The study offers a bird’s eye perspective of key societal and ethical challenges as emerging technologies encroach on intimate aspects of our lives.
Digital technologies are evolving towards an internet of robotic and bio-nano things driven by ever more powerful artificial intelligence, enabled by an ever faster infrastructure of 5G and soon 6G networks. Smart bodies, smart homes, smart industries and cities, as well as governments, hold the promise of many benefits as well as dangers. The Scientific Foresight Unit (under the aegis of the STOA panel) of the European Parliament Research Service has published a report looking at the ethical and societal challenges of the approaching technological storm.
The report looks at the complex issue of how to navigate the societal questions posed by the unprecedented deployment of vast amounts of data that will be collected to enable powerful new applications. These applications will begin to impact every domain of our lives – from business to health and education as well as recreation, family life and governance. It is possible to steer their development in a direction that is aligned with values such as privacy, justice, sustainability and wellbeing. To do so, however, the developers of these technologies have to join with policy makers and stakeholders to shape policy accordingly. The report constitutes a contribution to this effort, laying out the policy options that can be considered to ensure this alignment.
In a review of the existing literature, the study identifies a set of ethical and societal challenges raised by technologies from the infrastructure level to concrete consumer applications. These include 5G/6G, AI and robotics, Internet of Things, augmented and virtual reality, blockchain, and bio-nanotechnology. The authors analysed texts covering these topics from diverse types of sources: from ethical research to news and media, and from the regulatory and level domains to scientific publications.
Underpinning this approach lies the principle that each of these realms of discussion play a specific role in the overall division of labour to address these challenges. Ethics research can provide an early warning system, while journalistic news publications bring this clash between values and technological innovation to the attention of the broader public. Although legal debates may well reflect most of the relevant values, the authors identify gaps on issues surrounding wellbeing and an overly strong focus on artificial intelligence to the detriment of other impactful technologies. Similar criticisms emerge regarding the scientific literature: values like reliability, cybersecurity, privacy and sustainability are well covered but other values such as democracy, autonomy, transparency and wellbeing receive short shrift.
In addition to this literature review covering imbalances in different discussion fora, the report looks at opportunities and challenges of the new convergence of these emerging technologies. They highlight among the importance of ensuring digital sovereignty, addressing the blurring of social and economic areas, the encroachment on people’s intimate lives, opacity and cognitive overload, sustainability, cybersecurity, and heightened disruption and unpredictability.
Among its final recommendations, the report underlines the importance of investing in digital literacy, and the better institutionalisation of “design for values” on the model of “privacy by design” in emerging data protection legislation. A deeper reflection is also required on the reticence of western liberal legal thinking to approach the subject of well-being and human flourishing.