Ali E. Abbas (ed.) Next-Generation Ethics: Engineering a Better Society reviewed by Mandi Astola

Next Generation Ethics: Engineering a Better Society is an anthology featuring short chapters on the ethics of engineering, business and technology, intended for a broad audience.The 35 men and eight women who contribute to the volume are mostly ethicists, engineers, lawyers or policy specialists based at universities or technology companies.In terms of topics, the book is heavy on artificial intelligence (AI), data and digital technology, but such topics as management fads, the construction industry and the oil and gas industry are featured too.This is by no means just a review of the ethics of engineering, but also an overview of ethical concerns in engineering practice.It is a broad and comprehensive learning and teaching book to use and discuss rather than a research book to cite.Abbas is professor of industrial and systems engineering and public policy at the University of Southern California at the Sol Price School of Public Policy.He makes clear that the purpose of the book is to explore from various professional perspectives the ethical issues regarding many 'significant features of our era' (p.1).Examples are the design of large-scale systems, social media, artificial intelligence and online transactions.The motivation for compiling the book is to make the ethical sensitivities around technology understandable to a broad spectrum of stakeholders -citizens, engineers, policymakers and business organizations.Chapter 2 introduces a number of distinctions in ethics: prudence, legality and ethics of actions, lying, stealing or harming and positive and negative ethical commitments.The first chapter of Part I explores the question: what kind of ethical code is needed for Internet of Things technologies?The authors recommend a mixture of deontological, teleological and virtue approaches in dealing with this and other emerging technologies.The next chapter outlines some opportunities and problems of immersive technologies, such as the creation of lifelike digital copies of humans.The author identifies three ethical considerations for immersive technologies: deception, emotional manipulation and violation of privacy.Another chapter presents a Hippocratic oath for technologists and another features an ethics and future-themed interview with one of the creators of the internet, Vint Cerf, which includes his musings on the ethics of CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) and whether there is life on other planets.The following chapter outlines issues pertaining to privacy and the greater good, discussing algorithms for predicting depression from tweets as well as the public outrage produced by and the legal responses to similar technologies.The last chapter presents some considerations for implementing AI containers, or technological barriers to AI becoming a threat to humans.Part II, on business enterprises, contains chapters on the management of ethical behaviour in organizations.The first of these gives a brief history of business ethics, seeing big data and algorithms as a 'coming challenge' for business ethics.The second deals with privacy issues that can arise in the digital systems businesses use for internal and supply chain monitoring.The third argues that management fads and badly designed targets -'big, hairy, audacious goals' (p.145) -can easily push employees into unethical behaviour.It recommends a focus on outcomes (such as incentivizing good behaviour) rather than output (such as number of new clients).Another chapter explores the rise of remote and temporary teams and how this affects such values as loyalty in teamwork.The chapter recommends rating systems of employees or a less Orwellian instrument -gossip.A chapter on the need for transparency in organizations features many cautionary tales from companies that lacked transparency.The last chapter recommends that leaders build a culture in which employees feel it their duty to report misconduct.Leaders should also make themselves accountable for the decisions they make.