You Can Be Anything › All careers › Space & Emerging Fields
Digital Ethicist
Studies the moral implications of technology — AI bias, privacy, digital rights, misinformation.
Did you know?
MIT's Moral Machine experiment collected 40 million decisions from people in 233 countries about how self-driving cars should act in a crash.
How subjects help
- Philosophy: Weigh up whether an app's use of personal data is fair to the people it collects from.
- Computer Science: Test an AI system to check whether it treats different groups of people unfairly.
- Law: Explain how privacy and data protection laws apply to a new piece of technology.
- Psychology: Study how design tricks can push people to scroll longer or share more than they meant to.
A famous name
Luciano Floridi: Philosopher known for founding information ethics; he now directs Yale's Digital Ethics Center.
Try it yourself: Think through a big question
- Take the question: "Is it ever OK to break a promise?"
- Think of one example where breaking it seems right, and one where it seems wrong.
- What is the difference between them? Try to put it into one rule.
- Now look for an example that breaks your rule. Can you improve it?
- One thing is always true: if anyone asks you to keep a secret that makes you feel worried or unsafe, it is always OK to tell a trusted adult.
Philosophers and ethics advisers test ideas against tricky examples until the reasoning holds up.
Also try: Measure how far a sneeze flies.
Known for it in
USA, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Finland