Jelte Timmer

Ethical Challenges in Emerging Applications of Persuasive Technology

Persuasive technologies are gaining ground. As they enter into society they are being applied in more situations, and integrated with other technologies in increasingly smart environments. We argue that this development creates new challenges in designing ethically responsible persuasive technologies. Applications in social contexts like work environments raise the questions whether persuasion serves the interests of the user or the employer, and whether users can still voluntarily choose to use the technology. Informing the user and obtaining consent become complicated when persuasive systems are integrated in smart environments. To ensure that the autonomy of the user is respected, we argue that the user and provider should agree on the goal of persuasion, and users should be informed about persuasion in smart environments.

Societal and ethical issues of digitization

In this paper we discuss the social and ethical issues that arise as a result of digitization based on six dominant technologies: Internet of Things, robotics, biometrics, persuasive technology, virtual & augmented reality, and digital platforms. We highlight the many developments in the digitizing society that appear to be at odds with six recurring themes revealing from our analysis of the scientific literature on the dominant technologies: privacy, autonomy, security, human dignity, justice, and balance of power. This study shows that the new wave of digitization is putting pressure on these public values. In order to effectively shape the digital society in a socially and ethically responsible way, stakeholders need to have a clear understanding of what such issues might be. Supervision has been developed the most in the areas of privacy and data protection. For other ethical issues concerning digitization such as discrimination, autonomy, human dignity and unequal balance of power, the supervision is not as well organized.