Delft Digital Ethics Centre

Individuals and societies can greatly benefit from the use of data, AI and IT systems that are accountable, explainable, fair, safe, inclusive, and trustworthy. But how can we bridge the gap between abstract ethical discussions on these values and

 concrete digital innovations?

The TU Delft Digital Ethics Centre believes that it is crucial to translate ethical values in design requirements that can be used by engineers, decision and policy makers and regulators. For two decades TU Delft has pioneered a design approach to

ethics of technology and we firmly believe that it is the way to achieve responsible digital technologies both effectively and demonstrably.

As such, we work with engineers and external partners on the central and urgent applications of digital technology and computer science. Those applied projects are supported by research on philosophical and methodological foundations and on epistemic and moral values.

The theoretical research of the Digital Ethics Centre is divided over three main themes:

Digital technologies need to be designed and used responsibly, but how do we go about doing so? We believe that it is crucial to actively design for a range of values. But what are values, how do we identify and specify them, and how do we verify that a piece of technology embodies the relevant values? How do we deal with changing or conflicting values as part of the design process? Research on Conceptual Engineering, Meta-ethics and the Design for Values methodology helps to answer these questions underlying every applied project.

It is crucial to design digital technologies in line with moral values, to understand their societal implications and research the changes in our understanding of moral values due to technologies. How should we construe and realize values such as accountability, autonomy, democracy, fairness and privacy. We carry out philosophical research on different conceptions of these core values: when exactly is an instance of a digital technology fair? How should accountability be distributed when digital technologies are a central part of the decision making process? How does technology change our notion of autonomy? Research on moral values helps to answer questions that are central to designing responsible digital technologies.

Digital technologies provide us with large amounts of new information. How should we interact with this wealth of information? When can we rely on these technologies and under which conditions do we acquire knowledge while using them? How can we make them more transparent and explainable? What information do users need to contest decisions based on automated systems? Research on epistemic values looks at the knowledge-related questions that digital technologies give rise to. Our research helps to set standards on the information that is provided to human users by digital technologies, but also tells us what information is needed to responsibly use, evaluate or overrule digital technologies.