Digitalization, Ethics & Values

Target group

Students interested in current examples of digitalization and their ethical and value-related implications

Content

• Relationship of EU law and science
• Relationship of EU law and ethics
• EU values (general ones and specific ones) and their general meaning
• Examples of current challenges of digitalization …
  
  
  • Artificial intelligence (AI),
  • Self-driving cars (‘autonomous vehicles’),
  • Drones (‘Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems’, RPAS),
  • Humanoid robots …
    
• … in different fields (selection)
  
  
  • Future of work (labour market),
  • Healthcare and care of the elderly,
  • Transportation and traffic,
  • Education
    
• EU precautionary principle for situations of uncertainty in new developments
• plus their meaning in the context of digitalization.

Description

As digitalization is already changing the way we live and work, this MCIWebinar strives to raise awareness and the make students familiar with some concepts, which might be important in the discussion of these new phenomena. These legal concepts cover both EU values (human dignity, freedom, equality, etc.), as well as principles, such as the ‘precautionary principle’, which plays an important role in the context of risk assessment and risk management of new technologies etc. From an ethical perspective, the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice have be taken into account.

In EU law, we can find both references to “science” and “ethics”. Thus, in a first step, we will discuss the question which role these two non-legal disciplines play in EU law and how they are imported into the legal sphere.

In a second step, we will discuss what those mentioned EU values and the precautionary principle mean for those new phenomena in the context of digitalization.