Preface


This Seminar on Technology Ethics – arranged at 23-24.10.2019 at the University of
Turku – is the third instance of seminar originally invented by Kai K. Kimppa. This
year our aim has been to establish this as a conference that gathers up people that are
interested in the ethical use and development of technology - especially information
technology. As Moor already noted in 1985, we have entered to a time where infor-
mation technology has become an integral part of our everyday life, and there is a need
for ethics to seek future that is good for us (Moor, 1985).
   Nowadays, technology is everywhere in modern societies. Advances in technology
change our lives in numerous ways and the change will most likely accelerate by tech-
nologies such as artificial intelligence are more and more implemented. There may be
unforeseen be changes in society that creates new business opportunities for those who
can deploy new technologies. However, all changes are not what we desire and those
may increase the good in our life. Thus we need to understand the possible problems,
risks and ways to control the change towards a better world. Technology plays a stra-
tegic role in society but we are still missing the tools for understanding how technology
impacts the goodness of society (Brey, 2017).
   Thus, there is a need for understanding how phenomena such as Artificial Intelli-
gence (AI) and expanding data economy are affecting society from the viewpoint of
ethics. This Seminar is part of this rising interest toward ethical and thus more resilient
societies where technology should be seen as mean to end not end itself. If we neglect
the ethical issues – and do not look what kind of values we are implementing with
technology – we are just drifting and we may end up with a dystopic society where
technology draws borders of our lives instead that we draw the lines how we want to
use it to serve us.
   This seminar contributes to this aim of ethical society by presented papers and two
keynote speaks: “What kind of AI systems should we design?” by Virpi Roto and “Fair-
ness – key to European Data Economy Model?” by Jaana Sinipuro. However, I see that
the biggest contribution was to bring people who are interested in ethics together as we
need more collaboration at the national and international levels. We need more forums
where these issues are seen important and it is a pleasure to see that we were attracting
such a group of people that were interested in making a better world.

References
Brey, P. (2018). The strategic role of technology in a good society. Technology in so-
ciety, 52, 39-45.
Moor, J. H. (1985). What is computer ethics?. Metaphilosophy, 16(4), 266-275.



  November 2019                    Jani Koskinen
                                   Minna M. Rantanen