Digital Transformation and Ethics: Ethical Considerations on the Robotization and Automation of Society and the Economy and the Use of Artificial Intelligence

The digitalization, robotization, and automatization of society and of economy and the use of artificial intelligence embrace chances and challenges from an ethical perspective. Due to their moral capability technological progress must receive its ethical orientation from humans. This book discusses digital transformation from an ethical standpoint. After an introduction on the correlation between morality and technology and an assessment of the moral capability of technologies, the book introduces in a first part ethical principles serving the evaluation of the digital transformation of society and of economy and the use of artificial intelligence. In a second part, the digital transformation and its chances and challenges are analyzed from an ethical perspective. In a third part, ethical approaches addressing the challenges are developed. One of the research-focuses of Peter G. Kirchschlaeger (Department of Theology at the University of Lucerne and Visiting Fellow at Yale University) lies on digitalization, robotization, and automatization of society and of economy and the use of artificial intelligence from an ethical perspective.