The Ethical Balance of Using Smart Information Systems for Promoting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals

Mark Ryan, Josephina Antoniou, Laurence Brooks, Tilimbe Jiya, Kevin Macnish and Bernd Stahl
Additional contact information
Mark Ryan: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Josephina Antoniou: UCLan Cyprus, 7080 Larnaka, Cyprus
Laurence Brooks: Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility, De Montfort University, Leicester LE1 9BH, UK
Tilimbe Jiya: Centre for Sustainable Business Practices (CSBP), University of Northampton, Northampton NN1 5PH, UK
Kevin Macnish: Department of Philosophy, The University of Twente, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
Bernd Stahl: Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility, De Montfort University, Leicester LE1 9BH, UK

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 12, 1-22

Abstract: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are internationally agreed goals that allow us to determine what humanity, as represented by 193 member states, finds acceptable and desirable. The paper explores how technology can be used to address the SDGs and in particular Smart Information Systems (SIS). SIS, the technologies that build on big data analytics, typically facilitated by AI techniques such as machine learning, are expected to grow in importance and impact. Some of these impacts are likely to be beneficial, notably the growth in efficiency and profits, which will contribute to societal wellbeing. At the same time, there are significant ethical concerns about the consequences of algorithmic biases, job loss, power asymmetries and surveillance, as a result of SIS use. SIS have the potential to exacerbate inequality and further entrench the market dominance of big tech companies, if left uncontrolled. Measuring the impact of SIS on SDGs thus provides a way of assessing whether an SIS or an application of such a technology is acceptable in terms of balancing foreseeable benefits and harms. One possible approach is to use the SDGs as guidelines to determine the ethical nature of SIS implementation. While the idea of using SDGs as a yardstick to measure the acceptability of emerging technologies is conceptually strong, there should be empirical evidence to support such approaches. The paper describes the findings of a set of 6 case studies of SIS across a broad range of application areas, such as smart cities, agriculture, finance, insurance and logistics, explicitly focusing on ethical issues that SIS commonly raise and empirical insights from organisations using these technologies.

Keywords: Smart Information Systems (SIS); Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); ethics; case studies; impact (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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