Types of impacts
Digital technology has a number of effects on wider society including ethical, legal, cultural, environmental and privacy issues. You must consider these issues in the
context of modern advances in technology. A few examples are given below.
Driverless cars
Ethical: decisions about what to do if the car is definitely going to crash
Legal: determining who is responsible in the event of a crash
Cultural: will we use cars on
demand rather than own our own, what will happen to those that drive for a living
Environmental: this may have positive benefits for the environment
Privacy: what happens
to the data of journeys taken
AI and machine learning
Ethical: when is it and when isn't it appropriate to use, is it biassed
Legal: what data is it trained on, is it discriminatory
Cultural: do we need to consider things
like a living wage
Environmental: the computing power needed for AI is ever increasing and this takes vast amounts of power
Privacy: should it be able to train on copyright
data
Computer based implants
Ethical: when is it and when isn’t it appropriate to use, how should testing be managed
Legal: what is allowed? can i get bionic enhanced legs?
Cultural: could it lead
to an imbalance between those who can afford augmentation and those who can't
Environmental: any devices will need to be constructed from finite materials
Privacy: what if
someone could access the data of an implant