Ethicist as Designer: A Pragmatic Approach to Ethics in the Lab

Abstract

Contemporary literature investigating the significant impact of technology on our lives leads many to conclude that ethics must be a part of the discussion at an earlier stage in the design process i.e., before a commercial product is developed and introduced. The problem, however, is the question regarding how ethics can be incorporated into an earlier stage of technological development and it is this question that we argue has not yet been answered adequately. There is no consensus amongst scholars as to the kind of ethics that should be practiced, nor the individual selected to perform this ethical analysis. One school of thought holds that ethics should have pragmatic value in research and design and that it should be implemented by the (computer) engineers and/or (computer) scientists themselves, while another school of thought holds that ethics need not be so pragmatic. For the latter, the ethical reflection can aim at a variety of goals, and be carried out by an ethicist. None of the approaches resulting from these lines of thinking have been adopted on a wide-scale basis. To that end, the approach presented here is intended to bridge the gap between these schools of thought. It is our contention that ethics ought to be pragmatic and to provide utility for the design process and we maintain that adequate ethical reflection, and all that it entails, ought to be conducted by an ethicist. Thus, we propose a novel role for the ethicist--the ethicist as designer--who subscribes to a pragmatic view of ethics in order to bring ethics into the research and design of artifacts-no matter the stage of development. In this paper we outline the series of steps that a pragmatic value analysis entails: uncovering relevant values, scrutinizing these values and, working towards the translation of values into technical content. In conclusion, we present a list of tasks for the ethicist in his/her role as designer on the interdisciplinary team.

The moral psychology of value sensitive design: the methodological issues of moral intuitions for responsible innovation

“…Prior literature on VSD has focused on methodology (Cummings, 2006;Friedman & Kahn Jr., 2002;Friedman, Kahn Jr., Borning, & Huldtgren, 2013;Van den Hoven, Lokhorst, & Van de Poel, 2012;van den Hoven & Weckert, 2008), applications to current technological innovations (Aad Correlje, Eefje Cuppen, Marloes Dignum, 2015;Briggs & Thomas, 2015;van den Hoven, 2007) as well as to novel technologies (Dechesne, Warnier, & van den Hoven, 2013;Friedman, 1997;Friedman & Kahn Jr., 2000;Timmermans et al, 2011;van den Hoven, 2014;van Wynsberghe, 2013;Van Wynsberghe, 2016). Although these studies provide useful information, they do not take into account the reliability of all of the constituent parts of the VSD approach, in this case, the importance of moral intuition in conceptual investigations.…”

A Paradigm for Democratizing Artificial Intelligence Research

“…These approaches often focus on how to identify bias or define guiding values at the outset, although bias and values can also arise as local phenomena that are "discovered" throughout design and development [25]. The second approach suggests that social scientists must be incorporated into the research process, which may produce more disagreement but arguably more discussion and deeper reflection on where ethics happens and where there are perceived to be "ethics free zones" that require attention [51]. Both approaches suit certain design settings better than others, with some studies noting "disjunctions" between AI and big data research methods and existing research ethics paradigms [31].…”

“…This proposal follows a complementary approach to continuous ethical reflection in research, by incorporating the general public or "community" into ethics analysis during the entire research cycle from research design to data collection, analysis, implementation and reflection on impact. According to [51], ethics must be part of the whole technological design process from the very beginning. A community participation approach to ethics empowers the general public with the tools to participate in discussions and debates about AI/NLP advances and their uses throughout the research lifecycle.…”

Ethical considerations of using information obtained from online file sharing sites

“…• It is directly related to the kind and amount of information that can be collected, to name a few (van Wynsberghe et al, 2013;van Wynsberghe and Robbins, 2013).…”

“…The value is then a consequence of using the technology. With this in mind it is suggested that technologies can and should be made to intentionally realize desirable values while minimizing undesirable consequences ( van Wynsberghe and Robbins, 2013). This conclusion assumes a prospective approach to technology design and in this instance we are engaging in a retrospective ethical appraisal.…”