Ethics Working Group

Despite the many ways new technologies have improved life, they cannot be regarded as unambiguously beneficial or even value-neutral. Recent experience shows they can lead to unintended but harmful consequences. Our Working Group, as part of the Informatics Europe community, can contribute among others at the following levels:

• As an Informatics community, we need to ensure that socio-technological systems in the domain of informatics have a socially beneficial and ethical impact. This is especially important when it comes to emergent technologies, particularly for the new artificial intelligence and cognitive technologies in all phases of their development, from the design to implementation and in different applications. The current EU Artificial Intelligence Act, The European Approach to AI, presents a basis for the discussion.

• Likewise important for us as a community of educators in Europe is to help introduce the teaching of ethics and social aspects at technical universities in Europe. ETHICS4EU project provides a foundation for continuing work on ethics education. Implementation of the ETHICS4EU results should be done through the various departments.

We want to educate our students to think not only about which systems they could build, but whether they should build them in the first place. We need to find ways to encourage informatics students to think about:

• • What are the intended and thinkable unintended consequences of a product or feature?
  • What are the positive consequences we want to focus on?
  • What are the consequences we want to mitigate?

Long-term Goals

• Create a sustainable European Community of Practice in Informatics ethics
• Ensure that the importance of teaching ethics in Informatics degree courses is recognized
• Increase literacy on ethics among Informatics lecturers
• Increase literacy on ethics among decision-makers (CEOs, policymakers political organizations)

WG Operation

• Chair: Covadonga Rodrigo, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Spain
• Next meetings: TBA

Would you like to join us in our current initiatives or suggest new ones. Join our Working Group here.

Visit our Ethics webpage to know more about initiatives and outcomes on the topic by the Informatics Europe community.

• Working Group
• Outcomes

• Current members:

  • Covadonga Rodrigo, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Spain (Chair)
  • Thomas Alessandro Ciarfuglia, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
  • Suzana Alpsancar, University of Paderborn, Germany
  • Tiziana Catarci, Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy
  • Andrea F. Curley, TU Dublin, Ireland
  • Elisabetta Di Nitto, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
  • Radu Dobrin, Mälardalen University, Sweden
  • Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic, Mälardalen University, Sweden
  • Ana-Belén Gil-González, University of Salamanca, Spain
  • Damian Gordon, TU Dublin, Ireland
  • Manana Khachidze, Iv.Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Georgia
  • Monica Landoni, Universita della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland
  • Gabriele Lenzini, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
  • David Lopez, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain
  • Ugo Lopez, Università degli studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Italy
  • Emma Murphy, TU Dublin, Ireland
  • Dympna O'Sullivan, TU Dublin, Ireland
  • Alexander Pretschner, TU München, Germany
  • Ayushi Rastogi, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
  • Mirela Riveni, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
  • Ute Schmid, University of Bamberg, Germany
  • Florence Sèdes, SIF / University Toulouse 3 Paul Sabatier
  • Alicia Takaoka, NTNU, Norway
  • Brendan Tierney, TU Dublin, Ireland
  • Riccardo Torlone, Università Roma Tre, Italy 
  • P.J. Wall, TU Dublin / Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
  • Tatjana Welzer Družovec, University of Maribor, Slovenia
  • Ernst Wit, Universita della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland

  Past Chairs:

  • Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic, Mälardalen University, Sweden (2022-2023)
  • Dympna O'Sullivan, TU Dublin, Ireland (2024)
• • October 2024 - Cultivating Diversity: Integrating Inclusive Design into Informatics Education Workshop organized jointly with Diversity and Inclusion WG as part of ECSS 2024, held in Malta on 29 October 2024. Workshop slides can be found here. 
  • October 2022 - Societal Impact of Digital Transformation Workshop held in Hamburg on 26 October 2022, as part of the ECSS 2022. Workshop slides can be found here.