The ‘Guidance Ethics Approach’ offers concrete ethical guidance for the design, implementation and use of technologies It was developed with the working group on Ethics and Digitalization of ECP | Platform for the Information Society. The approach has three distinct characteristics:
- Ethics from within:
Rather than focusing on external ‘assessment’ of technologies, it aims at ethical ‘accompaniment’ of their design, embedding, and use. - Bottom-up ethics:
Instead of focusing on the top-down formulation of principles and guidelines, it enables professionals, stakeholders and citizens to identify the values that are at stake in relation to a specific technology. - Positive ethics:
Rather than focusing on demarcating what we do not want, it aims to shape the conditions for what we do want.
Oriented on identifying concrete options for action, the Guidance Ethics Approach intends to offer a widely applicable framework for the responsible design, implementation and use of technologies.
You can download the (free) publication here.
An inlay summarising the steps to be taken in the approach can be found here.
Peter-Paul Verbeek 