In discussions about digital technologies and related concepts like Industry 4.0, a number of ethical issues are raised regularly. Among these are questions of data protection, data security, decision making in ethical dilemmas and others. However, from a business ethics point of view, these ethical questions are often discussed without a focus on corporate perspectives, even if the players in the field – like the Five Tech Giants – are large companies. I argue that the ethics of digitization urgently needs greater contributions from business ethics. Examples are given from ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things, autonomous cars (in particular, the recent German, worldwide first, ethics code for autonomous cars) and other areas. All these are more than merely technological innovations and have huge societal implications. They can bring with them enormous ethical benefits, but will need not just detailed regulation, but clear ethical rules in order to gain widespread acceptance by citizens in many different countries.
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Front Matter
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Part I: Business and Politics
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Part II: Agency and Responsibility
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Part III: Models for Decision Making
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Part IV: Applied Topics: Technology and the Environment
