Mark Coeckelbergh

University of Vienna | UniWien · Institut für Philosophie

Are current digital technologies supporting democracy? Answering that question depends, among other things, on what is meant by democracy. This article mobilizes a communicative conception of democracy. While it is generally accepted that communication is important for democracy, there are directions in democracy theory that understand communicatio...

Technologies, especially disruptive technologies, have a great potential to change and reshape human-human as well as human-technology relations. This creates various ethical challenges that need to be addressed. However, technologies also have great potential to change human-animal relations. Since this aspect is underexplored in the academic deba...

The development of social assistive robots for supporting healthcare provision faces a lack of an ethical approach that adequately addresses the normatively relevant challenges regarding its deployment. Current ethical reflection is primarily informed by an individual-centered perspective focused on robots’ implications for their end-users and ther...

There is a broad consensus that artificial intelligence should contribute to the common good, but it is not clear what is meant by that. This paper discusses this issue and uses it as a lens for analysing what it calls the “democracy deficit” in current AI governance, which includes a tendency to deny the inherently political character of the issue...

We discuss the role of humans in algorithmic decision-making (ADM) for socially relevant problems from a technical and philosophical perspective. In particular, we illustrate tensions arising from diverse expectations, values, and constraints by and on the humans involved. To this end, we assume that a strategic decision-maker (SDM) introduces ADM...

It is increasingly recognized that as artificial intelligence becomes more powerful and pervasive in society and creates risks and ethical issues that cross borders, a global approach is needed for the governance of these risks. But why, exactly, do we need this and what does that mean? In this Open Forum paper, author argues for global governance...

Current techno-utopian visions of metaverse raise ontological, ethical, and political questions. Drawing on existing literature on virtual worlds but also philosophically moving beyond that body of work and responding to political contexts concerning identity, capitalism, and climate, this paper begins to address these questions by offering a conce...

Controversy arose when a humanoid robot named “Sophia” was given citizenship and did performances all over the world. Why should some robots gain citizenship? Going beyond recent discussions in robot ethics and human–robot interaction, and drawing on phenomenological approaches to political philosophy, actor-network theory, and performance-oriented...

It is generally thought that artificial intelligence (AI) has a significant impact on politics and democracy. Meanwhile, the technology is also often hailed as a solution to key societal and environmental challenges. It raises questions regarding, for example, how we can and should deal with climate change. This article links and discusses these is...

Moral status arguments are typically formulated as descriptive statements that tell us something about the world. But philosophy of language teaches us that language can also be used performatively: we do things with words and use words to try to get others to do things. Does and should this theory extend to what we say about moral status, and what...

Large language models such as ChatGPT enable users to automatically produce text but also raise ethical concerns, for example about authorship and deception. This paper analyses and discusses some key philosophical assumptions in these debates, in particular assumptions about authorship and language and—our focus—the use of the appearance/reality d...

AI image generators such as DALL-E 2 are deep learning models that enable users to generate digital images based on natural language text prompts. The impressive and often surprising results leave many people puzzled: is this art, and if so, who created the art: the human or the AI? These are not just theoretical questions; they have practical ethi...

Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI) is based on seven technical requirements sustained over three main pillars that should be met throughout the system's entire life cycle: it should be (1) lawful, (2) ethical, and (3) robust, both from a technical and a social perspective. However, attaining truly trustworthy AI concerns a wider vision that c...

We tend to see the world as a collection of things, but drawing on process philosophy (especially Bergson), this chapter proposes that we instead think about the world and the self in terms of processes and becoming. The influence of digital technologies on what we are and what we become is then also a matter of process, from which both subjects an...

This chapter explores the ethics and politics of technoperformances of time. What are good processes, narratives, and technoperformances? What is a good time and meaningful existence? How can we find a common time and develop good co-existence? First the chapter considers ethics: moving beyond individualist interpretations of virtue ethics, it enga...

This chapter introduces the theme of the book and outlines its content. Today we feel like we do not have enough time and that everything is accelerating. We fear death and face an uncertain world. With digital technologies we live too much in the present or perhaps we are not present enough: to ourselves, to others, to the world. Digital technolog...

Assume an AI ethicist uncovers objectionable effects related to the increased usage of AI. What should they do about it? One option is to seek alliances with Big Tech in order to "borrow" their power to change things for the better. Another option is to seek opportunities for change that actively avoids reliance on Big Tech.

Democratic theories assume that citizens have some form of political knowledge in order to vote for representatives or to directly engage in democratic deliberation and participation. However, apart from widespread attention to the phenomenon of fake news and misinformation, less attention has been paid to how they are supposed to acquire that know...

There is a tendency among AI researchers to use the concepts of democracy and democratization in ways that are only loosely connected to their political and historical meanings. We argue that it is important to take the concept more seriously in AI research by engaging with political philosophy.

A guide to the ethical questions that arise from our use of industrial robots, robot companions, self-driving cars, and other robotic devices Does a robot have moral agency? Can it be held responsible for its actions? Do humans owe robots anything? Will robots take our jobs? These are some of the ethical and moral quandaries that we should address...

