Ibo van de Poel

Algorithms and AI tools are becoming increasingly influential artefacts in commercial and governance contexts. Algorithms and AI tools are not value neutral; to some extent they must be rendered knowable and known as objects, and in their implementation and deployment, to see clearly and understand their implications for moral values, and what actions can be undertaken to optimise them in their design and use towards ethical goals, or whether they are even suitable for particular goals. Transparency is a term with variable uses and interpretations, a problem which can challenge its use in design and policy. Here, we attempt to further clarify transparency. We argue that transparency is the state of affairs that obtains when relevant and understandable information about some X is available and accessible to some target audience (A), so that this information is sufficient for A for the purpose (P). Moreover, we connect this conceptualisation with transparency’s moral value, where P is to provide an account about X’s supportive or conflicting relationship with relevant values and goals. Such teleological ends in our context here can be the ability to account for the degree to which an algorithm, process or organisation respects certain values and is conducive to (social) goals.

This article presents a conceptual investigation into the value impacts and relations of algorithms in the domain of justice and security. As a conceptual investigation, it represents one step in a value sensitive design based methodology. Here, we explicate and analyse the expression of values of accuracy, privacy, fairness and equality, property and ownership, and accountability and transparency in this context. We find that values are sensitive to disvalue if algorithms are designed, implemented or deployed inappropriately or without sufficient consideration for their value impacts, potentially resulting in problems including discrimination and constrained autonomy. Furthermore, we outline a framework of conceptual relations of values indicated by our analysis, and potential value tensions in their implementation and deployment with a view towards supporting future research, and supporting the value sensitive design of algorithms in justice and security.

The proliferation and pervasive use of artificial intelligence (AI) pose significant challenges to our democracies. In particular, AI leverages microtargeting political campaigns by constructing detailed user profiles and inferring people’s individual susceptibilities from their data. This capability enables highly targeted political messaging that can substantially influence voting decisions, potentially undermining citizens’ ability to make deliberative decisions in elections. While existing research has proposed interventions to mitigate the negative impacts of political micro-targeting, many of these interventions may become less effective as AI continually yields more powerful and subliminal forms of micro-targeting. Assuming that technologies can play a role in mitigating these negative impacts of AI, we conducted an explorative study to identify the design principles of technological tools that could facilitate citizens’ deliberative decision-making in elections in the continuously levelaged AI-based political campaigns. Using Indonesia’s 2024 elections as a case study, we interviewed twenty citizens and four political actors to gain critical insights into how such technologies might be developed. Initially, we anticipated that privacy-enhancing AI, used to counterattack profiling AI used by political actors, might suffice to facilitate election deliberation. However, our findings reveal a more complex reality: addressing societal issues through technology is inherently challenging; no single solution can serve as a silver bullet. Instead, facilitating election deliberation requires integrating privacy with other conditions, including self-reflection, education, access to diverse information, critical thinking, and openness to others. These design principles might serve as concrete, actionable design principles to guide the development of technologies to enhance election deliberation.

The Safe-by-Design approach in synthetic biology holds the promise of designing the building blocks of life in an organism guided by the value of safety. This paves a new way for using biotechnologies safely. However, the Safe-by-Design approach moves the bulk of the responsibility for safety to the actors in the research and development phase. Also, it assumes that safety can be defined and understood by all stakeholders in the same way. These assumptions are problematic and might actually undermine safety. This research explores these assumptions through the use of a Group Decision Room. In this set up, anonymous and non-anonymous deliberation methods are used for different stakeholders to exchange views. During the session, a potential synthetic biology application is used as a case for investigation: the Food Warden, a biosensor contained in meat packaging for indicating the freshness of meat. Participants discuss what potential issues might arise, how responsibilities should be distributed in a forward-looking way, who is to blame if something would go wrong. They are also asked what safety and responsibility mean at different phases, and for different stakeholders. The results of the session are not generalizable, but provide valuable insights. Issues of safety cannot all be taken care of in the R&D phase. Also, when things go wrong, there are proximal and distal causes to consider. In addition, capacities of actors play an important role in defining their responsibilities. Last but not least, this research provides a new perspective on the role of instruction manuals in achieving safety.

