in guiding the design of wearable health devices and virtual coaching platforms, resulting in reduced privacy risks and enhanced user agency.

By incorporating ethical reflection into design processes, engineers and designers can help ensure that disruptive technologies contribute to, rather than undermine, human well-being. We propose a value-centered approach, rooted in collaborative participation and the identification of core values, to establish meaningful and relevant frameworks.

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References:

Borthwick, M., Tomitsch, M. and Gaughwin, M., 2022. From human-centred to life-centred design: Considering environmental and ethical concerns in the design of interactive products. Journal of Responsible Technology, 10, p.100032.

Bosch, M., 2022. The Humane Technology Project: Developing a framework for creating socially-responsible technology to improve society and people's life.https://www.academia.edu/127011824/The_Humane_Technology_Project_Developing_a_framework_for_creating_socially_responsible_technology_to_improve_society_and_peoples_life

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Friedman, B. and Hendry, D., 2019. Value Sensitive Design: Shaping technology with moral imagination. 1st ed. [ebook] Seattle: The MIT Press, pp.1,2,19. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/value-sensitive-design

Jorge, A., Amaral, I. and de Matos Alves, A., 2022. Time Well Spent: The ideology of temporal Disconnection as a Means for Digital Well-Being. International Journal of Communication, [online] 16, p.1555. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/18148/3717

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Vandemeulebroucke, T., Denier, Y., Mertens, E., Gastmans, C., 2022. Which Framework to Use? A Systematic Review of Ethical Frameworks for the Screening or Evaluation of Health Technology Innovations. Sci Eng Ethics 28, 26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-022-00377-2

Zamora, D. (2019). Bending technology: a collaborative approach towards digital fabrication. https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/36111

This paper argues for the greater integration of the concept of moral progress into the philosophy of “disruptive” technologies (cf. Hopster, 2021a; Hopster, 2021b; Hopster & Maas, 2023). While significant contributions have been made to understanding the moral implications of technology and its role in moral change (Danaher & Saetra, 2022; Danaher & Sætra, 2023; Swierstra, Stemerding, & Boenink, 2009; Waelbers & Swierstra, 2014), moral revolutions (Danaher & Hopster, 2022; Hermann et al., 2021; Hopster et al., 2022; Klenk et al., 2022), and moral uncertainty (Danaher, 2023; Nickel, 2020; Nickel, Kudina, & van de Poel, 2022), there has been a notable absence of explicit engagement with the notion of moral progress. This omission, despite the extensive attention moral progress has received in other areas of philosophy (Anderson, 2014; Buchanan & Powell, 2018; Jamieson, 2002; Kitcher, 2021; Moody‐Adams, 1999; Pleasants, 2018; Roth, 2012; Wilson, 2010), requires examination to advance the discourse. This paper considers plausible reasons for this oversight, argues for explicitly addressing the normativity of such inquiries, and proposes that Philip Kitcher’s pragmatic account of moral progress (Kitcher, 2011, 2015, 2017, 2021) offers a productive framework for investigating techno-moral progress.

One reason for the lack of focus on moral progress is the methodological bracketing of normative questions in favour of descriptive inquiries. While this approach enables researchers to avoid contentious normative debates, bracketing normative considerations risks overlooking how these may indeed shape the very phenomena under investigation. Further, normative assumptions often enter implicitly through examples, language, or argumentation, revealing the flawed assumption that researchers’ normative commitments can be fully excised from their work (cf. Anderson, 1995; Longino, 1990). Explicit acknowledgment of these dimensions would enhance philosophical rigor and transparency, replacing moral agnosticism with a moral sincerity that aptly recognises the real-world consequences of technological innovation. Failure to rectify this risks complicity in ethically objectionable outcomes and misses opportunities for greater practical and ameliorative impact (Kitcher, 2023)

Another reason may stem from theoretical concerns about moral progress’s association with moral realism, and the supposed need to commit to some form of moral truth as a yardstick. Additionally, concerns about teleology often stem from justifiable and long-standing fears of utopian end-state planning. However, these worries can be mitigated through Kitcher’s pragmatic account of moral progress. Kitcher’s approach is backward-looking, emphasises problem resolution, practical outcomes, and the reconstruction moral practices. Overall, a concern for moral progress forces the grappling with difficult questions concerning our current moral trajectory, how it might be positively redirected, and what role technology might play. Moreover, it may yet come to constitute a novel ethical metric, namely, to evaluate in what ways emerging technologies might foster or stymy the possibility of future moral progress. All told, focus on moral progress promises to align philosophical inquiry with the transformative effects of technology on moral life.

