Eliciting values for technology design with moral philosophy: An empirical exploration of effects and shortcomings

Calls for an ethically aligned technology design have led companies to publish lists of value principles that their engineers should adhere to. However, it is questionable whether such lists can grasp a technology’s wide-ranging ethical implications. The bottom-up elicitation of values from the specific technology context avoids problems that predefined lists of values have but has been criticized for lacking an ethical foundation. In this empirical study, we explore how three grand ethical theories of Western philosophy—utilitarianism, virtue ethics, and deontology—can support the discovery of values. Based on three technologies, our results show that ethical perspectives can support IT professionals in identifying values that are not only context-specific but also cater to higher ethical principles (i.e., intrinsic values) and a broad spectrum of sustainability goals (e.g., economic, technical, individual). Each theory of ethics served a unique role in the identification of ethical issues and value potentials of a technology. However, results also suggest a focus on mainstream values and individual values while environmental issues were neglected. We conclude that theories of ethics encourage different perspectives on a specific technology and thus argue for a pluralist ethical basis for values in technology design.