Safe-by-design aims at addressing safety issues already during the R&D and design phases of new technologies. SbD has increasingly become popular in the last few years for addressing the risks of emerging technologies like nanotechnology and synthetic biology. We ask to what extent SbD approaches can deal with uncertainty, in particular with indeterminacy, i.e., the fact that the actual safety of a technology depends on the behavior of actors in the value chain like users and operators. We argue that while indeterminacy may be approached by designing out users as much as possible in attaining safety, this is often not a good strategy. It will not only make it more difficult to deal with unexpected risks; it also misses out on the resources that users can bring for achieving safety, and it is undemocratic. We argue that rather than directly designing for safety, it is better to design for the responsibility for safety, i.e., designers should think where the responsibility for safety is best situated and design technologies accordingly. We propose some heuristics that can be used in deciding how to share and distribute responsibility for safety through design.

Conceptual engineering is an approach or method for assessing, improving, adapting and disposing concepts. While recent case studies have shown the possibility and success of conceptual engineering, I argue that not all concepts are equally open to conceptual engineering. It is therefore useful to distinguish between generic and specific concepts. While the latter can be the object of conceptual design, I argue that designing generic concepts is problematic for practical and normative reasons. Nevertheless, attempts can be made to change generic concepts through interventions in larger conceptual repertoires. Contrary to specific concepts, generic concepts do not have a well-delineated function that can provide a normative reference for conceptual engineering. Moreover, they are well entrenched in larger conceptual schemes or repertoires, so that they cannot be engineered in isolation. Generic concepts also raise more and larger challenges in terms of implementation and authority than specific concepts. I discuss the consequences of the distinction between generic and specific concepts for conceptual engineering, the ethics of socially disruptive technology and conceptual ethics.

In some situations in which undesirable collective effects occur, it is very hard, if not impossible, to hold any individual reasonably responsible. Such a situation may be referred to as the problem of many hands. In this paper we investigate how the problem of many hands can best be understood and why, and when, it exactly constitutes a problem. After analyzing climate change as an example, we propose to define the problem of many hands as the occurrence of a gap in the distribution of responsibility that may be considered morally problematic. Whether a gap is morally problematic, we suggest, depends on the reasons why responsibility is distributed. This, in turn, depends, at least in part, on the sense of responsibility employed, a main distinction being that between backward-looking and forward-looking responsibility.

When many people are involved in an activity, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint who is morally responsible for what, a phenomenon known as the ‘problem of many hands.’ This term is increasingly used to describe problems with attributing individual responsibility in collective settings in such diverse areas as public administration, corporate management, law and regulation, technological development and innovation, healthcare, and finance. This volume provides an in-depth philosophical analysis of this problem, examining the notion of moral responsibility and distinguishing between different normative meanings of responsibility, both backward-looking (accountability, blameworthiness, and liability) and forward-looking (obligation, virtue). Drawing on the relevant philosophical literature, the authors develop a coherent conceptualization of the problem of many hands, taking into account the relationship, and possible tension, between individual and collective responsibility. This systematic inquiry into the problem of many hands pertains to discussions about moral responsibility in a variety of applied settings.

One of the main differences between science and engineering is that engineering is not just about better understanding the world but also about changing it. Many engineers believe that such change improves, or at least should improve, the world. In this sense engineering is an inherently morally motivated activity. Changing the world for the better is, however, no easy task and also not one that can be achieved on the basis of engineering knowledge alone. It also requires, among other things, ethical reflection and knowledge. This book aims at contributing to such reflection and knowledge, not just in a theoretical sense but also more practically. This book takes an innovative approach to engineering ethics in several respects. It provides a rather unique approach to ethical decision-making: the ethical cycle. This approach is illustrated by an abundance of cases studies and examples, not only from the US but also from Europe and the rest of the world. The book is also innovative in paying more attention than most traditional introductions in engineering ethics to such topics as ethics in engineering design, the organizational context of engineering, the distribution of responsibility, sustainability, and new technologies such as nanotechnology. There is an increasing attention to ethics in the engineering curricula. Engineers are supposed not only to carry out their work competently and skillfully but also to be aware of the broader ethical and social implications of engineering and to be able to reflect on these. According to the Engineering Criteria 2000 of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) in the US, engineering graduates must have "an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility" and "the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context" (Herkert 1999). This book provides an undergraduate introduction to ethics in engineering and technology. It helps students to acquire the competences mentioned in the ABET criteria or comparable criteria formulated in other countries. More specifically, this book helps students to acquire the following moral competencies

