15 - Big Data ethics - Zwitter (2014)
• Hoe zorgt Big Data voor nieuwe machtsverhoudingen tussen verschillende groepen in
onze samenleving? En waarom vragen die nieuwe machtsverhoudingen om een
heroverweging van traditionele ethische opvattingen?
• Welke specifieke ethische uitdagingen stelt het gebruik van Big Data ons voor?
- traditionele ethische opvattingen over Big Data gaan vaak uit van individuele morele
keuzevrijheid waarin het individu de verantwoordelijkheid draagt het moreel juiste te doen
→ Zwitter pleit voor een nieuwe conceptie van ethiek waarbij we onze morele overwegingen niet
meer uitsluitend baseren op het idee van individuele keuzes met voorspelbare uitkomsten
- big data requires ethics to rethink about individual moral agency
- the nature of big data has an impact on the individual’s ability to understand its potential and
make informed decisions
- moral agency: the capability of an individual to make moral decisions based on a conception of
good and evil and to take responsibility for one’s actions
→ the degree to which an entity possesses moral agency determines the responsibility of it
→ determined by three entity innate conditions:
1. causality: an agent can be held responsible if the ethically relevant result is an outcome
of its actions
2. knowledge: an agent can be blamed for the result of its actions if it had knowledge of the
consequences of its actions
3. choice: an agent can be blamed for the result if it had the liberty to choose an alternative
without greater harm for itself
→ when at least one is absent (so no full moral agency), observers excuse agents
- ‘many hands’ problem: if many agents contributed to an (undesirable) effect, it is hard to hold
any individual agent responsible
- the key qualities of big data (as relevant for ethical considerations):
1. there is more data than ever in the history of data
2. big data is organic: represents reality digitally much more naturally than statistical data
3. big data is potentially global: with truly huge big data sets, the reach becomes global
4. big data analyses emphasize correlations over causation
• Hoe zorgt Big Data voor nieuwe machtsverhoudingen tussen verschillende groepen in
onze samenleving? En waarom vragen die nieuwe machtsverhoudingen om een
heroverweging van traditionele ethische opvattingen?
• Welke specifieke ethische uitdagingen stelt het gebruik van Big Data ons voor?
- traditionele ethische opvattingen over Big Data gaan vaak uit van individuele morele
keuzevrijheid waarin het individu de verantwoordelijkheid draagt het moreel juiste te doen
→ Zwitter pleit voor een nieuwe conceptie van ethiek waarbij we onze morele overwegingen niet
meer uitsluitend baseren op het idee van individuele keuzes met voorspelbare uitkomsten
- big data requires ethics to rethink about individual moral agency
- the nature of big data has an impact on the individual’s ability to understand its potential and
make informed decisions
- moral agency: the capability of an individual to make moral decisions based on a conception of
good and evil and to take responsibility for one’s actions
→ the degree to which an entity possesses moral agency determines the responsibility of it
→ determined by three entity innate conditions:
1. causality: an agent can be held responsible if the ethically relevant result is an outcome
of its actions
2. knowledge: an agent can be blamed for the result of its actions if it had knowledge of the
consequences of its actions
3. choice: an agent can be blamed for the result if it had the liberty to choose an alternative
without greater harm for itself
→ when at least one is absent (so no full moral agency), observers excuse agents
- ‘many hands’ problem: if many agents contributed to an (undesirable) effect, it is hard to hold
any individual agent responsible
- the key qualities of big data (as relevant for ethical considerations):
1. there is more data than ever in the history of data
2. big data is organic: represents reality digitally much more naturally than statistical data
3. big data is potentially global: with truly huge big data sets, the reach becomes global
4. big data analyses emphasize correlations over causation
