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With the growth and profound influence of technology on our life, it is important to address the ethical issues inherent to the development and deployment of technology. Researchers and practitioners submit the need to inspect: how technology and ethics interact, how ethical principles regulate technology and what could be the probable future course of action to execute techno-ethical practices in a socio-technical discourse effectively. To address the thoughts related to techno-ethics, the authors of the present study conducted exploratory research to understand the trend and relevance of technology ethics since its inception.

The study collected over 679 documents for the period 1990–2022 from the Scopus database. A quantitative approach of bibliometric analysis was conducted to study the pattern of authorship, publications, citations, prominent journals and contributors in the subject area. VOS viewer software was utilized to visualize and map academic performance in techno-ethics.

The findings revealed that the concept of techno-ethics is an emerging field and requires more investigation to harness its relevance with everchanging technology development. The data revealed substantial growth in the field of techno-ethics in humanities, social science and management domain in the last two decades. Also, most of the prominent cited references and documents in the database tend to cover the theme of Artificial Intelligence, Big data, computer ethics, morality, decision-making, IT ethics, human rights, responsibility and privacy.

The article provides a comprehensive overview of scientific production and main research trends in techno-ethics until 2022. The study is a pioneer in expanding the academic productivity and performance of embedding ethics in technology.

Quantitative analysis of existing literature is conducted to compare the textual features of ethics education in science and technology under the broad theme of ethics in science and technology. On this basis, the authors reveal the research hotspots and topic evolution in this field, and propose development suggestions in conjunction with the 5W theory.

In this paper, the authors visualize the graph and quantify the indicators in four aspects: time series, institutional collaboration, author co-authorship, and research hotspots.

Compared to ethics of science and technology, the research results in the field of ethics of science and technology education are limited. There is still room for improvement in the low density of cooperation between authors and institutions. The research themes are focused on theoretical discussions and countermeasure research. At present, the reform of ethics of science and technology is still in its infancy and has not yet formed a perfect system for education and personnel training. It is necessary for research on the ethical theory of technology to provide theoretical support.

In the context of sustainable development strategies, it is beneficial to explore the path of pedagogical optimization of ethics of science and technology in this study. This includes the maintenance of a good research environment and the realization of a healthy development in the field of science and technology.

As interest in technology ethics is increasing, so is the interest in bringing schools of ethics from non-Western philosophical traditions to the field, particularly when it comes to information and communication technology. In light of this development and recent publications that result from it, this paper aims to present responds critically to recent work on Confucian virtue ethics (CVE) and technology.

Four critiques are presented as theoretical challenges to CVE in technology, claiming that current literature insufficiently addresses: overall applicability, collective ethics issues, epistemic overconfidence within technology corporations and amplification of epistemic overconfidence by the implementation of CVE. These challenges make use of general CVE literature and work on technology critique, political philosophy, epistemology and business ethics.

Implementing CVE in technology may yield some benefits, but these may be outweighed by other outcomes, include strengthening hierarchies, widening inequities, increasing, rather than limiting, predictive activity, personal data collection, misinformation, privacy violations and challenges to the democratic process.

Though not directly advocating against CVE, the paper reveals hitherto unidentified and serious issues that should be addressed before CVE are used to inform ethics guidelines or regulatory policies. It also serves as a foundation for further inquiry into how Eastern philosophy more broadly can inform technology ethics in the West.

This conceptual paper aims to examine theoretical issues in the proactive ethical assessment of technology development, with a focus on uncertainty. Although uncertainty is a fundamental feature of complex technologies, its importance has not yet been fully recognized within the field of ethics. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to study uncertainty in technology development and its consequences for ethics.

Going on the insight of various scientific disciplines, the concept of uncertainty will be scrutinised and a typology of uncertainty is proposed and introduced to ethical theory. The method used is theoretical and conceptual analysis.

The analysis results in questions with regard to the collection of information about the object of assessment (i.e. complex technologies and their development) and the framework of assessment (i.e. ethical theory and its practical aim of guiding the assessment of technology development). Moreover, based on the insights of the analysis of uncertainty, it is argued that substantive ethical theories prove to be inapt for the ethical assessment of complex technology development and therefore require a concomitant procedural approach. The paper concludes with requirements for any future ethics of technology under uncertainty.

The value of the paper consists in establishing the need of researching and incorporating uncertainty in ethics. The results are consequently of practical and theoretical interest for anyone working in the field of ethics and technology.

The purpose of this paper is fourfold: first, to provide the first systematic study on the ethics of blockchain, mapping its main socio-technical challenges in technology and applications; second, to identify ethical issues of blockchain; third, to propose a conceptual framework of blockchain ethics study; fourth, to discuss ethical issues for stakeholders.

The paper employs literature research, research agenda and framework development.

Ethics of blockchain and its applications is essential for technology adoption. There is a void of research on blockchain ethics. The authors propose a first theoretical framework of blockchain ethics. Research agenda is proposed for future search. Finally, the authors recommend measures for stakeholders to facilitate the ethical adequacy of blockchain implementations and future Information Systems (IS) research directions. This research raises timely awareness and stimulates further debate on the ethics of blockchain in the IS community.

First, this work provides timely systematic research on blockchain ethics. Second, the authors propose the first research framework of blockchain ethics. Third, the authors identify key research questions of blockchain ethics. Fourth, this study contributes to the understanding of blockchain technology and its societal impacts.

This paper aims to provide a framework for a code of ethics related to digital and leading edge technologies.

The proposed ethical framework is anchored in data protection legislation, and results from a combination of case studies, observed user behaviour and decision-making processes.

A concise and user-friendly ethical framework ensures the embedded code of conduct is respected and observed by all employees concerned.

An ethical framework aligned with EU data protection legislation is required.

The chapter presents the implementation of ethics education via challenge-based learning (CBL) in three European settings. At TU Eindhoven (the Netherlands), a mandatory first-year User, Society, and Enterprise course on the ethics and history of technology offers a CBL alternative on ethics and data analytics in collaboration with internal student and research teams. The University of Lübeck (Germany) initiated the project CREATE – Challenge-based Learning for Robotics Students by Engaging Start-Ups in Technology Ethics, which enables 60 students in Robotics and Autonomous Systems to integrate ethical and societal considerations into technological development processes, in cooperation with start-ups from a local accelerator. In Spain, CBI-Fusion Point brings together 40 students from business and law (ESADE), engineering and technology (Polytechnic University of Catalonia), and design (IED Barcelona Design University) for an innovation course focused on the application of CERN-developed technologies to real-world problems. The chapter documents the process of setting up three CBL courses that engage students with grand societal topics which require the integration of ethical concerns from the design stage of technological development. The authors also reflect on the challenges of teaching ethics via CBL and the lessons they learned by delivering experiential learning activities rooted in real-life challenges and contexts marked by high epistemic uncertainty. The contribution reflects the transition to remote teaching and presents strategies employed to enhance online communication and collaboration. The chapter thus provides guidance for instructors interested in teaching ethics via CBL and recommends further lines for action and research.

Upon graduating from university, many engineers will work in new product development and/or technology adoption for continuous improvement and production optimization. These jobs require employees to be cognizant of ethical practices and implications for design. However, little engineering coursework, outside the traditional ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) required Engineering Ethics course, accounts for the role of ethics within this process. Because of this, engineering students have few learning opportunities to practice and reflect on ethical decision-making.

This paper highlights one approach to integrating ethics into an engineering course (outside of engineering ethics). Specifically, the study is implemented within a five-week module with a focus on big data ethics, as part of a Supply Chain Management Technology course (required for Industrial Engineering Technology majors), using metacognition as the core assessment.

Four main themes were identified through the qualitative data analysis of the metacognitive reflections: (1) overreliance on content knowledge, (2) time management skills, (3) career connections and (4) knowledge extensions.

Three notable points emerged which contribute to the literature. First, this study showcased one example of how an ethics module can be integrated into an engineering course (other than Engineering Ethics). Second, this study demonstrated how metacognitive reflections can be used to reinforce student self-awareness of the learning process and connections to big data ethics in the workplace. Finally, this study exhibited how metacognitive reflection assignments can be deployed as a teaching and learning assessment tool, providing an opportunity for the instructor to make immediate changes as needed.

The purpose of this paper was to identify whether artificial intelligence (AI) products can possess human rights, how to define their rights and obligations and what ethical standards they should follow. In this study, the human rights ethical dilemma encountered in the application and development of AI technology has been focused on and analyzed in detail in the light of the existing research status of AI ethics.

In this study, first of all, the development and application of AI technology, as well as the concept and characteristics of human rights ethics, are introduced. Second, the human rights ethics of AI technology are introduced in detail, including the human rights endowment of AI machines, the fault liability of AI machines and the moral orientation of AI machines. Finally, the approaches to human rights ethics are proposed to ensure that AI technology serves human beings. Every link of its research, production and application should be strictly managed and supervised.

The results show that the research in this study can provide help for the related problems encountered in AI practice. Intelligent library integrates human rights protection organically so that readers or users can experience more intimate service in this system. It is a kind of library operation mode with more efficient and convenient characteristics, which is based on digital, networked and intelligent information science. It aims at using the greenest way and digital means to realize the reading and research of human rights protection literature in the literature analysis method.

Intelligent library is the future development mode of new libraries, which can realize broad interconnection and sharing. It is people-oriented and can make intelligent management and service and establish the importance of the principle of human rights protection and the specific idea of the principle. The development of science and technology brings not only convenience to people's social life but also questions to be thought. People should reduce its potential harm, so as to make AI technology continue to benefit humankind.