Autonomous vehicles, though having enormous potential, face a number of challenges. As a computer system interacting with society on a large scale and human beings in particular, they will encounter situations, which require moral assessment. What will count as right behavior in such situations depends on which factors are considered to be both morally justified and socially acceptable. In an empirical study we investigated what factors people recognize as relevant in driving situations. The study put subjects in several “dilemma” situations, which were designed to isolate different and potentially relevant factors. Subjects showed a surprisingly high willingness to sacrifice themselves to save others, took the age of potential victims in a crash into consideration and were willing to swerve onto a sidewalk if this saved more lives. The empirical insights are intended to provide a starting point for a discussion, ultimately yielding societal agreement whereby the empirical insights should be balanced with philosophical considerations.
Background. Digital technologies increasingly shape today’s world of work. This not only affects sectors such as knowledge work and the automotive industry, but also the care sector. On the one hand, many nurses today use technologies supporting some selected and rather peripheral nursing tasks (e.g., electronic documentation). However, on the other hand, more comprehensive and additionally proximal care-related task devices (e.g., diagnostics via telecare) seem to be used less often. From a psychological perspective, attitudes towards technology are an important antecedent of user behaviour. Therefore, in two studies we aimed to examine if nurses’ attitudes towards four digital technology fields (i.e., electronic documentation ED, ambient assisted living AAL, telecare application and robotics) are differing in relation to the type of task substitution, how technology appraisal and knowledge shape these attitudes, and how attitudes predict user behaviour. Method. We conducted two cross-sectional survey studies with German nurses (Study 1: N = 148, Study 2: N = 252) with well-established scales (i.e., general and work-related positive and negative attitudes towards technologies, ease of use, usability, knowledge, and technology use). Results. We found that it is important to consider positive and negative attitudes towards technology distinctively as intercorrelations were only moderately negative. As expected, we found in both studies that nurses reported stronger positive and less negative attitudes towards technologies assumed to be substituting more specific and peripheral (e.g., ED) than comprehensive and proximal care tasks (e.g., robotics). Moreover, we found that two types of technology appraisal (ease of use and usability) both positively correlated with positive attitudes towards all four technology fields, whereas patterns were more inconsistent and additionally influenced by technology knowledge when predicting negative attitudes. Although inconsistently across both studies and the considered technologies, in general, technology users reported more positive and less negative attitudes than non-users. Conclusion. If technology developers and nursing facility managers want to help nurses successfully adopting new technologies in their work routines, nurses’ technology appraisal and technology attitudes have to be considered already in the pre-development phase. Our study results show that nurses report different attitudes towards the four digital technology fields considered here in relation to the levels and types of task-substitution. More specifically, if core carerelated work-tasks (e.g., direct care) are not substituted, nurses report stronger positive and less negative attitudes towards the supporting technologies and higher user behaviour.
Tätigkeiten sind Tätigkeiten, die in direkter Interakti on mit Menschen durchgeführt werden. Dieses Kapitel reflektiert die bei diesen Tätigkeiten vorzufindende arbeitsbedingte Belastung sowie Bean spruchungsfolgen vor dem Hintergrund der digitalen Transformation der Arbeitswelt. Zunächst werden definierende Merkmale personenbezogener Tätigkei ten erläutert und die hohe Diversität dieses Tätigkeitskonzeptes veran schaulicht. Auf eine Darstellung des Vorgehens zur Auswahl der fokussier ten Tätigkeiten "Menschen pflegen" und "Menschen kontrollieren" folgt eine vertiefende Untersuchung beider Tätigkeiten. Hierfür werden jeweils die Arbeitsbedingungen sowie kurz-und langfristige Beanspruchungsfol gen bei Erwerbstätigen, die diese Tätigkeiten ausüben, beschrieben. An schließend wird die Nutzung digitaler Technologien bei diesen Tätigkei ten beleuchtet und vorliegende Befunde zum Zusammenhang zwischen dem Einsatz von digitalen Technologien, arbeitsbedingter Belastung und/ oder Gesundheit der Erwerbstätigen werden vorgestellt. Daran anknüp fend werden für beide hier näher betrachtete Tätigkeiten Zukunftsbilder skizziert. Den Abschluss bildet eine Zusammenschau zentraler Erkenntnis se und ein Fazit. Personenbezogene Tätigkeiten -Von der Homogenität und Diversität eines Tätigkeitskonzeptes Arbeitstätigkeiten sind Vorgänge, mit denen Beschäftigte den ihnen über tragenen Arbeitsauftrag erfüllen (Hacker et al., 2014). Dieser Arbeitsauf trag definiert stets auch einen Arbeitsgegenstand, an dem innerhalb des Arbeitsprozesses Veränderungen vorgenommen werden. Bei personenbe zogenen Tätigkeiten -exemplarisch zu nennen sind das Bedienen, Ret ten, Kontrollieren oder Pflegen von Menschen sowie auch das Beraten, Schützen, Unterrichten und das Verkaufen -ist der Arbeitsgegenstand ein Subjekt, d. h. ein Mensch. Beispiele hierfür sind Ratsuchende, Patientin nen und Patienten oder Schülerinnen und Schüler. Aus dieser Tatsache III.
Psychological and ethical criteria are to date not systematically covered in the system design process. We suggest to extend existing model-based system engineering approaches by new elements that are capable to capture these criteria and, in particular, allow for an implementation of psychological risk analysis and ethical evaluation of work systems already in the design phase. The need for a systematic integration of not only safety but also ethical and psychological criteria in the system design is strengthened by the growing complexity of work systems and the increasing use of artificial intelligence-based algorithms, which have the potential to replace distinctive human capabilities and are associated with a shift of responsibility from humans to machines. We identify essentially two factors impeding the development of an innovative integrative system design approach. First, at present, there is no legally predefined iterative process including an open feedback loop between the operator and the system designer that enables continuous risk assessment. Second, available methods do not provide a framework to integrate ethical and psychological criteria. We propose four steps for the development of an integrative system design approach: (1) an in-depth investigation of current methods suitable for holistic system design processes, (2) the development of a transdisciplinary terminology, (3) the development of a procedure which allows to identify ethical criteria meeting both individual and societal requirements and (4) testing of the developed approach in a digital system model by using a suitable use case.
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