Call for papers

Ethics by Design track

Part of the 4TU.Ethics Biannual Conference ‘The Ethics of Disruptive Technologies’
TU/Eindhoven, The Netherlands, November 7th - 8th 2019

Deadline for submission: June 15th, 2019 Notification: July 5th, 2019

Co-Chairs:

• prof. dr. Philip Brey University of Twente, coordinator of the SIENNA project
• prof. dr. Bernd Carsten Stahl, De Montfort University, coordinator of the SHERPA project

Design for Values approaches have flourished in recent years, following the pioneering work of Batya Friedman and her associates who have advocated, since the 1990s, the approach of value-sensitive design. Recently, the approach has also captured the attention of industry, policy makers and research funders, in particular the European Commission (EC) with its Horizon 2020 and forthcoming Horizon Europe funding programmes. The term used by the EC is “Ethics by design”, and it is now implemented in the general Ethics Review protocol used by the EC in Horizon 2020, and receives special attention in the Artificial Intelligence funding scheme (projected budget for Horizon Europe: 9 bln. Euros), in which it is set to become a required element for new project proposals.

Ethics by design is defined by the EC as the implementation, starting from the beginning of the design process, of ethical and legal principles. (See https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/coordinated-plan-artificial-intelligence communication and annex.) The EC is currently exploring what ethics by design principles and methods might look like. In the Horizon 2020 SIENNA (http://www.sienna-project.eu/) and SHERPA (https://www.project-sherpa.eu/) projects, which study the ethical and human rights aspects of AI, big data, robotics, human enhancement and human genomics, one of the objectives is the development of ethics by design principles and methodologies for the new Horizon Europe programme.


In the Ethics by Design track, we have three objectives:

(1) Exploring current approaches to Design for Values / Ethics by Design
(2) Making steps towards a concrete, usable Ethics by Design methodology that can be used by technology developers and designers with little or no prior training in Ethics by Design
(3) Making steps towards a concrete methodology for the development of AI systems in particular
We invite presentations that cover any of the three objectives. This includes ethics by design papers that do not focus on AI but on other technologies. We will have a panel meeting after the talks with invited speakers to discuss the issues raised and to discuss possible further steps and collaborations.

The SIENNA and SHERPA projects are co-sponsor of this track.


Submitting your abstract

Abstracts should be 500 words, excluding a short bibliography. These abstracts will be evaluated by the programme committee of the conference. Please include the text “Ethics by design Track” at the beginning of your abstract.
Abstracts can be submitted at the following website: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=4tuethicsedt
If you have not worked with the easychair system before, please first register by creating your own personal account and then you will be able to enter the 4TU.Ethics Conference area as an author and submit your abstract.

Conference website:
https://ethicsandtechnology.eu/news/4tu-ethics-bi-annual-conference-thursday-7th-friday-8th-november-2019-tu-eindhoven/