Technological unemployment and human disenhancement

Ethics and Information Technology 17 (3):201-210 (2015)
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Abstract

This paper discusses the concept of “human disenhancement”, i.e. the worsening of human individual abilities and expectations through technology. The goal is provoking ethical reflection on technological innovation outside the biomedical realm, in particular the substitution of human work with computer-driven automation. According to some widely accepted economic theories, automatization and computerization are responsible for the disappearance of many middle-class jobs. I argue that, if that is the case, a technological innovation can be a cause of “human disenhancement”, globally, and all things considered, even when the local and immediate effect of that technology is to increase the demand of more sophisticated human skills than the ones they substitute. The conclusion is that current innovations in the ICT sector are objectionable from a moral point of view, because they disenhance more people than they enhance.

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Michele Loi
Luiss Guido Carli

Citations of this work

The Philosophical Case for Robot Friendship.John Danaher - forthcoming - Journal of Posthuman Studies.
Automation, Work and the Achievement Gap.John Danaher & Sven Nyholm - 2021 - AI and Ethics 1 (3):227–237.
An evaluative conservative case for biomedical enhancement.John Danaher - 2016 - Journal of Medical Ethics 42 (9):611-618.
Institutions, Automation, and Legitimate Expectations.Jelena Belic - forthcoming - The Journal of Ethics:1-21.

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References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition.John Rawls - 1999 - Harvard University Press.
Natural law and natural rights.John Finnis - 1979 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Welfare, happiness, and ethics.L. W. Sumner - 1996 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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