Welcome to Ethical Engineering, a new monthly column from Design World.
I have been teaching engineering ethics to university engineering students for nearly two decades, and I don’t think that I’ve seen the kind of increased focus on the subject as I have over the last year or two.
What accounts for this seemingly sudden surge of interest? A few things. For one, the general public is more aware of technological or engineering failures — airplane crashes, data breaches, and other big-story type news items. Another is the rise of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and the promises and perils they bring with them.
Such stories give rise to the realization that much of our lives are enmeshed in technological networks of varied kinds, most notably and on a daily basis, the digital. And that there are moral questions and issues that arise from the design and implementation of technology, with real-world implications for human lives.
At the design level, this manifests in the call for more eco-friendly materials and practices, the drive to reduce waste, and designs that are more energy efficient.
In other words, engineering ethics is about thinking through the moral dimensions of engineering work and making the most informed decisions possible at the end of the day. And this matters because those decisions made by design engineers have far-reaching consequences for everybody, perhaps most notably in terms of human health and safety.
Even a recent article from Automate, the Association for Advancing Automation, listed ethical value-based engineering as one of the top trends shaping engineering in 2025, alongside AI and machine learning, sustainability, and smart manufacturing, among others.
This is an acknowledgement that ethical considerations in the design process have moved to center stage, and are no longer tangential concerns as they once were.
So, what can you expect to see in this new Ethical Engineering column? In the broadest sense, it will cover topics relating to engineering and technology ethics, which itself is concerned with the moral issues arising from engineering practice in all the many ways that they present themselves.
For instance, common topics may include issues surrounding risk and safety of any engineered product, component, or system. So, everything from transportation (planes, trains, and automobiles, you might say) and medical devices to bridges and buildings and beyond. And of course, the moral dimensions of our mobile phones, social media, AI, robotics and more.
Alongside such product-specific issues like those above, there are other common issues in the engineering profession. These involve what you might call day-to-day issues in practice such as conflicts of interest, bribery or accepting of gifts and the related issue of undue influence, honesty and data integrity, proper relations between colleagues, as well as relations with suppliers and business partners and customers.
Then there are others: environmental, regulatory, and intellectual property (IP) issues, as well as not only the moral but legal implications of these.
And we’re not done yet!
In addition to these topics, there are questions about the broader societal impacts and implications of new technologies and whether or not these technologies truly serve the public good in some general sense or if they are in fact detrimental to that good. Think of the impact of social media on our culture, both politically and in other senses, the Internet itself, or the opaqueness of algorithms running so much of our activities online. Or the inherently non-transparent (and in fact anti-democratic) proclivities of these algorithms and the companies that deploy them — sometimes for their own self-interest and not necessarily in the best interests of their users.
Lastly (but in no way least), we are excited to be able to present to our readers a panel of engineering and ethics experts from across the spectrum of experience and engineering disciplines who will occasionally weigh in on real-world dilemmas and challenges. These will be drawn from our own readership, and we encourage you to contact us with ethical dilemmas you have faced (or are facing) in the engineering workplace.
This participatory forum will be, we hope, a vital addition to the engineering communities we serve.
We hope you’ll all join us on this new adventure.
Miles Budimir
Senior Editor
Filed Under: NEWS • PROFILES • EDITORIALS
