Abstract
This chapter outlines the features of the professional practice which lead to the necessity for codes of professional ethics, and which underpin the nature and typical content of such codes. There are a variety of codes and regulations regarding professional practices, which may serve different purposes. Members of a profession possess certain skills, knowledge and capacities that their clients and the general public typically lack. This creates a gradient of power and of relative vulnerability between the professional and others. Codes of ethics aim to mitigate the potentially deleterious effects, or the misuse, of such professional power. Codes of professional ethics may be backed up by hard or soft power . Since each profession deals with a certain area of endeavour, codes of professional ethics typically concern themselves with values, benefit and harms in relation to their own area of expertise. Nonetheless, there are general values underlying such codes, even if these are implicit. These may be hard to articulate and may indeed be controversial. The value of autonomy is examined as an example especially relevant to AI. Codes of ethics can only function effectively with both adequate institutional and societal backing. Understanding the history and context of development of codes of ethics is important to understand their underlying values, and especially where social and technological change is occurring. Codes of ethics may develop in response to catastrophe, in anticipation of problems, and with reference to codes of ethics in key areas, and all of these may give rise to problems. Codes of ethics may have certain failings, and in some cases even make a situation worse.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Adams G, Balfour D (2014) Unmasking administrative evil, 4th edn. Routledge, Abingdon
Atkinson P (2009) Ethics and ethnography. Twenty First Century Soc 4(1):17–30. doi:10.1080/17450140802648439
Bartholmew J (2015) Hating the Daily Mail is a substitute for doing good. The Spectator, 18 April 2015
Bazerman MH, Tenbrunsel AE (2011) Blind spots: why we fail to do what’s right, and what to do about it. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
Beauchamp TL, Childress JF (2001) Principles of biomedical ethics. Oxford University Press, New York, NY
Belloc H (1907) Cautionary tales for children: designed for the admonition of children between the ages of eight and fourteen years. Harcourt, New York, NY
Benatar SR, Singer PA (2000) A new look at international research ethics. BMJ 321(7264):824
Berg P, Baltimore D, Brenner S, Roblin RO, Singer MF (1975) Summary statement of the Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA molecules. Proc Natl Acad Sci 72(6):1981–1984
Boddington P, Hogben S (2006) Working up policy: the use of specific disease exemplars in formulating general principles governing childhood genetic testing. Health Care Anal 14(1):1–13
Boddington P, Räisänen U (2009) Theoretical and practical issues in the definition of health: insights from Aboriginal Australia. J Med Philos 34(1):49–67
Boorse C (1975) On the distinction between disease and illness. Philos Public Aff 5:49–68
Bowden P, Surma A (2003) Codes of ethics: texts in practice. Prof Ethics 11(1):19–37
Bowie N (2009) Organisational integrity and moral climates. In: Brenkert GG (ed) Oxford handbook of business ethics, Oxford handbooks online. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Bridges J, Wilkinson C (2011) Achieving dignity for older people with dementia in hospital. Nurs Stand 25(29):42–47
Bryson J (2012) The making of the EPSRC principles of robotics. AISB Q 133(Spring 2012):14–15
Butler J (1827) Fifteen sermons preached at the Rolls Chapel. Hilliard, Grey, Little and Wilkins, Boston, MA
Castilla EJ, Benard S (2010) The paradox of meritocracy in organizations. Adm Sci Q 55(4):543–676. doi:10.2189/asqu.2010.55.4.543
Caulfield T, McGuire AL, Cho M, Buchanan JA, Burgess MM, Danilczyk U, Diaz CM, Fryer-Edwards K, Green SK, Hodosh MA (2008) Research ethics recommendations for whole-genome research: consensus statement. PLoS Biol 6(3):e73
Chambers T (1999) The fiction of bioethics (Reflective bioethics). Routledge, New York, NY
Dawson A (2010) The future of bioethics: three dogmas and a cup of hemlock. Bioethics 24(5):218–225
De Angelis C, Drazen JM, Frizelle FA, Haug C, Hoey J, Horton R, Kotzin S, Laine C, Marusic A, Overbeke AJP (2004) Clinical trial registration: a statement from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Ann Inter Med, 21 Sept 2004
Dingwall R (2008) The ethical case against ethical regulation in humanities and social science research. Twenty First Century Soc 3(1):1–12. doi:10.1080/17450140701749189
Directorate General for Internal Policies, European Union (2016) European civil law rules in robotics. European Parliament.
