Soft skills for junior researchers: Value sensitive innovation

Digital technologies are powerful tools to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, technological innovation may intersect with ethical values, social norms, and moral commitments, and may bring unintended harmful consequences or hinder environmental, economic, and social improvements. A responsible way forward proposes addressing human and societal values in the design and development of technologies before they are introduced and integrated in society. This approach helps enhance the sensitivity to values for technology developers and innovators in their day-to-day practices. The seminar consists of lectures on basic concepts, as well as individual and group work through highly interactive exercises, during a one-day in-person session.

Facilitator: Ning Wang Ning is an ethicist and a political scientist based at University of Zurich since 2017. She has a broad research interest in the ethics ass e governance of emerging and future technologies, such as AI, robotics, and autonomous systems. Through empirical studies, she aims to address the ethical, social, legal, and regulatory challenges new technologies pose to society, explore responsive analytical approaches in the understanding and evaluation of them, and propose practical governance tools for the design, development, and use of them. Conceptually, she is interested in exploring philosophical notions such as identity, agency, autonomy, responsibility, justice, and the good life. Methodologically, she seeks to draw on insights gained through trans-disciplinary research in co-creation processes.

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