Digital ethics

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Digital Ethics or data ethics , partly algorithms ethics , deals as a branch of ethics and practical philosophy with the moral standard ratios required for digitization and Big Data are to apply. Much discussed topics are artificial intelligence and algorithms , surveillance and privacy , the relationship between humans and machines and the role of social media in a deliberative democracy .

She has overlap with other areas of applied ethics such as the robot ethics , the ethics of technology , information ethics , the media ethics , the hacker ethic and medical ethics .

definition

Digital ethics is a sub-category of information ethics and partly a continuation of approaches of media ethics . Digital ethics examines how digital media and technologies are used by individuals, organizations and in social contexts and which solutions can be negotiated to resolve problems and conflicts that arise. As with information ethics, the boundaries to technology ethics are fluid. Information ethics encompasses ethical questions “of information and communication including, but not exclusively, digital media.” The distinction between information ethics and media ethics itself is not “clear-cut”. Technology ethics, in turn, has “lines of contact” with technology assessment .

The term “digital ethics” has been used by Rafael Capurro since 2009 .

According to the Federal Association for the Digital Economy , digital ethics translates "existing ethical standards for a digitally shaped society." Christoph Asmuth explains that digital ethics are not new, "just ethics, [...] limited to specific problems in today's digital world ." The D21 initiative and the Data Protection Foundation name the "datafication of the world", "algorithmic decision-making processes", "shifting responsibility between man and machine", "personalizing online services", "shortened communication" and "the network never forgets" as individual ethical aspects of the digital change. The demand for a “digital ethics” or an “ethics of digitization” has already been expressed on various occasions. a. 2018 by the incumbent Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier .

Questions

The central themes of the Digital Ethics are the economization and the digital transformation of the workplace , protection of privacy and data protection . It is also discussed which values ​​will change as a result of digitization. The focus is particularly on values ​​such as privacy and the autonomy of individuals. In addition, typical phenomena of the digitized age are examined and criticized from an ethical perspective. These include in particular the cyberbullying that Doxxing or hacking . Furthermore, digital ethics is related to the development of artificial intelligence and the increasing importance of robotics .

There are also points of contact with machine ethics , the possibilities of moral machines and the question of whether machines are capable of moral behavior. A concrete example in which digital ethics is investigating new possibilities for human action through the changed human-technology interaction is the question of responsibility in autonomous driving . Investigated approaches to ethical technology design are methods such as ethics by design , value sensitive design and their legally binding application in data protection by design.

Conflict situations

The following conflict situations are dealt with by digital ethics:

  • Use of algorithmic decision-making systems in the private sector (e.g. lending, selection of job applications, promotions) and in the state sector (e.g. recognizing the accent of an asylum seeker, assessing the risk of offenders recidivism in court, admission procedures to universities)
  • Use of diagnostic procedures based on artificial intelligence in medicine
  • Liability for damage caused by a system (for example, failure of a medical diagnostic system or failure of an autonomous vehicle)
  • moral obligation to provide personal health data for medical research ("data donation " analogous to organ donation )
  • Use of care robots
  • Use of health data when setting tariffs for health insurance
  • Freedom to drive (e.g. exceeding the speed limit) in the case of autonomous vehicles
  • Dilemma situations with autonomous vehicles
  • Use of data-based models and automated face recognition in predictive police work
  • Influence of filter bubbles and fake news in social media on freedom of expression and democracy
  • Hate speech on social media
  • Influence of automation and robotics on human work

Organizations

Bodies

Numerous bodies deal with digital ethics:

research

There are institutes for research into digital ethics at various universities, such as:

economy

Numerous companies have issued their own codes and guidelines for the ethical use of artificial intelligence, including Google , SAP and Deutsche Telekom .

