Improving Technology Through Ethics

This book deals with the ethics of technology and addresses specific ethical problems related to some emerging technologies, mainly in the field of computer science (from machine learning models to extracting value from data to humanrobot interaction). The contributions are authored mainly by scholars in ICT and other engineering fields who reflect on ethical and societal issues emerging from their own research activity. Thus, rather uniquely, the work overcomes the traditional divide between pure ethical theory that disregards what practitioners do and mere R&D practice that ignores what theorists conceptualize. Conversely, the reader is enabled to understand what ethics means when it is actually put into work by engineering researchers. The book arises from a joint program between MIT and Politecnico di Milano aimed at training early career researchers in addressing the ethical issues of technology and critically reflecting on the social impacts of the emerging, and even disruptive, technologies they are currently developing through their novel research. Overall, it aims at spreading the task of developing technologies that, from the beginning, are designed to be responsible for human life, society, and nature.

Inhalt
Introduction: What Improving Technology through Ethics Means.- An Ethnographer Among the Engineers: Doing STS at a Technical University.- Future Medicine: Towards a More Conscious and Ethical Communication.- Data Quality, Data Diversity and Data Provenance: An Ethical Perspective.- Ethics-aware Application of Digital Technologies in the Construction Industry.- Drawing Together: Technology Development for Public Service.- Addressing Big Data Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa for Responsible AI Development.- Social and Technological Innovation: Cross-Fertilization Needed.