Duguid MM, Thomas-Hunt MC (2015) Condoning stereotyping? How awareness of stereotyping prevalence impacts expression of stereotypes. J Appl Psychol 100(2):343
European Civil Law Rules in Robotics (2016) European Parliament
Executive Office of the President (2016) Artificial intelligence, automation, and the economy. The White House, Washington, DC
Gulhati CM (2005) A new colonialism? Conducting clinical trials in India. N Engl J Med 352(16):1633
Hammersley M (2009) Against the ethicists: on the evils of ethical regulation. Int J Soc Res Methodol 12(3):211–225
HapMap Iinternational Committee (2004) Integrating ethics and science in the International HapMap Project. Nat Rev Genet 5(6):467
Herxheimer A (2003) Relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and patients’ organisations. BMJ 326(7400):1208
Holm S (2004) Like a frog in boiling water: the public, the HFEA and sex selection. Health Care Anal 12(1):27–39
Houston S (1989) National Aboriginal Health Strategy Working Party. Aborig Isl Health Worker J 13(4):7
Jones M (1999) Informed consent and other fairy stories. Med Law Rev 7(2):103–134. doi:10.1093/medlaw/7.2.103
Laurie GT (2001) Challenging medical-legal norms: the role of autonomy, confidentiality, and privacy in protecting individual and familial group rights in genetic information. J Leg Med 22(1):1–54
MacNaughton D (1988) Moral vision. Blackwell, Oxford
McKerrow RE (1993) Critical rhetoric and the possibility of the subject. In: Angus I, Langsdor L (eds) The critical turn: rhetoric and philosophy in postmodern discourse. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, IL, pp 51–67
McLean B, Elkind P (2013, 2004) The smartest guys in the room: the amazing rise and scandalous fall of Enron. Penguin, London
Mesmer-Magnus JR, Viswesvaran C (2005) Whistleblowing in organizations: an examination of correlates of whistleblowing intentions, actions, and retaliation. J Bus Ethics 62(3):277–297
Milgram S (1974) Obedience to authority. Harper Collins, New York, NY
Moore FD (1989) The desperate case: CARE (costs, applicability, research, ethics). JAMA 261(10):1483–1484
Novas C, Rose N (2000) Genetic risk and the birth of the somatic individual. Econ Soc 29(4):485–513. doi:10.1080/03085140050174750
Padela AI, Malik AY, Curlin F, De Vries R (2015) [Re]considering respect for persons in a globalizing world. Dev World Bioeth 15(2):98–106
Plows A, Boddington P (2006) Troubles with biocitizenship? Genomics Soc Policy 2(3):1–21
Reverby SM (2012) Tuskegee’s truths: rethinking the Tuskegee syphilis study. UNC Press, Chapel Hill, NC
Rhodes R (1998) Genetic links, family ties, and social bonds: rights and responsibilities in the face of genetic knowledge. J Med Philos 23(1):10–30
Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (2016) Science and technology committee. House of Commons, London
Roff HM (2013) Responsibility, liability, and lethal autonomous robots. In: Routledge handbook of ethics and war: just war theory in the 21st century. Routledge, London, pp 352–364
Roff HM (2014) The strategic robot problem: lethal autonomous weapons in war. J Mil Ethics 13(3):211–227
Ross T (1988) Super Duper Jezebel. Anderson Press, London
Shuster E (1997) Fifty years later: the significance of the Nuremberg code. N Engl J Med 337(20):1436–1440. doi:10.1056/NEJM199711133372006
Trash of the Titans (1998) The Simpsons, 9th series, 22nd episode edn
Vinge V (1993) The coming technological singularity: how to survive in the post-human era. In: Proceedings of a Symposium Vision-21: Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering in the Era of CyberSpace, held at NASA Lewis Research Center (NASA Conference Publication CP-10129)—1993
Vollmann J, Winau R (1996) Informed consent in human experimentation before the Nuremberg code. BMJ 313(7070):1445
Williams P, Wallace D (1989) Unit 731 the Japanese Army’s secret of secrets. Hodder and Stoughton, London
Zimbardo P (2008) The Lucifer effect: understanding how good people turn evil. Random House, New York, NY
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Boddington, P. (2017). Codes of Professional Ethics. In: Towards a Code of Ethics for Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence: Foundations, Theory, and Algorithms. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60648-4_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60648-4_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-60647-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-60648-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)