This paper is the introduction to a topical collection on “Changing Values and Energy Systems” that consists of six contributions that examine instances of value change regarding the design, use and operation of energy systems. This introduction discusses the need to consider values in the energy transition. It examines conceptions of value and value change and how values can be addressed in the design of energy systems. Value change in the context of energy and energy systems is a topic that has recently gained traction. Current, and past, energy transitions often focus on a limited range of values, such as sustainability, while leaving other salient values, such as energy democracy, or energy justice, out of the picture. Furthermore, these values become entrenched in the design of these systems: it is hard for stakeholders to address new concerns and values in the use and operation of these systems, leading to further costly transitions and systems’ overhaul. To remedy this issue, value change in the context of energy systems needs to be better understood. We also need to think about further requirements for the governance, institutional and engineering design of energy systems to accommodate future value change. Openness, transparency, adaptiveness, flexibility and modularity emerge as new requirements within the current energy transition that need further exploration and scrutiny.

Technologies shape who we are, how we organize our societies and how we relate to nature. For example, social media challenges democracy; artificial intelligence raises the question of what is unique to humans; and the possibility to create artificial wombs may affect notions of motherhood and birth. Some have suggested that we address global warming by engineering the climate, but how does this impact our responsibility to future generations and our relation to nature? This book shows how technologies can be socially and conceptually disruptive and investigates how to come to terms with this disruptive potential. Four technologies are studied: social media, social robots, climate engineering and artificial wombs. The authors highlight the disruptive potential of these technologies, and the new questions this raises. The book also discusses responses to conceptual disruption, like conceptual engineering, the deliberate revision of concepts.

This paper describes a teaching methodology whereby students can gain practical experience of ethical decision-making in the engineering design process. We first argue for the necessity to teach a ‘practical’ understanding of ethical issues in engineering education along with the usual theoretical or hypothetical approaches. We then show how this practical understanding can be achieved by using a collaborative design game, describing how, for example, the concept of responsibility can be explored from this practical basis. We conclude that the use of games in design education can provide an excellent basis for discussing practical and ethical reasoning during the process of design.

Editors’ Overview: Moral Responsibility in Technology and Engineering Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-11 DOI 10.1007/s11948-011-9285-z Authors Neelke Doorn, Department of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5015, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands Ibo van de Poel, Department of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5015, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands Journal Science and Engineering Ethics Online ISSN 1471-5546 Print ISSN 1353-3452 Journal Volume Volume 18 Journal Issue Volume 18, Number 1.

In this editorial contribution, two issues relevant to the question, what should be at the top of the research agenda for ethics and technology, are identified and discussed. Firstly: can, and do, engineers make a difference to the degree to which technology leads to morally desirable outcomes? What role does professional autonomy play here, and what are its limits? And secondly, what should be the scope of engineers’ responsibility; that is to say, on which issues are they, as engineers, morally obliged to reflect? The research agendas proposed by the authors contributing to this special section, implicitly, give different answers to these questions. We suggest that an explicit discussion of these issues would greatly help in constructing a common research agenda.

