Ethics of Emerging Technology

This chapter surveys ethical approaches to emerging technology. In recent years, emerging technologies have become a major topic of study in the ethics of technology, which has increasingly focused its attention on early-stage intervention in technology development. A number of specific approaches and methods have now been developed for the field, which in many ways is still in its infancy. The main problem for the ethics of emerging technology is the problem of uncertainty (Sollie, 2007): how to deal with the uncertainty of future products, uses and consequences, and associated ethical issues that will result from an emerging technology. Several approaches to the ethics of emerging technology will be reviewed that deal with this problem in different ways. Special attention will be paid to anticipatory approaches, which combine foresight analysis with ethical analysis. These approaches will be assessed and critically compared to alternative ethical approaches to emerging technology.