This book presents a holistic approach to the design and use of drones. It argues that this powerful technology requires high levels of ethical analysis and responsibility – our moral progress must keep pace with our technological progress.
Drone technologies support and diminish the flourishing of certain human values, impact power relations between individuals and groups, and add an additional element to the complex network of humans and objects in modern society. The book begins by introducing four prototype drones designed and built by the author: the healthcare drone, the search and rescue drone, the educational drone, and the spiritual drone. These drones have been developed using a value-sensitive design approach – with values such as human welfare, privacy, trust, environmental sustainability, and justice at the forefront. Ethical analyses and social impacts are taken as design inputs, leading to the creation of better, more responsible drone designs. The book then showcases additional methods used to develop the prototype drones from the fields of engineering, ethics, and art, including ethical frameworks, ethics standards, capability caution, and speculative design. The holistic approach reveals a more subtle and nuanced view of drones than the currently polarized characterization of "the good drone" or "the killer drone". The book concludes with recommendations for drone engineers, companies, lawmakers, and citizens on how to support ethics in drone design.
The Ethics of Drone Design is an essential resource for scholars, advanced students, engineers, and designers interested in the ethics of technology.
Author(s): Dylan Cawthorne
Series: Routledge Research in Applied Ethics
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 154
City: New York
Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
1.1 Drones
1.1.1 Good Drones and Evil Drones
1.2 Ethics
1.2.1 Introduction to Value-Sensitive Design
Note
2 The Healthcare Drone
2.1 The Ethical Phase
2.1.1 Human Welfare
2.1.2 Safety
2.1.3 Security
2.1.4 Privacy
2.1.5 Calmness
2.1.6 Jobs
2.1.7 Justice
2.1.8 Environmental Sustainability
2.1.9 Trust
2.1.10 Explicability
2.1.11 Dual-Use
2.1.12 Misuse
2.2 The Social Phase
2.2.1 Context
2.2.2 Use Plan
2.2.3 Stakeholders
2.2.4 Empirical Investigation
2.3 The Technological Phase
2.3.1 Size and Configuration
2.3.2 Materials
2.3.3 Exterior
2.3.4 Cargo Bay
2.3.5 Power System
2.3.6 Sensors
2.3.7 Control and Autonomy
2.3.8 Support Systems
2.3.9 Summary of Specifications
2.3.10 Performance
2.4 Should This Drone Be Built?
Notes
3 The Search and Rescue Drone
3.1 The Ethical Phase
3.1.1 Human Welfare
3.1.2 Safety
3.1.3 Privacy
3.1.4 Jobs
3.1.5 Environmental Sustainability
3.1.6 Trust
3.1.7 Explicability
3.1.8 Dual-Use
3.1.9 Misuse
3.1.10 Calmness
3.2 The Social Phase
3.2.1 Context
3.2.2 Use Plan
3.2.3 Stakeholders
3.2.4 Empirical Investigation
3.3 The Technological Phase
3.3.1 Description of Materiality
3.3.1.1 Size and Configuration
3.3.1.2 Materials
3.3.1.3 Exterior
3.3.1.4 Power System
3.3.1.5 Sensors
3.3.1.6 Telepresence
3.3.1.7 Control and Autonomy
3.3.1.8 Support Systems
3.3.1.9 Summary of Specifications
3.3.1.10 Performance
3.4 Should This Drone Be Built?
Notes
4 The Sierra Leone Educational Drone
4.1 The Ethical Phase
4.1.1 Human Welfare
4.1.2 Safety
4.1.3 Privacy
4.1.4 Jobs
4.1.5 Justice
4.1.6 Environmental Sustainability
4.1.7 Trust
4.1.8 Explicability
4.1.9 Dual-Use
4.1.10 Misuse
4.2 The Social Phase
4.2.1 Context
4.2.2 Use Plan
4.2.3 Stakeholders
4.2.4 Empirical Investigation
4.3 The Technological Phase
4.3.1 Description of Materiality
4.3.1.1 Size and Configuration
4.3.1.2 Materials
4.3.1.3 Exterior
4.3.1.4 Power System
4.3.1.5 Sensors
4.3.1.6 Control and Autonomy
4.3.1.7 Support Systems
4.3.1.8 Summary of Specifications
4.3.1.9 Performance
5.2.1 Context
5.2.2 Use Plan
5.2.3 Stakeholders
5.2.4 Empirical Investigation
4.4 Should This Drone Be Built?
Note
5 The Spiritual Drone
5.1 The Ethical Phase
5.2 The Social Phase
5.3 The Technological Phase
5.3.1 Description of Materiality
5.3.1.1 Size and Configuration
5.3.1.2 Exterior
5.3.1.3 Materials
5.3.1.4 Payload
5.3.1.5 Power System
5.3.1.6 Sensors
5.3.1.7 Control
5.3.1.8 Support Systems
5.3.1.9 Summary of Specifications
5.3.1.10 Performance
5.4 Should This Drone Be Built?
Note
6 The Theory, Methodology, and Practice
6.1 Embodied Values of Technology
6.2 Human Values
6.2.1 Human Welfare
6.2.2 Privacy
6.2.3 Justice
6.2.4 Trust
6.2.5 Human Autonomy
6.2.6 Informed Consent
6.2.7 Accountability
6.2.8 Identity
6.2.9 Environmental Sustainability
6.3 Value-Sensitive Design
6.3.1 The Ethical Phase Methods
6.3.2 The Social Phase Methods
6.3.3 The Technological Phase Methods
6.3.4 Value Conflicts
6.3.5 Moral Overload
6.3.6 Responsibility
6.4 Methodological Approach
6.4.1 World View
6.4.2 Research Approach
6.4.3 Research Design
6.5 Ethical Frameworks
6.6 Ethics Standards, Certifications, and Labels
6.7 Capability Caution
6.8 Multiple Futures
6.9 Speculative Design
6.10 Art
Notes
7 The Future
7.1 Recommendations
7.1.1 Organizational
7.1.2 For Drone Engineers
7.1.3 For Drone Companies
7.1.4 For Social Scientists
7.1.5 For Ethicists
7.1.6 For Lawmakers
7.1.7 For Citizens
7.2 Conclusion
8 Afterword: The Engineer
8.1 The Individual
8.1.1 Early Life and Career
8.1.2 Education and Professional Experience
8.1.3 Designer Values
8.2 The Context
8.2.1 Collaborators
8.2.2 The Network
8.3 Future Work
Notes
References
Index
