Book presentation: EXPONENTIAL ETHICS
Book presentation: EXPONENTIAL ETHICS
What do you fear about the future? Is it robots? Is it our inability to keep up with emerging technologies? Within a few decades, we could see technological changes never before witnessed— ageless societies, software-based immortal humans, cybernetic organisms, and means of transport at lightning speed. Can we coexist with machines that will be smarter, faster, and wiser than humans? Will we blend with technology, or will a new dimension of “humans” emerge? What are the implications of human intervention in evolution, and can we do it responsibly?
Ethics must keep up with the exponential progress of technology. Ethics should leapfrog and facilitate public debates, not only among rulers but also among influential contemporary thinkers, philosophers, scientists, engineers, and prominent science fiction authors. Students should also be empowered to reflect before creating new disruptive innovations. We don’t want to slow down progress; we want to befriend it. This coming decade will be the most pioneering decade in history, and exponential technologies will lead to exponential innovation. We should strive to take this journey, conscious of the risks we are facing, and raise a call to action for openly discussing the social repercussions these technologies could have if left only to their “makers”—a call to action in pursuit of exponential ethics.
NICOLETTA IACOBACCI, PdD, is a global ethics officer who engages executives, thinkers, artists, innovators, entrepreneurs, and students in conversations about ethics and emerging technologies. She is the founder of Ethica.ly, a platform for reflecting on the consequences of exponential innovations and ambassador of Singularity University Geneva. She currently serves as an adjunct professor at Webster University Geneva and at Jinan University in Guangzhou, China, where she is investigating the future implications of technology on society. A board member of major companies, she is also the founder of the Hyperloop Transportation Technology ethical framework, and her book Exponential Ethics, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, will be released December 2018.
Speakers
Nicoletta Iacobacci
Global Ethics Catalyst
Katharina Sand
journalist/editor/senior lecturer
Sarah Grosso
adjunct professor, Webster University