Ethics for Technologies with High Socio-Economic Impact

TechEthos will reinforce the pivotal role of the European Union as an ethics trailblazer in new and emerging technologies. Such technologies bring with them new ethical challenges and societal consequences that need to be addressed.

The project will develop guidance for the development and deployment of these technologies to ensure the highest ethical standards at the EU and international levels. It will carry out a horizon scan to identify three or four new technologies with high socio-economic impact.

It will then identify and analyse the ethical issues raised by the selected technologies and explore the views and attitudes of expert and lay stakeholders towards them and their ethical implications using scenarios and media analysis.

Public involvement is key in this project: science museums and centers involved in our work will ensure appropriTechEthos will address the growing ethical challenges and expectations vis-à-vis new technologies to ensure the highest ethical standards at the EU and international levels.

It will conduct a horizon scan of emerging technologies with high socio-economic impacts to identify 3-4 that may raise particularly challenging ethical issues; these will be further analysed and engaged with in the project (via ethical and legal analysis and stakeholder engagement activities).

The project will develop/refine/extend (as desirable and applicable to the selected technologies) existing/proposed ethics frameworks, operational guidelines or Codes (e.g., developed in SIENNA, SHERPA, PANELFIT, SATORI and other projects) to enable the effective ethics governance of the technologies.

It will reconcile the needs of research and innovation and the legitimate concerns of the society while stimulating innovation and reducing socio-economic inequalities.

To do so, it will especially engage with researchers and innovators, research ethics committees (RECs), research integrity (RI) bodies, civil society organisations (CSOs), policy-makers and the public.