I.R. van de Poel
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Many guidelines outline ethical principles for designing and deploying emerging digital technologies, like AI, in public services, but there is a gap between such principles and practices. We evaluate whether an educational intervention can enable public sector professionals to close this gap and implement responsible innovation. The educational intervention was based on Design for Values, a responsible innovation approach to integrate values into the design process. We employ a systems perspective to evaluate the effects of the intervention. While the educational intervention helps foster techno-moral virtues and enhance accountability, its success depends on the broader organizational context. Future research should explore the long-term embedding of Design for Values in various settings, using comparative and longitudinal methods to understand better the factors that influence its effectiveness.
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.
Introduction to Topical Collection
Changing Values and Energy Systems
Design for Values is an approach that aims at integrating moral values pro-actively in the design of new technology. While this approach originates from outside the field of Technology Assessment (TA), it may now be seen as part of it. This handbook contribution first discusses the emergence, history and some of the theoretical backgrounds of Design for Values. It then describes in more detail how a typical Design for Values process would look like paying attention to: 1) stakeholder analysis and value identification; 2) conceptualizing and specifying values, 3) identifying and dealing with value conflicts, 4) prototyping and testing to validate whether the design indeed embodies the relevant values and 5) ongoing-monitoring for unexpected side-effects and value change, possibly leading to adaptations in the design. Attention is also paid to methods for, and applications of Design for Values, and some of the main limitations and criticism of the approach.
Transforming towards inclusion-by-design
Information system design principles shaping data-driven financial inclusiveness
Digitalization and datafication of financial systems result in more efficiency, but might also result in the exclusions of certain groups. Governments are looking for ways to increase inclusions and leave no one behind. For this, they must govern an organizational ecosystem of public and private parties. We derive value-based requirements through a systematic research methodology and iteratively refine design principles for achieving inclusivity goals. This refinement process is enriched by interviews with field experts, leading to the formulation of key Design principles: the essential role of inclusive metrics, leveraging alternative data sources, ensuring transparency in loan processes and the ability for decision contestation, providing tailored credit solutions, and maintaining long-term system sustainability. The government's role is to ensure a level playing field where all parties have equal access to the data. Following the principles ensures that exclusion and discrimination become visible and can be avoided. This study underscores the necessity for system-level transformations, inclusion-by-design, and advocacy for a new system design complemented by regulatory updates, new data integration, inclusive AI, and organizational collaborative shifts. These principles can also be used in different data-driven governance situations.
Understanding engineering ethics in countries
Towards an analytical framework
In recent decades, distinct national approaches to engineering ethics have evolved, each tailored to its unique contextual factors. These contextual disparities make it unfeasible to transfer one country's engineering ethics approach directly into another. This calls for a compelling need to enhance our comprehension of engineering ethics within specific national contexts. This paper introduces a novel conceptual framework for national engineering ethics (NEE), inspired by Elinor Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. The NEE framework categorises engineering ethics activities into three core pillars: research, education, and professional behaviour. This framework facilitates a comprehensive analysis of these activities across three levels—operational, organisational, and governmental. The proposed framework offers a valuable resource for scholars seeking a deeper understanding of engineering ethics within specific national boundaries, enabling structured reporting and analysis. It serves as a critical step towards achieving mutual understanding, allowing for cross-national comparisons and the exchange of best practices. Additionally, it provides a structured platform for policymakers and developers to devise strategies for implementing engineering ethics at the national level.
Sustainable design of multiscale CO2 electrolysis
A value sensitive design-based approach
The present study utilizes a value sensitive design (VSD) inspired approach to contribute to the design and implementation of CO2 electrolysis (CO2E) within the framework of carbon capture and utilization (CCU) technologies, which convert CO2 into valuable products. The focus of this study is on a low technology readiness level (TRL) technology, yet likely relevant to reach climate neutrality by 2050. We examine the perspectives of stakeholders along the supply chain and proactively identify relevant sustainability-related values and potential conflicts among them. Thus the current work highlights the importance of considering a broad range of stakeholders and their values in the early stages of technological design. The research approach is consisting of various steps inspired by value sensitive design (VSD): identifying relevant values and norms associated with CO2 electrolysis through literature analysis, conducting qualitative interviews with relevant stakeholders to triangulate the results. Subsequently, a value-based alignment network analysis was employed to examine shared values that are central for the design of the technology. The findings indicate that sustainability-related values such as concern for nature, climate change mitigation, the use of renewable energy, critical raw materials, cost, and return on investment, albeit with potential differences in interpretation, are increasingly becoming central considerations in the decision-making processes of individuals, businesses, and governments alike. Based on these findings, specific aspects of technology design, namely scale, location, integration, and synthesized product, that can impact a wide range of identified values, are discussed.
Not a Good Fix
Constitutivism on Value Change and Disagreement
Technologies have all kinds of impacts on the environment, on human behavior, on our society and on what we believe and value. But some technologies are not just impactful, they are also socially disruptive: they challenge existing institutions, social practices, beliefs and conceptual categories. Here we are particularly interested in technologies that disrupt existing concepts, for example because they lead to profound uncertainty about how to classify matters. Is a humanoid robot - which looks and even acts like a human - to be classified as a person or is it just an inert machine? Conceptual disruption occurs when the meaning of concepts is challenged, and such challenges may potentially lead to a revision of concepts. We illustrate how technologies can be conceptually disruptive through a range of examples, and we argue for an intercultural outlook in studying these socially disruptive technologies and conceptual disruption. Such an outlook is needed to avoid a Western bias in labeling technologies socially or conceptually disruptive, as this outlook takes inspiration from a broad range of philosophical traditions.