Others

The Bertelsmann Stiftung has been dealing with the social consequences of algorithmic decision-making since 2017, including as a sponsor of the AlgorithmWatch initiative and in collaboration with iRights.lab in the Algo.Rules project . Among other things, she carried out a survey in which almost three quarters of Germans spoke out in favor of a ban on decisions made by algorithms alone. Europeans know little about algorithms. At the same time, representatives of the foundation noted in the debate about artificial intelligence that humans and machines are not hostile to one another. But algorithms need rules.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Digital ethics. Retrieved March 6, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Digital ethics. Retrieved March 6, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Heesen, Jessica (ed.): Handbook of media and information ethics . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2016, p. 1 , doi : 10.1007 / 987-3-476-05394-7_1 .
  4. ↑ Armin Grunwald: The concept of action in technology philosophy and technology ethics . No. March 12 , 2009, ISSN  1612-3034 , p. 7 ( widerstreit-sachunterricht.de [PDF]).
  5. ↑ Digitization as an ethical challenge. Interview with Rafael Capurro . In: Philipp Otto, Eike Gräf (Eds.): 3TH1CS. The ethics of the digital age . iRights Media, 2017.
  6. ↑ Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft: Humans, Morals, Machines - Digital Ethics, Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved March 5, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Christoph Asmuth: Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft (BVDW) eV Accessed on March 5, 2019 .
  8. ^ Initiative D21 and Data Protection Foundation: Basics of digital ethics - A normative orientation in the networked world. Retrieved March 5, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Hildebrandt, Alexandra: Why we need digital ethics. Interview with Tobias Loitsch. In: Blog on huffingtonpost.de . November 18, 2017, accessed March 6, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Christoph David Piorkowski: Think clearly in the indignant democracy. In: Der Tagesspiegel. June 26, 2018, accessed March 6, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Julia Giertz, Oliver Bünte: Expert: "We are completely naked" - digital ethics as a compass of values. July 4, 2018, accessed March 6, 2019 .
  12. ↑ www.bundespraesident.de: Der Bundespräsident / Reden / 21st Ordinary Federal Congress of the DGB. Retrieved March 5, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Spiekermann, Sarah: Digital Ethics . 2019 (publisher's announcement).
  14. ↑ Michael Friedwald (Ed.): Privacy and self-determined life in the digital world. Interdisciplinary perspectives on current data protection challenges. Springer, 2018 ( springer.com ).
  15. ↑ http://maschinenethik.net. Retrieved March 6, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Moral Machine. Retrieved March 6, 2019 .
  17. ↑ Cathrin Misselhorn: Fundamentals of machine ethics . Reclam, 2018.
  18. ^ Cathrin Misselhorn: Machine ethics and 'Artificial Morality'. Can and should machines act morally? February 2, 2018, accessed March 6, 2019 .
  19. ↑ a b Report of the Ethics Committee on automated and networked driving. June 20, 2017, p. 11 , accessed March 6, 2019 .
  20. ↑ VSD: home. Retrieved March 6, 2019 .
  21. ↑ General Data Protection Regulation. Article 25. In: EUR-Lex. Publication Office of the European Union, accessed March 1, 2019 .
  22. ↑ Marc Etzold: After the hate speech debate: Facebook founds an ethics council. Retrieved March 5, 2019 .
  23. ↑ Algorithmenethik - for algorithmic decision-making that serves humankind. Retrieved March 5, 2019 .
  24. ↑ Ethical aspects in norming and standardization for AI , DIN.ONE, accessed on March 5, 2020
  25. ↑ Welcome to the Center for Digital Ethics & Policy | Center for Digital Ethics & Policy. Retrieved March 6, 2019 .
  26. ^ Digital Ethics Lab. Oxford Internet Institute, accessed October 29, 2019 (UK English).
  27. ↑ https://www.digitale-ethik.de/. Retrieved March 6, 2019 .
  28. ^ AI at Google: our principles. June 7, 2018, accessed March 5, 2019 .
  29. ↑ SAP defines ethical guidelines for dealing with AI. September 18, 2018, accessed March 5, 2019 .
  30. ↑ SAP defines ethical guidelines for dealing with AI. September 18, 2018, accessed March 5, 2019 .
  31. ↑ Karl Gaulhofer: How humans tame machines . In: The press . September 22, 2018, p. 16 .
  32. ↑ Patrick Beuth: Algorithmen: Having a say in the automation of the world. In: Zeit Online. December 7, 2017, accessed May 20, 2019 .
  33. ↑ Algo.Rules: Rules for the design of algorithmic systems. (PDF) iRights.Lab, Bertelsmann Stiftung, March 7, 2019, accessed on May 20, 2019 .
  34. ↑ Torsten Riecke, Anna Gauto, Christof Kerkmann, Sebastian Matthes: Artificial Intelligence: The Power of Algorithms . In: Handelsblatt . August 16, 2018.
  35. ↑ Viktoria Grzymek, Michael Puntschuh: What Europe knows and thinks about algorithms. Results of a representative population survey. Bertelsmann Stiftung, Gütersloh 2019, doi : 10.11586 / 2019006 ( bertelsmann-stiftung.de [PDF; accessed on May 20, 2019]).
  36. ↑ Jörg Dräger : Extended Intelligence . In: Handelsblatt . April 5, 2019, p. 64 (comment).
  37. ↑ Dana Heide: Artificial Intelligence: Rules for the use of algorithms presented. In: Handelsblatt. April 8, 2019, accessed May 20, 2019 .