Introducing Ethics by Design in Engineering Education: Designing COVID-19 Tracing Apps

Abstract

Including ethical concepts and considerations in engineering education has attracted significant interest in recent years, mainly due to the impact of some AI applications in different areas of our life. The use of case studies in teaching ethics is a well-known and useful approach. The debate related with a given case study helps students think about the implications, motivations and foreseeable impact of the technologies. This fact is in contrast with the common easy-thinking that technologies are neutral and that an engineer should not bother about ethics and does not have any responsibility at all. While many basic technologies may be considered neutral, more developed and complex systems are not so neutral; they have a motivation and some foreseeable impact and consequences. Thence, the main message is that engineers have a responsibility when developing these systems. This paper presents a case study used in a course for Ph.D. students in a Technical University to introduce the concept of ethics by design and to stress the idea of responsible conduct in engineering. The case under study is the design and development of tracing applications for fighting against the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The analysis of the case requires to understand the basic technologies proposed, the different alternatives considered at that time, the basic facts related with the contagion chain and the main factors to be addressed, the consideration of the balance between public health rights and individual privacy rights, and the social aspects related with the acceptability by citizens.