Incorporating Societal (Social) and Ethical Implications into the Design, Development, and Deployment of Technologies

Abstract

Technologies can have significant ethical and societal impacts. Unfortunately, it has been common for engineers and developers to overlook these concerns as being beyond the scope of their technical responsibilities. Autonomous and Intelligent Systems are making it more difficult to ignore these issues. However, it can be challenging to know where to begin when trying to incorporate societal and ethical concerns into the design, development, demonstration, and deployment of a technology, process, algorithm, or application. The purpose of this paper is to outline a process that can be used to ensure the consideration of ethical and societal impacts during the development process.