Definition: A branch of ethics that studies and evaluates moral problems related to data (including generation, recording, curation, processing, dissemination, sharing and use), algorithms (including artificial intelligence, artificial agents, machine learning and robots) and corresponding practices (including responsible innovation, programming, hacking and professional codes), in order to formulate and support morally good solutions (e.g. right conducts or right values). Data ethics builds on the foundation provided by computer and information ethics but, at the same time, it refines the approach endorsed so far in this research field, by shifting the level of abstraction of ethical enquiries, from being information-centric to being data-centric.This shift highlights the need for ethical analyses to concentrate on the content and nature of computational operations—the interactions among hardware, software and data—rather than on the variety of digital technologies that enable them.
Related terms: computer ethics, information ethics, AI, responsible innovation
Reference: Floridi, L. and Taddeo, M. (2016). What is data ethics?. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 374(2083), p.20160360. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2016.0360