Original version
Human-Machine Communication: Rethinking Communication, Technology, and Ourselves. 2018, 237-257, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3726/b14399
Abstract
It might be thought that Human-Machine Communication (HMC) and ethics have little, if anything to do with one another. To be sure, those engaged in the more technical sides of HMC—ICT designers, software engineers, roboticists, and so on—are at least nominally beholden to the ethics codes and guidelines of their specific professional organizations (e.g., ACM, 1992). But more broadly, ethics and technology have largely been kept separate—until relatively recently. In Part I, I explore these backgrounds and developments in three interrelated ways, beginning with how technological developments themselves help forge dialogue between ethicists and philosophers with computer scientists and engineers: the same pattern is further apparent in the rise of “robo-philosophy” over the past decade or so. Secondly, transformations in our understanding of science have led specifically to conceptions of complementarity between science (as the ground of technology) and ethics. Lastly, these complementarities are instantiated in striking examples of convergence between applied ethics and technical fields emerging from the praxis of contemporary ICT projects and especially contemporary ethics of design—including, finally, emerging requirements for autonomous systems.