References

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Buchanan, A., & Powell, R. (2018). The evolution of moral progress: A biocultural theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Danaher, J. (2023). Moral Uncertainty and Our Relationships with Unknown Minds. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 32(4), 482-495.

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Danaher, J., & Saetra, H. S. (2022). Technology and moral change: the transformation of truth and trust. Ethics and Information Technology, 24(3), 35.

Danaher, J., & Sætra, H. S. (2023). Mechanisms of techno-moral change: A taxonomy and overview. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 26(5), 763-784.

Hermann, J., Hopster, J., Klenk, M., Eriksen, C., O'Neill, E., Blunden, C., . . . Steinert, S. (2021). The Structure of Technomoral Revolutions. Inquiry.

Hopster, J. (2021a). The ethics of disruptive technologies: towards a general framework. Paper presented at the International Conference on Disruptive Technologies, Tech Ethics and Artificial Intelligence.

Hopster, J. (2021b). What are socially disruptive technologies? Technology in Society, 67, 101750. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2021.101750

Hopster, J., Arora, C., Blunden, C., Eriksen, C., Frank, L. E., Hermann, J., . . . Steinert, S. (2022). Pistols, pills, pork and ploughs: the structure of technomoral revolutions. Inquiry, 1-33.

Hopster, J., & Maas, M. (2023). The technology triad: disruptive AI, regulatory gaps and value change. AI and Ethics, 1-19.

Jamieson, D. (2002). Is there progress in morality? Utilitas, 14(3), 318-338.

Kitcher, P. (2011). The ethical project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Klenk, M., O’Neill, E., Arora, C., Blunden, C., Eriksen, C., Frank, L., & Hopster, J. (2022). Recent work on moral revolutions. Analysis, 82(2), 354-366.

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Navigating conceptual disruption through affordances-informed conceptual engineering. Taxonomy and operationalisation

Conceptual engineering is gaining prominence as a normative approach to conceptual work in the philosophy of technology. Conceptual engineering enables philosophers to evaluate conceptual adequacy, propose targeted interventions when appropriate, and implement such proposals (Chalmers, 2020). In particular, conceptual engineering has been proposed as a useful approach to address and bridge instances of conceptual disruption, i.e., interruptions in the normal functioning of concepts (Löhr, 2022, 2023a, 2023b; Marchiori & Scharp, 2024). Current approaches to conceptual disruption and conceptual engineering have been traditionally guided by a broadly functional account of concepts, whereby concepts are deemed adequate to the extent that they are able to fulfil their functions (Hopster & Löhr, 2023; Hopster et al, 2023). Conversely, concepts are deemed inadequate (and thus, disrupted) when they are unable to do so. However, the functionalist paradigm insufficiently addresses the complex roles concepts play beyond their intended functions (Nado, 2019). To this end, recent work on conceptual engineering has advanced the discussion by proposing that such a functional framework should be informed by the affordances of concepts—i.e., the potential actions that concepts enable. This paper synthesises and extends prior work on conceptual disruption and conceptual engineering in the philosophy of technology, as well as work on conceptual functions and affordances, by offering a taxonomy integrating the ways in which conceptual disruption can manifest with appropriate affordances-informed conceptual engineering interventions. Furthermore, the paper advances a tentative operationalisation of such a framework, by structuring the analysis of conceptual adequacy and the related suggested conceptual engineering interventions into the following dimensions: type of affordance, desirability, satisfiability, type of conceptual disruption, recommended conceptual engineering intervention, and urgency of the intervention. Such operationalisation aims to guide conceptual engineers in their interventions.

Chalmers, D. J. (2020). What is conceptual engineering and what should it be?. Inquiry, 1-18.

Hopster, J., Brey, P., Klenk, M., Löhr, G., Marchiori, S., Lundgren, B., & Scharp, K. (2023). Conceptual disruption and the ethics of technology.

Hopster, J., & Löhr, G. (2023). Conceptual engineering and philosophy of technology: Amelioration or adaptation?. Philosophy & Technology, 36(4), 70.

Löhr, G. (2023). Conceptual disruption and 21st century technologies: A framework. Technology in Society, 74, 102327.

Löhr, G. (2022). Linguistic interventions and the ethics of conceptual disruption. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 25(5), 835-849.

Marchiori, S., & Scharp, K. (2024). What is conceptual disruption?. Ethics and Information Technology, 26(1), 18.

Nado, J. (2021). Conceptual engineering, truth, and efficacy. Synthese, 198(Suppl 7), 1507-1527.