Delft Design for Values and the 4TU Centre for Ethics and Technology (4TU.Ethics) are organising a 4TU-wide response to the ethical challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic in a new working group which deals with the impact of the crisis on the design of new emerging technologies.
Ā 4TU.Ethics & COVID-19
The COVID-19 crisis is causing an unprecedented period of disruption to public and private life in the Netherlands. As well as affecting public health, the crisis has disrupted commerce, industry, education, work, and leisure for the foreseeable future. These changes are creating many short-term ethical challenges. How we respond to these challenges may also cause lasting shifts in our moral norms and our ethical decisions.
For over a decade, 4TU.Ethics has hosted world-leading expertise on many of the ethical challenges that the crisis now requires us to face. Together with Delft Design for Values it wants to offer a lasting contribution to how we respond to the ethical issues of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to future disasters.
Technological challenges
COVID-19 challenges us to fundamentally rethink numerous ethical issues. The crisis raises new problems for our current understandings of value conflict, transparency, paternalism, risk management, online privacy, civic responsibility, mass surveillance, emergency governance, digital well-being, and approaches to public health.
New technologies have the potential to solve the challenges which come across with Corona. Data-driven technologies offer ways to predict and monitor epidemics. Diagnostic and app-based tools are being developed to more effectively triage patients and to aid prognosis. Cutting-edge manufacturing processes (e.g. 3D printing, nanotechnology) may be able to offer new tools for fighting infections. Other emerging technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, machine learning) are revolutionising established medical disciplines (virology, epidemiology, etc.).
All of these technological responses to the crisis come with ethical implications that urgently need to be addressed. TheĀ collective efforts of the working group, and those ofĀ our researchĀ partners,Ā aim to contribute to doing this.Ā
Key themes
https://www.delftdesignforvalues.nl/covid-19/key-themes/
Featured researchers
https://www.delftdesignforvalues.nl/covid-19/featured-researchers/
Join us?
Become a member of the working groupĀ or send us a message:
https://www.delftdesignforvalues.nl/covid-19/contact-workgroup/
4TU.Ethics COVID-19 podcast
Proposals are now open for the upcoming 4TU.Ethics COVID-19 podcast. What would you like to hear? Who would you like to speak, from 4TU.Ethics and beyond? Suggest your topics and share your thoughts atĀ https://padlet.com/ssteinert5/jkyj0gsmck4rdufg
Follow the activities of the working group
https://twitter.com/4TUethics
https://twitter.com/DDFV_TUDelft