Workshop - The Pivot Moment in Ethical Decision-Making
This November, we partnered with London School and Economics and Political Science to deliver a workshop on ethical decision making.
LSE's research into the ethical decision-making in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) as part of VIRT-EU (Values and Ethics in Innovation for Responsible Technology in EUrope) has revealed that there are a range of ethical frameworks and ethical toolkits available to technology developers but these rarely align with the economic and sectoral pressures small organisations and companies face.
This workshop was about identifying key ethical decision-making moments in technology design and business development. It involves a fictitious immersion in the world of being part of a technology start-up. First, together with the participants we developed an idea for a start-up and then based on distinct job roles, we took important decisions for our company as we went through different investment rounds, prototyping, product development, testing and so on. Throughout the decision-making process, we explored ways of thinking about ethics and technology beyond consequentialist and utilitarian approaches and discussed themes such as sustainability, social good, transparency, usability and openness. In doing so, we also looked at what ‘conflict’ entails in this space and how differences in ethical approaches and business priorities might come to be negotiated.
The workshop was open to everyone with an interest in emerging technologies and no prior knowledge of ethics is necessary. This workshop is funded by the University of Glasgow, Human Data Interaction (HDI) Funding, award number 174544, PIs: Funda Ustek-Spilda and Alison Powell.
Our facilitators were:
Funda Ustek-Spilda is a postdoctoral researcher at The London School of Economics, Department of Media and Communications. She is currently working on a project titled Virt-EU: Values and Ethics in Innovation for Responsible Technology in Europe which aims to understand how European IoT innovators and developers make ethically consequential decisions in their work. In her previous research role at Goldsmiths, University of London, she studied the making of statistics in Europe for hard-to-count populations, such as refugees, migrants and the homeless and the ethical implications of numbers for these populations. She obtained her D.Phil from the University of Oxford in Sociology (2015) and M.Sc in Comparative Social Policy (2010). She is interested in tech for good, responsible tech and ethics.
Alison Powell is Assistant Professor in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Programme Director of the MSc in Data & Society. Her research examines how people’s values influence the way technology is built. Alison spends time with two projects: VIRT-EU, a Horizon 2020 project examining ethics in practice among Internet of Things developer communities where she is co-principal investigator, and Understanding Automated Decisions, which explores how to design services to explain how algorithms work, where she is principal investigator. Her book on citizenship in smart cities will be published in early 2020 by Yale University Press.
Many thanks to our refreshments sponsor Tenzing for keeping us energised throughout the morning!
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This blog was written by Marija Butkovic, Digital Marketing and PR strategist, founder and CEO of Women of Wearables. She regularly writes and speaks on topics of wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT, entrepreneurship and diversity. Visit marijabutkovic.co.uk or follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic @Women_Wearables.