Ethics of Digitalization in Industry

Titelangaben

Manzeschke, Arne ; Brink, Alexander:
Ethics of Digitalization in Industry.
In: Frenz, Walter (Hrsg.): Handbook Industry 4.0 : Law, Technology, Society. - Berlin ; Heidelberg : Springer , 2022 . - S. 903-923
ISBN 978-3-662-64447-8
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-64448-5_48

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Abstract

Ray Kurzweil, a distinguished mastermind of an all-round digitalized future (and, in his role as head of technical development at Google today, someone in a strategically prominent position), presented this description of the problem in the 1990s, when the Internet of Things and convincing Artificial Intelligence were far from reality. Whether one wants to follow his census of a first and second industrial revolution, or rather the census of four striking cuts in the process of industrialization on which this book is based (Industry 1.0: mechanical production with water and steam power, Industry 2.0: mass production with electrical energy, Industry 3.0: automation through electronics and IT, Industry 4.0: digitalization and networking of production) (Schwab 2015), plays only a minor role to questions of orientation. In addition to the social distortions of technical innovation, Kurzweil rightly points to a central problem: the image of the human being, which is changing because of technical developments. “How will we work?” is a less dramatic question than “Who will we be?” One might object, saying that the way we work does not have a considerable influence on how we understand ourselves. In any case, one has to admit that serious moral issues will be put to the test here. What does it mean to lead a self-determined life? What status do machines have when they become our “partners”? How powerful can machines become without endangering us? To reflect on such moral questions is the task of ethics, as the philosopher of technology Gernot Böhme put it: “A moral question in the area of ethics concerned with the formation of an individual mode of living is a question by which it is decided how a person regards himself or herself, and who that person is; a moral question in the field of the public discourse devoted to establishing social norms is a question by which a society regards itself and what it becomes. In each case these are questions in which matters become serious for the individual person or for the society.” (Böhme 2001, p. 9)