To be intrinsically valuable means to be valuable for its own sake. Moral philosophy is often ethically anthropocentric, meaning that it locates intrinsic value within humans. This paper rejects ethical anthropocentrism and asks, in what ways might nonhumans be intrinsically valuable? The paper answers this question with a wide-ranging survey of th...

Six commentaries on the paper "You, robot: on the linguistic construction of artificial others" articulate different points of view on the significance of linguistic interactions with robots. The author of the paper responds to each of these commentaries by highlighting salient differences. One of these regards the dangerously indeterminate notion...

Recently there has been more attention to the cultural aspects of social robots. This paper contributes to this effort by offering a philosophical, in particular Wittgensteinian framework for conceptualizing in what sense and how robots are related to culture and by exploring what it would mean to create an “Ubuntu Robot”. In addition, the paper ge...

Climate change is a global priority. In 2015, the United Nations (UN) outlined its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which stated that taking urgent action to tackle climate change and its impacts was a key priority. The 2021 World Climate Summit finished with calls for governments to take tougher measures towards reducing their carbon footprin...

The empirical turn, understood as a turn to the artifact in the work of Ihde, has been a fruitful one, which has rightly abandoned what Serres and Latour call “the empire of signs” of the postmoderns. However, this has unfortunately implied too little attention for language and its relation to technology. The same can be said about the social dimen...

Political issues people care about such as racism, climate change, and democracy take on new urgency and meaning in the light of technological developments such as AI. How can we talk about the politics of AI while moving beyond mere warnings and easy accusations? This is the first accessible introduction to the political challenges related to AI....

Assume that a researcher uncovers a major problem with how social media are currently used. What sort of challenges arise when they must subsequently decide whether or not to use social media to create awareness about this problem? This situation routinely occurs as ethicists navigate choices regarding how to effect change and potentially remedy th...

After its rejection of the linguistic turn, influential strands in empirically-oriented philosophy of technology tend to neglect or are even hostile towards structuralist and transcendental approaches to technology. Drawing on Cassirer, Bourdieu, Wittgenstein, and Ricoeur, this article offers an account of the meaning of technologies that theorizes...

Most accounts of responsibility focus on one type of responsibility, moral responsibility, or address one particular aspect of moral responsibility such as agency. This article outlines a broader framework to think about responsibility that includes causal responsibility, relational responsibility, and what I call “narrative responsibility” as a fo...

Does cruel behavior towards robots lead to vice, whereas kind behavior does not lead to virtue? This paper presents a critical response to Sparrow’s argument that there is an asymmetry in the way we (should) think about virtue and robots. It discusses how much we should praise virtue as opposed to vice, how virtue relates to practical knowledge and...

While today there is much discussion about the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), less work has been done on the philosophical nature of AI. Drawing on Bergson and Ricoeur, this paper proposes to use the concepts of time, process, and narrative to conceptualize AI and its normatively relevant impact on human lives and society. Distinguishing b...

Commercial brain-computer interfaces raise interesting critical political-philosophical and artistic questions. Drawing on our research and experiences with the “Neuromatic Game Art” project, and using critical theory from philosophy of technology (Feenberg), among other theories, this paper examines the power relations involved in the use of comme...

A humanoid robot named 'Sophia' has sparked controversy since it has been given citizenship and has done media performances all over the world. The company that made the robot, Hanson Robotics, has touted Sophia as the future of artificial intelligence (AI). Robot scientists and philosophers have been more pessimistic about its capabilities, descri...

The use of autonomous and intelligent personal social robots raises questions concerning their moral standing. Moving away from the discussion about direct moral standing and exploring the normative implications of a relational approach to moral standing, this paper offers four arguments that justify giving indirect moral standing to robots under s...

In response to my article “Earth, Technology, Language”, Christopher Müller asks whether use-oriented theory and Wittgensteinian language can capture the structural relations of power that shape habituation and argues that digital media do not provide opportunities for empowerment and democracy because there is no co-ownership. In my reply I argue...

In response to challenges to moral philosophy presented by other disciplines and facing a diversity of approaches to the foundation and focus of morality, this paper argues for a pluralist meta-ethics that is methodologically hierarchical and guided by the principle of subsidiarity. Inspired by Deweyan pragmatism, this novel and original applicatio...

Purpose This paper aims to show how the production of meaning is a matter of people interacting with technologies, throughout their appropriation and in co-performances. The researchers rely on the case of household-based voice assistants that endorse speaking as a primary mode of interaction with technologies. By analyzing the ethical significance...

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-021-00059-y

The recent incidents involving Dr. Timnit Gebru, Dr. Margaret Mitchell, and Google have triggered an important discussion emblematic of issues arising from the practice of AI Ethics research. We offer this paper and its bibliography as a resource to the global community of AI Ethics Researchers who argue for the protection and freedom of this resea...

Both designers and users of social robots tend to anthropomorphize robots. Focusing on the question how to conceptualize the relation between robots and humans, this paper first outlines two opposite philosophical views regarding this relation, which are connected to various normative responses to anthropomorphism and anthropomorphization. Then it...

