2400094 – Ethik der IT
Self-driving cars, care robots, apps, software for recruitment procedures, or for use in complex medical diagnostic processes such as MRI scans — it has long been clear that many new technologies in the field of informatics bring both benefits and risks. Today, almost all of us are personally affected by phishing emails and spam, and the adverse effects of social media, such as loneliness and the associated mental illnesses, are widely known. A much greater scope becomes apparent when considering the possibilities of modern surveillance systems, facial recognition technologies, and big data algorithms in socio-global contexts, where they can, as seen in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, undermine political elections and even entire political systems.
This ambivalence of new technologies also raises the question of responsibility for the consequences associated with them. It would certainly be too simplistic to place the responsibility solely on individual computer scientists; after all, this is a broader societal issue involving, for example, political actors and companies, a situation made even more complex by the often global scale of cooperative projects in the IT sector. However, computer scientists are often the first to confront ethical problems. In order to develop one’s own position in this context, it is important to learn how to navigate confidently, through argumentation, the gray areas typical of ethical questions (where there is often no clear right or wrong).
The aim of this lecture series is to contribute to this effort by discussing fundamental and application-oriented ethical questions in informatics together with relevant experts. An open discourse is particularly important to us, one in which all arguments surrounding often controversial topics can be heard and evaluated.