Ethical challenges in the age of digitisation

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung recently published a paper on the ethical challenges of digitisation written by Peter Seele, economist, philosopher and professor of business ethics at USI Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society and Dirk Helbing, professor of Computational Social Science at ETH Zurich. In a number of sci-fi adventure novels, famous authors have taken the literary license to create dystopias in which the Earth is saved by opting for its "depopulation". Today the themes of sustainability, and of accessible resources for all are causing quite a buzz: if on the one hand people make the most of the resources in order to perpetrate their interests, on the other hand they are looking for solutions to better implement Agenda 2030. How to solve the dilemma in reality? As pointed out by the two authors, at the centre of this process are the doubts deriving from practical philosophy, that is, those situations for which there is no pleasant or correct solution, but all possible of actions create a problem. With digitisation, will algorithms take control of all cases where people are not able to express evaluations' And what would the consequences be for the basic principles of democracy and the rule of law? The reflection of the authors on how and whether machines should make moral decisions and which ethical principles should guide their behaviour begins with these basic questions. It all starts from an exemplary dilemma, the so-called " trolley problem ", a thought experiment in ethics that proposes a basic reflection "Which life is worth more in case of an unavoidable crash? Who has to die if not everyone can survive?" The question was taken up in the controversial " Moral Machine Experiment ", which uses the example of automated driving.