Latest news
Latest news
The University of Twente Section of Philosophy and the Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies (ESDiT) programme invite applications for a PhD position.
Upcoming events
We are glad to announce that 4TU.ethics will organize a new PhD course on the Philosophy and Ethics of AI.
Upcoming events
The course runs across five days, with each day covering one dimension of philosophy of technology: metaphysics (May 14 and 15), (meta)ethics (May 16), politics (May 21), applied ethics (May 22).
We are glad to announce that 4TU.ethics will organize a new PhD course on the Philosophy and Ethics of AI.
About the topic
Moral philosophy before the mid-Twentieth Century developed under the implicit assumption that outcomes could be treated as determinate.
Newest blogs
The world is ever-changing, and so are human values. Social media, for example, illustrates why we should take value change seriously.
Newest blogs
The world is ever-changing, and so are human values. Social media, for example, illustrates why we should take value change seriously.
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Statement 4TU.Ethics against use of technology for violence
The 4TU Centre for Ethics and Technology is distraught by the brutal violence against innocent people in Iran, Ukraine, and many other places in the world. In our mission we state that we envision “..a world in which technology is developed and used for benefit of humanity and the preservation of our planet. It is a world in which ethical considerations concerning human rights, well-being, global and inter-generational justice, the social good are systematically included in practices of technology and engineering.”
This is an ideal vision indeed. Throughout human history, technology has been applied to suppress and to attack innocent people, either in warfare or by violent regimes towards their own people. Notwithstanding this repeating history, we are always shocked again, for example now in the ways how the Iranian regime is suppressing Iranian citizens by means of digital technologies (including tracking protesters with spyware on their mobile phones and using facial recognition technologies to identify protesters) and in the drone attacks by the Russian army on Ukrainian technological infrastructures, necessary for all citizens to survive. We cannot but reject such violence. Human rights should be served by technological developments, not violated. We call on all governments and engineers to resist such use of technology.