Deep Ethics Integration in Technology Research and Development: Bridging the Principles-to-Practice Gap in AI Ethics – and Elsewhere

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In this paper I investigate how integrating ethics deeply into technology research and development can help developers overcome a major obstacle in the ethical alignment of innovation processes, namely, the “principles-to-practice gap”. By reference to a specific ethics intervention made by Berlin Ethics Lab featuring an AI system under development, I show that the gap is not about a failure to operationalize principles for research and development practice, but rather that it originates in divergent styles of thinking: ethical reflection and design thinking. Based on these insights, I elucidate how ethical reflection can be integrated on a foundational level into research and development processes. An essential starting point is the creation of a space for reflection to explore potential designs, a space dedicated to contextualizing and re-conceptualizing technology. This enables an ethical reframing of the design problem, systematic ethical analysis, and an assessment of potential implications. I conclude by presenting the ways in which this approach of deep ethics integration challenges other approaches to integrating ethics at an early stage (such as embedded ethics, STIR, VCIO, ethics by design, and value sensitive design) and demonstrating what additional benefits it has to offer.