The most dangerous technologies are those preventing people from having a clear view of the world and the needs of others

Jeroen van den Hoven, Professor of Ethics and Technology and the co-author of Evil Online, answering the following question on the website Gizmodo:

I think the most dangerous technologies are in a sense social or cognitive technologies that prevent people from having a clear view of the world and the needs of others. These technologies are often conducive to dehumanization and invite people to turn into self-obsessed and unthinking individuals. They are like fog machines that create the conditions that make it easy to renounce, deny or turn a blind eye to our common humanity and our human responsibility. They are technologies of bad faith. Those who work on them are often instrumentalized by others and naïve, culpably complicit, or masters in orchestrating plausible deniability for all the future misery and suffering that may ensue.

The way digital technologies—in their social and online applications—have helped to create epistemic chaos is I think one of our most serious threats. Risks and dangers of technologies can be easily downplayed, obscured and denied, so that most think there is nothing wrong. Benefits and the blessings of other technologies may be made to look bad. Despots and villains glorified, heroes and saviors demonized. As Voltaire said: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

Those who haven’t given up on trying to make up their minds about the best way to fight climate change, to figure out how to fight the pandemic, to keep lethal autonomous weapons at bay, to prevent AI-based triage decisions in hospital or targeted dream incubation in marketing and expose deep fakes, have a real hard time finding out what is true and morally acceptable. Many others, I fear, have given up trying to figure out what we ought to do and have become docile or complacent.

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