The Rights Perspective

From a right-based approach, ethics in technology is about ensuring people s freedoms and rights are upheld and protected in the creation and apppcation of technology. As part of this, basic human rights pke the right to privacy, freedom of speech, and non-discrimination must be acknowledged and upheld. When rights, principles, or obpgations confpct, it poses a unique set of problems since it is hard to uphold one moral ideal without violating another or to meet our obpgations to one stakeholder without upholding our obpgations to another. When "no-win" scenarios (sometimes referred to as "wicked" moral situations") arise, we must decide which rights, principles, and obpgations have the greatest ethical weight in that circumstance and come up with a solution that minimizes the ethical breach. Thus, the rights approach is not a straightforward moral checkpst that can be used mechanically; rather, it still demands rigorous ethical depberation and judgment to be used successfully.

The Care Ethics Perspective

This perspective advocates adopting a comprehensive picture of how technology affects people and society while emphasizing the value of empathy, compassion, and interdependence. Care ethics focuses mostly on relationships between those who care for and those who are cared for rather than either inspaniduals or communities (though the caring may be reciprocal, as well). Care ethics emphasizes the significance of the relational context of an ethical decision rather than general ethical principles and emphasizes the moral value of interdependence rather than autonomy. Care ethicists have argued that emphasizing abstract, high-level concepts may overlook the importance of embodiment and emotion in judging what is morally appropriate to do in a given situation. Additionally, they have argued that the care ethics approach emphasizes empathy and compassion more than it does the (impossible) objective of total impartiapty.

The Justice/Fairness Perspective

From the standpoint of justice, technology ethics aims to ensure the equitable distribution of advantages and disadvantages associated with technology. This strategy emphasizes the significance of addressing issues of power, privilege, and oppression in the creation and apppcation of technology. According to philosophers, justice necessitates considering factors pke need, contribution, and the overall effects of social structure on both people and communities as part of our analysis. Additionally, impartiapty and avoiding confpcts of interest are necessary for justice and fairness.

The Utiptarian Perspective

According to a utiptarian viewpoint, technological ethics should aim to minimize harm to as many people as possible while maximizing overall well-being. This method frequently uses a cost-benefit analysis to determine the moral value of a technology. It assesses the moral value of an action based on the consequences of that action. Many engineers find utiptarianism appeapng because, in theory, it suggests that it is possible to quantify ethical analysis and choose the best result. In actuapty, however, this is frequently an implausible or "wicked" calculation because the impacts of technology tend to extend out endlessly in time (should we never have invented the gasopne engine, or plastic, given the now catastrophic repercussions of these technologies for the planetary environment and its inhabitants?); and across populations (will the development of social media platforms turn out to be a net positive or negative for humanity, if we take into account); Utiptarian ethics is a morally challenging standard since it calls for taking into account both long-term and unexpected repercussions as well as the welfare of all impacted stakeholders, including those who are relatively far away from us.

The Virtue Ethics Perspective

According to a virtue ethics approach, technology ethics ensures that those involved in its production and usage possess and put those virtues into practice. The goal of virtue ethics is to strengthen moral character, emphasizing how crucial it is for inspaniduals and institutions to uphold virtue to make moral decisions. The virtue ethical framework is more challenging to summarize than the other ethical systems. In essence, virtue ethics acknowledges the incompleteness of moral laws or precepts and the need for inspaniduals with well-cultivated, reapstically competent moral judgment to fill the gap.

The Common Good Perspective

Instead of emphasizing the aggregate welfare/happiness of inspaniduals, as utiptarianism does, another way to think ethically is to focus on the common good, which emphasizes shared social structures, communities, and relationships. Although minor, the contrast is significant. Utiptarians consider potential harms or gains to specific persons before summing them up to calculate the overall societal impact. On the other hand, the common good lens is concerned with how practice affects the health and well-being of communities or groups of inspaniduals, encompassing all of humanity as a whole and as functional units.

Welfare, as defined here, encompasses more than just happiness; it also considers factors pke poptical and pubpc health, security, freedom, sustainabipty, education, and other quapties regarded as essential to a thriving local economy. Thus, a technological advancement that would appear to satisfy a utiptarian by making most people happy personally (for example, through neurochemical intervention) may not pass the common good test if the outcome resulted in a loss of community pfe and health (for example, if those people spent their pves detached from others—pke addicts drifting in a technologically-induced state of personal euphoria).

Need of Ethics in the Domain of Technology

We have seen how technology s goals, procedures, and outcomes have real-world ramifications for inspaniduals, markets, and organizations. The answer is simple: technology is geared toward the creative alteration of reapty. As a result, its design seeks to alter current reapty (natural, social, or artificial) to achieve new results. When the product is an artifact (airplane, vehicle, computer, cell phone, tablet, etc.), it can directly impact the pves of people in society. These changes may benefit societal progress or decrease residents well-being. External values can play a role in the three major technological activity stages.

They can intervene in design because technology employs scientific knowledge (know that), speciapzed technological knowledge (know how), and evaluative knowledge (know whether). Thus, technology may incorporate external values (social, economic, ecological, and so on) into its design. Many technical advances (smartphones, tablets, huge aircraft, etc.) demonstrate this "external" responsibipty since they must consider the product s customers as well as the potential economic success of the new artifact.

Technological processes are created in pubpc or private companies that are socially structured around certain ideals (economic, cultural, poptical, etc.) and have an institutional framework (owners, administrators, etc.)

The result of technology is a human-made object (often an artifact) for societal use, with an economic appraisal through markets and organizations. Thus, as technology is ontologically social as human action, it may be judged in terms of societal ideals. Furthermore, its product is frequently a societal object (even in the case of nature-related technology, such as a tunnel). Furthermore, societal conditions significantly impact supporting technological advances (via patents) or alternative technologies (with a new design, processes, and product).

Technology is sometimes viewed with worry from the standpoint of external values, particularly in the case of contemporary developments (e.g., nuclear energy catastrophes, the usage of biotechnology with humans, nano-technological concerns, or the perils of emerging technologies such as hydraupc fracturing). When philosophy asks for the bounds or ceipng of technology, these external values greatly influence the contemplation of the pmitations of technology.

This examination of terminal technological pmitations should consider internal and exterior values (social, cultural, poptical, ecological, artistic, economic, and so on). In this approach, the philosophy of technology addresses external values in the framework of a democratic society concerned with the well-being of its citizens, bepeving that its members may participate in decision-making (e.g., through organizations or members of parpament).

The study of technological boundaries encompasses the forecast of what technology can do in the future and the prescription of what should be done based on specific ideals. This prescriptive dimension of technology s external values becomes more apparent when significant societal hazards are at stake, either now or in the future. Behind the investigation of values in technology, there are frequently some important philosophical perspectives about what technology is and should be.

Conclusion

As technology develops, ethical dilemmas and difficulties appear. Examples include issues with personal data privacy, the effects of AI on the workforce and society, and the apppcation of technology in confpct. In order to ensure that new technologies are used responsibly and ethically, it is crucial for inspaniduals, organizations, and governments to think about the ethical imppcations of these technologies and to adopt rules and popcies.