On Wednesday, 13 March 2024, WE SHAPE TECH’s community navigated and explored the field of Digital Ethics with Christina Meyer and Sophia Ding, both Digital Ethics and AI Specialists at Swiss Post. In an interactive setting they demonstrated why considering ethical aspects in digital product development can make a difference. And why “Ethics in a Box” can help us think “outside the box”.
How to Shape Trust in the Digital World with Digital Ethics
With a great community, where you never know which new and interesting people one is going to meet, great speakers and a hot topic, everything promised this to be another great event. After some welcome drinks, snacks, and first get-to-know-each-others, the attendees took their place in anticipation of what the evening would bring.
Janine Fuchs from WE SHAPE TECH started the event with a short introduction about WST and introduced speakers Sophia and Christina.
In today’s fast changing digital world, we often find ourselves in the intersection of technological capabilities and their ethical implications. Concerns around privacy, autonomy, transparency or accountability may arise.
In their talk, the speakers showcased concrete examples and pointed out, why it is important to take ethical aspects into account when developing digital products. We learned what tools and frameworks they use to address ethical aspects at Swiss Post and what insights and learnings they have made so far.
In interactive breakout sessions moderated by Christina (Swiss Post), Sophia (Swiss Post), Janine (WST), Sabrina (WST) and Angela (WST), we had the chance to elaborate on fictious use cases by using their self-developed toolbox “Ethics in a box”.
As the lively discussions and very engaged audience showed: The topic is relevant, leads to many fruitful discussions and motivates to continue shaping tech – in an ethical way.
The offical part of the event was followed by some networking and relaxed conversations accompanied by yummy food and drinks.
Take Aways
Not all concerns are that obvious from the beginning: We were surprised, how realistic some case studies sounded in the beginning, before we systematically unwrapped their critical aspects during the breakout sessions.
When dealing with digital ethics we deal with impact on human beings or on society. That can be users of our digital products, our customers, our employees – or sometimes stakeholders we did not even think of so far.
Digital Ethics as an opportunity: Institutionalising digital ethics must not be an obstacle or “yet another checklist” to deal with, but can rather be seen as an opportunity in order to create trust.
The earlier, the better: “Ethics by Design” helps us to identify potential concerns or ethical dilemmas early on and to proactively address them. Tools and frameworks help to systematically approach ethical aspects in digital product development.
Tools alone are not enough: digital ethics requires everyone’s involvement and is an interdisciplinary task. In order to get everyone on the same boat, creating awareness is key.
Slides
Image Gallery
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WE SHAPE TECH would like to thank Swiss Post for not only giving insight into how they are tackling digital ethics, but also for generously sponsoring the catering. Furthermore, we would like to thank Impact Hub Zurich for sponsoring the use of their great venue.
