Big data ethics, machine ethics or information ethics? Navigating the maze of applied ethics in IT

TL;DR

This paper clarifies the distinctions among various branches of applied ethics in IT, such as big data, machine, and information ethics, and provides guidance for ethical normative analysis in digital development, illustrated by a facial recognition example.

Contribution

It offers a clear overview of normative and applied ethics in IT, categorizes different ethical branches, and demonstrates how to conduct normative analysis with a practical facial recognition case.

Findings

Provides a structured overview of applied ethics branches in IT

Demonstrates normative analysis through a facial recognition example

Clarifies relationships between normative and applied ethics in digital development

Abstract

Digitalization efforts are rapidly spreading across societies, challenging new and important ethical issues that arise from technological development. Software developers, designers and managerial decision-makers are ever more expected to consider ethical values and conduct normative evaluations when building digital products. Yet, when one looks for guidance in the academic literature one encounters a plethora of branches of applied ethics. Depending on the context of the system that is to be developed, interesting subfields like big data ethics, machine ethics, information ethics, AI ethics or computer ethics (to only name a few) may present themselves. In this paper we want to offer assistance to any member of a development team by giving a clear and brief introduction into two fields of ethical endeavor (normative ethics and applied ethics), describing how they are related to each other and, finally, provide an ordering of the different branches of applied ethics (big data ethics, machine ethics, information ethics, AI ethics or computer ethics etc.) which have gained traction over the last years. Finally, we discuss an example in the domain of facial recognition software in the domain of medicine to illustrate how this process of normative analysis might be conducted.