Social robots are designed to facilitate interaction with humans through “social” behavior. As literature in the field of human–robot interaction shows, this sometimes leads to “bad” behavior towards the robot or “abuse” of the robot. Virtue ethics offers a helpful way to capture the intuition that although nobody is harmed when a robot is “mistrea...

In this transdisciplinary paper we discuss the question whether trust in human-robot-interaction (HRI) can be gained by gamification. Therefore, the concept of credibility will be introduced. A specific focus is on the question concerning the implementation of ethical rules in robotic safety systems. With a focus on Wittgenstein as a philosopher of...

This chapter offers a conclusion. Firstly, it presents a summary of the book; outlining the 3 bodies of theory we draw on in this book—narrative theory, philosophy of technology, and virtue ethics—and describing what was delivered on the basis of this work. Secondly, the chapter explores further directions for research on narrative theory of techno...

This chapter translates the narrative ethics of technical practice into a method for practising ethics in research and innovation settings. Recent years have seen a proliferation of methods for practising ethics in research and innovation, and our method responds to certain shortcomings in these approaches. It offers three phases and nine stages, w...

Chapter 5 develops a narrative ethics of technical practice. As such, it unfolds an account of the ethical aim of a technical practice, which enables us to distinguish between practices that cultivate the virtues and those that do not. Firstly, the chapter makes a detour through virtue ethics and its recent revival in ethics of technology, focusing...

Chapter 3 explores Ricoeur’s hermeneutic concept of technical practice. It firstly introduces Ricoeur’s work, presenting Ricoeur as an eminent philosopher of mediation and discussing how he deals with language, temporality, and the social. Secondly, the chapter problematises the everyday understanding of the concept of technical practice. It establ...

Chapter 4 develops an account of technological mediation that is based on Ricoeur’s narrative theory and linked to the theory of technical practice that was presented in Chap. 3. Firstly, it provides an exposition of Ricoeur’s narrative theory, in particular paying attention to the central theme of emplotment and the three stages of mimesis, the im...

In order to develop a hermeneutic technology ethics, we need a narrative theory of technology and a normative theory, an ethics. This chapter does groundwork for both parts. Firstly, it identifies central gaps in contemporary philosophy of technology (in particular mediation theory): insufficient attention to the role of language, lack of sensitivi...

In the era of digitalization, manufacturing companies expect their growing access to data to lead to improvements and innovations. Manufacturing engineers will have to collaborate with data scientists to analyze the ever-increasing volume of data. This process of adopting data science techniques into an engineering organization is a sociotechnical...

Artificial intelligence can and should help to build a greener, more sustainable world and to deal with climate change. But these opportunities also raise ethical and political issues that need to be addressed if this project is to be successful. For example, the use of AI and the required data centers may involve high energy consumption, vulnerabi...

Postphenomenology and posthermeneutics as initiated by Ihde have made important contributions to conceptualizing understanding human–technology relations. However, their focus on individual perception, artifacts, and static embodiment has its limitations when it comes to understanding the embodied use of technology as (1) involving bodily movement,...

This paper discusses the problem of responsibility attribution raised by the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. It is assumed that only humans can be responsible agents; yet this alone already raises many issues, which are discussed starting from two Aristotelian conditions for responsibility. Next to the well-known problem of many h...

Artificial intelligence powers Google's search engine, enables Facebook to target advertising, and allows Alexa and Siri to do their jobs. AI is also behind self-driving cars, predictive policing, and autonomous weapons that can kill without human intervention. These and other AI applications raise complex ethical issues that are the subject of ong...

Especially in the realm of technology, big data, and new media it is questionable if our traditional understanding of responsibility is able to face current challenges—mostly due to its restricted focus on the autonomous, self-sufficient, individual human being as the genuine responsible agent. The possibility of ascribing responsibility to artific...

This paper aims to contribute to the debate about ethical, legal, and social implications of robotics by discussing the meaning of autonomy. Robots are often labeled as autonomous, but what does “autonomy” in robotics actually mean? In order to answer this question, methods of conceptual analysis and language critique are applied. It turns out that...

Many discussions about robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) focus on far future scenarios such as superintelligence, but for the near future ethics of robotics AI it is necessary to think about more concrete ethical issues that pervade the daily use of the technologies. This talks gives a very brief overview of ethical and societal issues rais...

This book proposes that technologies, similar to texts, novels and movies, ‘tell stories’ and thereby configure our lifeworld in the Digital Age.The impact of technologies on our lived experience is ever increasing: innovations in robotics challenge the nature of work, emerging biotechnologies impact our sense of self, and blockchain-based smart co...

Dreyfus’s work is widely known for its critique of artificial intelligence and still stands as an example of how to do excellent philosophical work that is at the same time relevant to contemporary technological and scientific developments. But for philosophers of technology, especially for those sympathetic to using Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and W...

Robot-assisted therapy (RAT) offers potential advantages for improving the social skills of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). This article provides an overview of the developed technology and clinical results of the EC-FP7-funded Development of Robot-Enhanced therapy for children with AutisM spectrum disorders (DREAM) project, which a...