Welcome to TechEthos

A warm welcome to our first newsletter, dear reader

Welcome to the first newsletter of TechEthos, an EU-funded project dealing with the ethics of new and emerging technologies. We are a team of ten scientific partners and six science engagement organisations representing expertise from technological assessment to citizen engagement to ethical advice.

Our overall goal is to produce ethics guidelines helping the research community to consider ethical and societal values in the earliest phase of technology design and development. This “ethics by design” approach will not only provide value for researchers from academia and industry, but also for related stakeholders such as research funding bodies, research ethics committees, technology users and the overall society.

We are now in month six of our three-year project and close to a major project milestone. That is, to decide which technologies we will focus on and produce ethics guidelines for. This decision will be based on a thorough horizon scanning process conducted by the TechEthos team and the result will be presented on our website in July 2021.

This newsletter highlights the 'ethics by design' approach as well as the expectation of our project from policy officer Lisa Diependaele. It will also provide information on texts & tools & events relevant for the TechEthos community.

We appreciate your interest in TechEthos. Do pass on this newsletter to those who you think would like to join this growing community of ethics-driven, emerging technology enthusiasts. We look forward to the journey ahead.

Eva Buchinger

TechEthos project coordinator

AIT, Austrian Institute of Technology

Graphic of human with microchip attached to the head

Adopting Ethics by Design: Lessons from the SIENNA project

Article by Nuala Polo

What is 'ethics by design' and how will TechEthos build on the findings of the recently concluded SIENNA project? Nuala Polo, Research Impact Officer at Trilateral Research, covers these topics and more.

Find out more

Outside of the European Commission building

A Foundation for Effective Ethics Governance

Interview with Lisa Diependaele

We sat down with Lisa Diependaele, Policy Officer at the European Commission's Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, to understand the European Commission's vision in the field of the ethics of emerging technologies and the role TechEthos will play.

Read the interview

Further reads and talks

Find below a series of good reads, talks and resources that have inspired us in our work - we think you might find them interesting too.

Event recording

Policy options for the ethical governance of disruptive technologies

The SHERPA, SIENNA and PANELFIT projects co-hosted an event with the European Parliament's Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA) in light of an upcoming EU legislative proposal on Artificial Intelligence.

Watch the recording

Resource

The Ethics Tools and Techniques Directory is open for feedback

The Greater Than Learning initiative has put together a collection of tools and techniques to support ethical decision making and are welcoming feedback to help them make decisions about what tools to use, when and how.

Learn more

Report

Will ethical AI design become the norm?

A recent report by the Pew Research Centre takes the pulse of Artificial Intelligence ethics experts on their concerns and hopes for the future. A majority worry that evolutions in this field will continue to focus on profits and social control.

Read the report

Journal issue

Pointing the way forward for Value Sensitive Design

This special issue of the Ethics and Information Technology journal puts forward eight challenges for the field and takes up ideas, applications and aconcepts that can show the way forward on how to bring human values into the design process.

Access the journal

For your diary

28 June - 09 July | Online event

Horizon Europe Info Days

A 10-day event to find out what is new in Horizon Europe and its funding mechanisms across nine different themes.

Go to Event

25 August - 27 August | Online event

Summer Seminar on Research Integrity

A variety of interactive lectures with attention to learning about the relevance of different research integrity tools. Featuring TechEthos Advisory and Impact Board Member, Dr. Maura Hiney.

Go to Event

“We know that with technological progress we can transform society as a whole. For the uncertainties and risks these technologies bring, however, we have to ensure that their development, from the very beginning, is tied to the realisation of our values.“

Lisa Diependaele, Policy Officer, European Commission

Keep in touch with us

The Techethos website

The TechEthos project is coordinated by AIT – Austrian Institute of Technology.

This newsletter is coordinated by Ecsite – European Network of Science Centres and Museum and distributed by Trilateral Research.

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