Identifying and addressing ethical challenges is a critical step to ensuring that the whole of society can benefit from innovation. The EU-funded TechEthos project led by AIT offers guidance for the development and deployment of critical new technologies. The EU CORDIS website published the final project results in a brief article. According to the most recent “CORDIS Results Pack on ethics and integrity in research”, TechEthos is one of eight highlighted projects advancing “World-leading ethical practices".
While emerging technologies often bring important social, economic and environmental benefits, their development and use can also raise significant ethical concerns and questions. What if it leads to widespread job losses and the need to reskill workers, or creates new data breaches and vulnerabilities for cybercriminals to exploit?
To address these concerns, prioritising ethics and societal values in the design, development and deployment of new technologies is a critical consideration. The TechEthos project sought to provide guidance on how this can be achieved.
For the first six months, the project team analysed and identified new and emerging technologies with high economic and ethical relevance. It ended up focusing on three areas of innovation that interact with the planet, with the digital world, and with the body. The first technology of focus was climate engineering, a second area was extended reality and finally the team looked at the ethical considerations surrounding neurotechnologies.
The project team next examined issues such as societal awareness levels and key regulatory issues. Existing guidelines were analysed in order to identify gaps and put forward suggestions, while a major emphasis was placed on citizen interaction. The ethical, legal and societal analyses conducted on the three technologies are accessible on the project website, along with fact sheets summarising the findings.
CORDIS website