Ethical reflection on innovation is necessary to continue safeguarding the values that we find so important within the European Union. This is because society is shaped to a large extent by new technology. Jeroen van den Hoven, Professor of Ethics and Technology at TU Delft and a member of the committee Responsible Innovation (Dutch acronym: MVI) at NWO, is the main author of the Statement ‘Values for the Future: the Role of Ethics in European and Global Governance’. This paper was presented as an advice to the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen in June of this year. ‘The NWO research with respect to responsible innovation plays a significant role within that document.’ 

Fundamental values and rights play an important role in how European Union policy is formed, international politics is shaped and treaties are concluded. These are embedded in the European DNA, so to speak, says Van den Hoven. ‘It is a distinguishing characteristic of Europe in the global arena. For example, if we work on smart solutions for climate change in Europe, we want to do that in accordance with the values that we find important as Europeans. If we make legislation about the use of data and artificial intelligence, then we make those values our starting point. At the same time, another key value is that we continue to do well economically so that we can continue to guarantee the interests and welfare of EU citizens in the future. For this purpose, growth is fortunately more broadly interpreted than merely the growth in GDP. We are having to compete with economies in the world that structurally violate human rights. In essence, the question we face is: how do we make our ethics work? This question also plays a role in shaping responsible innovation, an area we have been researching for many years via the NWO Platform for Responsible Innovation (NWO-MVI). The need for responsible innovation in the Netherlands and abroad is increasingly more pressing. Fortunately, we have a better idea about how to answer these needs thanks to research within NWO-MVI, as well as Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) elsewhere in Europe.’

 

Dutch inspiration in Europe

The NWO-MVI initiative was an important source of inspiration for the European Commission in its thinking about responsible innovation. ‘The core of this approach is that we do not just have an idea about the innovative solutions for major societal challenges, such as the energy transition and climate adaptation, but that we also describe the societal and ethical aspects of these innovations at an early stage. These aspects subsequently play an important role in the design and development process and in embedding new technology. We call this the design approach. Ethical issues are part of those societal aspects. One such question is how inclusive an innovation is. To include such issues and take them seriously, it is necessary to formulate specific design requirements.’ 

Values such as sustainability, health, security, democracy, responsibility, justice, and privacy play an essential role in these societal challenges. Van den Hoven: ‘These values can conflict – for example security and privacy – and the challenge of the innovation process is to realise solutions in which justice can be done to as many of the relevant values as possible. This renders these solutions more acceptable from a societal and ethical viewpoint, and makes it possible to prevent failures or expensive retrospective adaptations. We’re not talking about some sort of academic hobby here, but about the needs of the real world, which can’t wait for smart solutions that are also acceptable from a societal and ethical viewpoint. Furthermore, if you manage with innovation to satisfy more of your societal and moral obligations instead of less, then you have done something good. You could even say that progress is being made, in an ethical or societal sense.’ 

Tension between values: a challenge

In the Statement, the EGE writes that ethics should function more as a compass in innovations and policy-making. By including ethical considerations from the start of designing innovations – as happens in the responsible innovation approach – you view the world in a “richer” way, states Van den Hoven, and sometimes you see more opportunities for innovation. ‘In this way, ethics is no longer seen an obstacle to progress but instead as a catalyst and a compass by which Europe can set its course. These possibly conflicting values can also be viewed as a challenge: you need to be creative to reconcile the differences. Everybody can optimise security by reducing privacy. Everybody can optimise privacy at the expense of investing in opportunities to improve health. Everybody can realise economic growth, while elsewhere others focus on sustainability. However, the crucial, but not immediately obvious innovations that could solve our biggest problems focus on all of the above-listed aspects. Actually, the innovation itself often results from a tension between values.’

Trust is essential

Take privacy and security, for example. ‘We need information about what happens in society in order to control crime. The collection of this information can best be designed in such a way that the privacy of innocent citizens is not put at risk, for example by collecting data in a “coarse-grained” manner. This means that you exclude unnecessarily detailed information about citizens, but include information for specified parties, for specified purposes, under specificconditions, supported by smart Privacy-Enhancing Technologies. The innovations here are also clearly innovations at the system level. The same applies, for instance, to the responsible use of artificial intelligence in healthcare. In its recent report about ethics and AI, to which I was invited to contribute, the WHO also emphasised the importance of a design approach. What is so vitally important in all of this is that users of innovations, European citizens, can trust both industry and government. Citizens must be able to have confidence that the technology which determines their daily lives, protects them and does not, for example, abandon them to economic forces that no influence can be exerted upon. An example here is software that through a wide range of backdoors collects data about us and tries to enslave us to online platforms and misleads us in our choices and purchases.’

Open inclusive innovation

The same applies to the relationship between the citizen and the government. ‘Citizens must be able to trust that their voice counts in the approach to the major transition issues in Europe. Democracy is under pressure due to polarisation, the developments in countries such as Poland and Hungary, and the unstoppable influence of Big Tech and social media. That rich, robust ideal of democracy means, amongst other things, that as many perspectives as possible should be included in the case of innovations. If innovations are designed without taking the various voices and values into account, problems will arise at a later stage and then trust will be lost. Consequently, innovation must be open, participative and inclusive. And that fits entirely within the tradition of Dutch responsible innovation research and our consensus culture.’ 

Ethics embedded in culture

Will the recommendations from the EGE now become a guideline for the European Commission’s policy and governance? ‘Ethics is not an independent, swerving activity but is always embedded in a certain culture – in our case that of Europe’, states Van den Hoven. ‘As EGE, we think that our message precisely fits the European Commission’s current priority with respect to democracy. Innovation takes place in democratic constitutional states that uphold human rights and the rule of law. Here lies the chance to go a step further than we have already done. Like I said previously: we have to make our ethics work. Globally speaking, we already know what we consider important in Europe regarding the relationship between the citizen and government, and between the public and private domains. They have a very different view of such things in China. In my international contacts, I have noticed that people there are also mesmerised by the design thinking of responsible innovation. However, they want to deploy this approach as part of their own values and their own interpretations of international agreements. The European Commission observes geopolitical developments and is aware of a systemic rivalry between power blocs in the world. Ethics is a highly prominent factor in this. And when it comes to the power of Big Tech, there is also a very active EU policy, for example via the competition policy of Commissioner Vestager. The European Commission does not want to be naïve vis-à-vis other powers or big industry, and quite rightly so. A coherent ethical view of innovation, new technology and fundamental values will hopefully help in that respect.’