In this paper we report on our experiences with using network analysis to discern and analyse ethical issues in research into, and the development of, a new wastewater treatment technology. Using network analysis, we preliminarily interpreted some of our observations in a Group Decision Room session where we invited important stakeholders to think about the risks of this new technology. We show how a network approach is useful for understanding the observations, and suggests some relevant ethical issues. We argue that a network approach is also useful for ethical analysis of issues in other fields of research and development. The abandoning of the overarching rationality assumption, which is central to network approaches, does not have to lead to ethical relativism

The notion of responsible innovation suggests that innovators carry additional responsibilities beyond those commonly suggested. In this paper, we will discuss the meaning of these novel responsibilities focusing on two philosophical problems of attributing such responsibilities to innovators. The first is the allocation of responsibilities to innovators. Innovation is a process that involves a multiplicity of agents and unpredictable, far-reaching causal chains from innovation to social impacts, which creates great uncertainty. A second problem is constituted by possible trade-offs between different kinds of responsibility. It is evident that attributing backward-looking responsibility for product failures diminishes the willingness to learn about such defects and to take forward-looking responsibility. We will argue that these problems can be overcome by elaborating what it is exactly that innovators are responsible for. In this manner, we will distinguish more clearly between holding responsible and taking responsibility. This opens a space for ‘supererogatory’ responsibilities. Second, we will argue that both innovation processes and outcomes can be objects of innovators’ responsibility. Third, we will analyze different kinds of responsibility and show that the functions of their attribution are not necessarily contradictory. Based on this conceptual refinement, we will argue that accountability, responsibility-as-virtue and the willingness to take responsibility are crucial for responsible innovation.

Arriving at a moral judgment is not a straightforward or linear process in which ethical theories are simply applied to cases. Instead it is a process in which the formulation of the moral problem, the formulation of possible “solutions”, and the ethical judging of these solutions go hand in hand. This messy character of moral problems, however, does not rule out a systematic approach. In this article, we describe a systematic approach to problem solving that does justice to the complex nature of moral problems and ethical judgment: the ethical cycle. Our goal is to provide a structured and disciplined method of addressing moral problems, which helps to guide a sound analysis of these problems. We will illustrate the usefulness of this cycle with an example. Further, we will discuss two general issues in applied ethics in relation to the proposed ethical cycle: the role of ethical theories and the place of individual judgment versus collective deliberation.

Courses on ethics and technology have become compulsory for many students at the three Dutch technical universities during the past few years. During this time, teachers have faced a number of didactic problems, which are partly due to a growing number of students. In order to deal with these challenges, teachers in ethics at the three technical universities in the Netherlands — in Delft, Eindhoven and Twente — have developed a web-based computer program called Agora (see www.ethicsandtechnology.com). This program enables students to exercise their ethical understanding and skills extensively. The program makes it possible for students to participate actively in moral reflection and reasoning, and to develop the moral competencies that are needed in their later professional practice. The developers of the program have tried to avoid two traps. Firstly, they rejected, from the outset, a cookbook style of dealing with ethical problems that applied ethics is often taken to be and, secondly, they wanted to design a flexible program that respects the student’s as well as the teacher’s creativity, and that tries to engage students in moral reflection. Agora meets these requirements. The program offers possibilities that extend beyond the requirements that are usually accepted for case-exercises in applied ethics, and that have been realised in several other computer models for teaching ethics. In this article, we describe the main considerations in the development of Agora and the features of the resulting program

In this paper, the so-called V-chip is analysed from the perspective of responsibility. The V-chip is a technological tool used by parents, on a voluntary basis, to prevent children from watching violent television content. Since 1997 in the United States, the V-chip is installed in all new televisions sets of 12″ and larger. We are interested in the question whether and how the introduction of the V-chip affects who is to be considered responsible for children. In the debate, it has been argued that the V-chip reduces parents’ responsibility for children, but it has also been argued that it gives parents a tool to exercise their responsibility. It may appear as though all debaters are discussing the same thing and merely have different opinions. However, we argue that there are at least three notions of responsibility underlying these claims and that these should be kept separate. First, arguments on responsibility may refer to responsibility as task distribution. Second, they can refer to responsibility as control. Finally, a thicker concept of parental responsibility understood as a virtue may be referred to. It becomes clear that whereas task distribution changes to some extent and the possibilities for control are increased, only certain parts of parental responsibility as a virtue are affected. The finding that there appear to be different notions of responsibility involved in a debate that prima facie is about one issue, indicates that discussions on other technologies and how they affect responsibility may suffer from the same conceptual lack of clarity