Recents debates within energy ethics have focused on the framework of energy justice. The justice framework is often linked to Western ethical ideas, especially the human rights framework and the ideas of Western individualism. The presentation ongoing debate between human rights and the rights of nature. The analysis highlights the frequent association of human rights with social contract theories, identifying both the strengths and limitations of contractualist individualism.

The emerging technoscience of quantum technology (QT) will have a considerable impact on society. However, a broader public dialogue on societal impact and possible ethical issues of QT is currently lacking. This may relate to the fact that first, existing approaches to public engagement such as Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) often focus upon reasoning and argumentation, and second, that outreach is usually developed in a top-down setting. How could we encourage a public dialogue?

It is common knowledge that Western philosophy underpins artificial intelligence (AI) ethics studies. This is not surprising since there are few known AI experts in Africa, and by extension, few African researchers contributing to AI ethics (Eke et al., 2023). That notwithstanding, the concept of recognitional justice suggests that the current notions of AI ethics, sustainable AI, and technology in general, are not satisfactory to resolving ethical and political issues if they do not include the local and contextual philosophies of the Global South.

Advanced neurotechnology applications record brain signals, process them, and use the data output to control software or hardware, make predictions about brain activity more generally, or as input for machine learning applications. Especially as it converges with artificial intelligence, neurotechnology is increasingly developing along lines aiming to produce ‘mind reading’ applications (e.g. Tang et al., 2023). Neuroethical responses to these developments often centre on assessing the veracity of mind reading claims (e.g.

In recent years the role of public values have gained significant importance, both in technology assessment and as guidelines for government policy of technology (for one example see the value-driven approach to digitalization of the Dutch government, final draft November 2022). A practical explanation for the uptake of public values is that while they carry normative weight, this weight can be flexibly applied depending on context and also depending on possible trade-offs between the values at stake.

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, to whom it occurred to say this is mine, and found people sufficiently simple to believe him was the true founder of civil society.” This iconic saying of Jean-Jacques Rousseau does not address the foundation of civil society as a celebrated event in the speculative history of the humankind. For Rousseau, it is rather a catastrophic turn in that it has sown the seeds of inequality among human beings. The question whether the commons that came to be partitioned among humans led to a better societal life remains unresolved.

This paper focuses on robotic art practices as a complementary perspective to ongoing discussions in ethics and philosophy of technology on the potentially disruptive impacts of emerging technologies such as social robots and AI. Art, through its ability to foster alternative perspectives and moral reflections, provides a unique approach to analyzing the design, use, and social meaning or implications of new technologies such as robots, thus enabling speculative theorization that extends beyond the dominant narratives emerging from robotics research and development.

Artistic approaches and performative explorations enable innovative ways to design human-robot interactions (HRI) by providing new perspectives and embodied understandings of how humans relate to technology (Gemeinboeck, 2021). We understand dance as an inherently dynamic and interactive process of alignment and, therefore, chose an explorative approach that builds on performative experiments between human performers and a social robot. Our investigations aim to understand how both parties enact their interwovenness in improvisational situations and what interdependencies emerge.

This paper presentation seeks to understand how feminist standpoint theory can complement the concept of explainability in AI, and how AI’s use could be repurposed for inclusive political aims. Explainability refers to the possibility of AI systems to provide clear, understandable explanations for its actions and decisions in order to counter black box effects, and decrease potential risks of negative biases’ creation towards minorities.

The development of language technologies – e.g. machine translation and LLM-powered AI chatbots – is significantly impacting various forms of cognitive labour, as well as the institutions and business practices that support and exploit them. Arguably, language technologies are also conceptually disruptive in challenging how we characterise and understand these forms of cognitive labour, the capacities and expertise involved.

In Europe and the United States, cryo-preservation of the dead is increasingly common. The aim of cryonics techniques is to preserve the body in the hope that it will one day be possible to repair the damage that led to death. If successful, cryo-preservation and similar biostasis technologies may challenge the conceptualization of death as something that is irreversible.

The main problem that the paper presentation will concentrate on concerns the place of ethics in the current European Union (EU) efforts to steer the hectically advancing realm of science and technology (S&T) towards breakthrough and disruptive innovation. It will attempt to reveal how the change in the EU research and innovation (R&I) policy impacts the role of ethics in the overall governance of the sector.

In 2017 Partridge et al. announced the first successful animal trial with an artificial placenta, a technology meant to improve the survival and quality of life of preterm infants. The first in-human trial is expected in the next 2-5 years. This trial will pose notable challenges. For example, how do we predict risk of a trial with an innovative and potentially disruptive technology and how do protect participants? Further, as transfer in AP requires a C-section, the pregnant person is also a participant. How do we balance the interests of both participants?

