GLASNOST · REGULATING STAFF ENHANCEMENT IN ORGANISATIONS (GLASNOST)

REGULATING STAFF ENHANCEMENT IN ORGANISATIONS (GLASNOST)

The transhumanist movement has been actively promoting their vision of the enhanced human, an individual who has increased physical, psychological, and cognitive abilities, and would be therefore happier, for decades. Several individuals in this movement have reached positions of choice, working for companies like Google or campaigning for the US presidency. Recent technological developments also allow to see their philosophy realize itself. Companies are proposing to employees to use exoskeletons, bionic gloves, microchip implants, or wearable technology in order to help them to do their work better, with less effort, with better cognition. The use of these emerging technologies is not ethically nor politically neutral. Opponents to transhumanism are afraid that these technologies are changing our relationship to each other, trigger a race to enhancement, and could lead to power imbalances threatening democracy. These thinkers demand that enhancement is regulated and even forbidden. Such considerations are of importance, however they focus on abstract reasoning and lead the debate to an impasse as they do not consider that the technology is being developed and that not only individual initiative but also organisational initiatives drive human enhancement. Eventually, it is noteworthy that these debates also tend to occur within the American culture, while enhancement is a worldwide phenomenon and ethical reasoning is not the same in every country. There is a governance issue at play. Besides the philosophical and ethical questions raised by human enhancement, there are also managerial questions which emerge with the introduction of new technology. Namely, it is important to understand what drives their acceptation or the resistance to such technology, and how to implement the technology in a responsible manner. Responsible Research and Industry does promote the need to look at technology from, among others, the ethical perspective. Yet, the models of technology acceptation consider only the role of privacy and trust (in the technology) as ethical dimensions. There is a priori a gap between the philosophical considerations of the transhumanists and their opponents, and what is seen as driving acceptation. It is important to see why individuals are ready to accept enhancement technologies and what ethical trade-offs they are making so that the policy-makers can eventually regulate enhancement and prohibit ethical trade-offs which are not in line with what is taken to be the development of a good society. This project aimed primarily at finding a way out of the sterile ideological debates on human enhancement by identifying factors which would lead to an ethically acceptable and accepted implementation of human enhancement technology based on the study of real cases. A secondary goal of the project was to identify the ethical and political considerations attached to the use of enhancement technologies in the workplace, so that the policy-makers can reflect upon them and make decisions pertaining to regulation.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз