U.S. human-subjects review has shifted from calibrated protection toward compliance criteria insufficiently traceable to its normative anchor. The paper develops two linked constructs: normative anchor drift, the widening gap betweecn founding norms and institutional practice as operational criteria proliferate without documented justification and reflexivity deficit, the failure of formal responsiveness to correct drift when governance bodies' incentives remain unchanged. Analysis of the 1991 and 2018 Common Rule, IRB burden evidence and institutional history identifies layering, conversion and drift as modes of change. Comparison with Canadian ethics governance and socio-technical integration identifies structural alternatives. The paper proposes re-anchoring, proportionate tiering, and reflexive re-engagement as a non-deregulatory reform agenda. Unlike the 2018 revision, it shifts determinations toward investigators, replaces routine ex ante submission with post-hoc audit, and separates novel-methods reflexivity from IRB compliance. It differs from gain-of-function deregulation and First Amendment challenges to review licensing.
As society moves towards digitalisation, all sectors must adapt their thinking, production processes, and development strategies. We aim to derive an RRI-inspired framework for supporting the transition of traditional industry regions into digitalised ones and to present its practical application in three regions. The framework was implemented through the DigiTeRRI project in three European regions: Värmland (Sweden), Grand-Est (France), and Styria (Austria). The practical application brought together stakeholders of each region to co-create goals, specific objectives, and actions in a roadmap for a joint transition into a digitalised innovation ecosystem. Such a collaborative approach makes the transition to digitalised ecosystems more inclusive, responsible, and tailored to each region's unique needs and strengths. Thus, our research contributes to the operationalisation of RRI by offering a structured way to co-create roadmaps.
The significant disruptive potential of artificial intelligence (AI) demands a more comprehensive approach to regulation, especially those grounded in ethical principles that consider unique AI characteristics and issues. The European Union’s 2024 AI Act is one of the first comprehensive regulations on AI, and promotes safe, trustworthy and responsible development and use of AI. The Act’s consideration of societal implications of AI reflects a core value of the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) literature. RRI proposes that to effectively regulate technology, its potential impacts must be considered while still in development. While the Act does not explicitly refer to RRI, it includes various principles that demonstrate RRI ideals. In this paper, we examine if and how the text of the EU AI Act facilitates RRI, and areas of the EU AI Act that could benefit from additional RRI emphasis. We conclude with considerations of how RRI might be strengthened.
The future of the Earth is increasingly wrapped up in the design and operation of the technosphere: the aggregate technological apparatus and systems built to provide infrastructural support for human societies and the global economy. This relationship between people, technologies, and the biosphere defines the Anthropocene, the period in which human technological capabilities have become global in scale and ambition and planetary in significance and impact. Responsible innovation is thus no longer limited to ethical assessment of the manufacturing or use of individual technologies as tools. It now extends to the ways in which new technologies reconfigure and transform the socio-technological systems that comprise the technosphere, their interactions with Earth systems, the technological and environmental habitats they create for humans and the Earth's other inhabitants, and what it means to live and to experience life in those habitats. This article proposes, therefore, systematic efforts to better come to grips with the global socio-technological systems humanity is now designing, fashioning, and operating and the larger planetary techno-human enterprise - the technosphere - that they add up to. Finding ways to make technospheric systems more visible and analytically tractable is increasingly critical to long-term planetary sustainability and human flourishing, as are understanding, analyzing, and modeling their human and technological structures and dynamics, critically evaluating their implications for what it means to be human and for the Anthropocene Earth; and intentionally designing and redesigning their futures.
Calls for increased attention to societal impacts in research are now commonplace, but mechanisms for achieving this lag. This paper reports on a pilot of a scalable, low-cost mechanism to help manufacturing and materials science researchers assess and improve the societal impacts of their work. The mechanism, a public values statement, scaffolds researchers in assessing plausible economic, environmental, national security, and other public consequences of their research. More focused than conventional ‘broader impacts’ statements, the public values statement is designed to be integrated into research support, funding, or facilities use applications. The statement preparation and evaluation procedure was piloted at a workshop with manufacturing and materials science researchers. The procedure demonstrated the ability to support these researchers in assessing diverse societal impacts of their work, both positive and negative. Additional scaffolding may be required to help researchers develop plans to amplify positive and mitigate negative consequences of their work.