The phrase "the impact of AI on society" has almost become a platitude in debates on strategies for channeling this perceived impact, implicitly presenting us with an insignificant model of cause and dramatic effects. The phrase is taken as an unquestioned premise for public, academic and governmental discussions that work towards practicable solutions, such as ethical guidelines and regulations. But do solutions not hinge on an explicit and precise understanding of problems? How exactly does the impact of AI on society come about?

Consciousness, emotion, or intention are central concepts in discussing artificial moral agents (AMA). We want to add to this debate and, for two reasons, argue to explore another concept: attention.

This paper proposes a new normative framework to think about Big Tech reform. Focusing on the case of digital communication, I argue that rethinking the corporate purpose of social media companies is a distinctive entry point to the debate on how to render the powers of tech corporations democratically legitimate. I contend that we need to strive for a reform that redefines the corporate purpose of social media companies. In this view, their purpose should be to create and maintain a free, egalitarian, and democratic public sphere rather than profit seeking.

Philosophical literature on conceptual engineering has identified different kinds of ‘conceptual defects’. For instance, a defect concept may prevent the realization of moral and political values, or it may hinder the acquisition of knowledge and theoretical progress (Cappelen en Plunkett 2020). There are different ‘ameliorative strategies’ to respond to these defects, such as conceptual elimination, conceptual replacement, and conceptual modification.

This paper presents a reflective case study in conceptual engineering by considering whether and how the concept of ‘control’ might need revision My primary aim is not to propose a new concept of ‘control but rather to learn about (the process of) conceptual engineering.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used in reproductive medicine and in various digital applications on sexual and reproductive health. Recently, these developments have sparked various ethical analyses (Afnan et al. 2021; Coghlan et al. 2023; Rolges et al. 2023; Tamir 2023). Not surprisingly, many of the ethical problems of AI—such as its explanability deficits or the existence of biases—are also present in these AI tools in the service of procreative purposes. However, other issues have been less explored.

Digital platforms increasingly mediate social, economic, and other forms of human interactions, which puts them in a position to influence the power dynamics and moral values that shape these interactions. This paper focuses on the platform and sharing economy – an economic model, in which digital platforms facilitate social and economic interactions. Its two central models, mainstream and cooperative platforms, offer similar applications and services. However, they fundamentally differ in aspects such as ownership and governance structures, economic models, and technical designs.

In this talk I discuss how a capabilities approach (CA) can inform the deployment of carbon removal techniques (CDR) within climate mitigation projects as well as the broader sustainable development context. Specifically, CDR raises ethical concerns, especially issues of justice. I argue that the CA can offer a more accurate account of people’s quality of life in CDR implementation, expanding the discussion beyond the traditional distributive justice paradigm. Moreover, the CA can integrate a focus on recognition of human as well as non-human entities affected by CDR deployment.

When discussing transformations to sustainability, one is brought to employ a variety of foresight methods to create different versions of the future worth striving for. In part, these are anchored in data, trends, and realities of today. However, these also require going beyond trends, in other words, beyond the descriptive, towards the normative. This, however, is fraught with uncertainty, in particular, normative ambiguity, i.e. the lack of certainty on norms and values in the future. Issues of techno-moral change, or value change are easier to describe when looking back at history.

Socially disruptive technologies impact people differently. One’s social position, for example, may play a significant role in the way a disruptive technology has either positive or negative impact on one’s abilities. In this talk, I propose thinking in terms of capabilities as a metric for the moral assessment of equality of impact of socially disruptive technology on people’s capabilities.

This presentation is part of the panel Capabilities and transdisciplinarity in the ethics of technology

This workshop aimed to collect shared dilemmas, struggles and questions while operationalizing the CA in individual research. By discovering common experiences within different disciplines and sketching the outlines for generalised operational approaches, we aim to arrive at a shared methodology that can be useful across various disciplines aiming to develop technologies and related policies just and inclusively. Cases used for input include urban planning, global value chains and health technologies.

In recent years, there has been an increasing number of calls for more inclusive local participation in decision-making on local energy infrastructures and projects. This also goes for energy technologies in the Netherlands, as the Dutch Climate policy includes a mandate for municipalities to organise participation in local energy projects. Including stakeholders (instead of shareholders) and their values is important for instrumental and intrinsic reasons. Still, there are important worries concerning local participation in decision-making in energy infrastructures.

Over the past two decades, citizen participation has emerged as a central component in governing energy transitions. The conceptualization of the roles citizens can and should play in these transitions has been defined through the concept of energy citizenship. However, since its first explication in 2007, the concept developed into a very narrow set of roles for citizen in energy transitions.

There is an increasing awareness that normative issues pervade the energy transition, testified by the popularity of concepts like ‘energy justice’ and the ‘just transition’. In spite of this awareness, experts and practitioners have difficulty relating to the moral implications of their work that are relatively new to them, for three reasons. First, there is a widely held conviction that moral issues are subjective expressions of preference and, as such, do not fit the objective outlook associated with professional expertise.