About
Ethics
THE DSI COMMUNITY ETHICS
The use of novel digital technologies poses a broad range of ethical challenges and questions. DSI Community Ethics explores the ethical aspects of digitalization in terms of the following dimensions: normative, empirical and constructive.
The DSI Community Ethics organizes workshops and other meetings for regular exchange and promotion of interdisciplinary research along the normative, empirical and constructive lines. It also supports the DSI as a whole by providing ethical expertise for other research groups and for outreach activities.
Normative dimension:
Empirical dimension:
Constructive dimension:
Community facts
23
Projects
49
Members
THE DIGITAL SOCIETY INITIATIVE (DSI)
What questions about digitalization are on your mind? And how has your life changed with the digital transformation? Digitalization is presenting society and science with new challenges. It is taking hold of a large part of our lives at an ever faster pace.
The Digital Society Initiative (DSI) shapes the digital transformation of society and science. With interdisciplinary activities in research, education and outreach, the DSI is the University of Zurich’s (UZH) competence center on digital transformation.
The DSI is a scientific institution supported by all faculties of the UZH, which promotes independent scientific reflection and innovation on questions of digital transformation. It prepares UZH students to help shape the digital transformation, engages in regular discourse with the public and supports policy-making on digital transformation issues.
Community Activities
The core structure of the DSI Community Ethics is the DSI Digital Ethics Lab (DSI-DEL). The DSI-DEL consists of researchers that work on interdisciplinary projects with a strong focus on ethical questions of digital transformation, whereas (third party) project funding emerged from collaboration in the community. Members of the Digital Ethics Lab are involved in several projects within the National Research Programme (NRP) 75 that explicitly deal with ethical, legal and societal issues that novel technologies and innovations raise.
Furthermore, the Digital Ethic Lab organizes regular Lab Meetings as a learning experience to support interdisciplinary, innovative ethics research. In the lab meetings, researchers present their actual research both to the community as well as to other members of the DSI network. The Digital Ethics Lab Meetings have been integrated as a course module in the DSI Excellence Program.
The online reading group «Interdisciplinary Ethics of Algorithms» is another regular activity in the DSI Ethics Community. The aim of the reading group is to discuss ethical issues in algorithmic decision-making examined from various methodological approaches (philosophy, social sciences, political theory, economics, statistics, and machine learning) and with an initial focus on fairness and non-discrimination, human control, and trust in AI.
The DSI Community Ethics regularly organizes workshops and conferences within and beyond the community. For example, the 2020 conference has been dedicated to the topic of «Trust in Autonomous Machines».
Discover some of our Projects
In order to understand the ethical aspects of digitization, our members carry out various projects.
Membership in the DSI Community Ethics is open to researchers affiliated with a Swiss university. For other individuals, membership is conditional on an ongoing cooperation with the DSI Community. To become a member of a DSI Community, membership in the DSI Network is required. Please follow this link.
DSI Digital Ethics Lab
The core structure of the DSI Ethics Community is the DSI Digital Ethics Lab (DSI-DEL). The DSI-DEL consists of researchers that work on interdisciplinary projects with a strong focus on ethical questions of digital transformation, whereas (third party) project funding emerged from collaboration in the community.