Can Ethics Enhance Creative Design Activity?

AbstractThis study exhibits that there exists generative ethics in which ethical thinking will allow us to change our perspectives to consider the artifacts’ social effects in design, thereby enhancing our activity to generate novel and practical design ideas.As an example of practicing the generative ethics, a case for addressing the increasing requirement to properly introduce “artificial intelligence” (AI) systems in society was considered. We applied the ethical design theory to promote the practice of ethical AI design by engineers. To achieve this, we implemented a creativity support tool that can be used based on the knowledge base of AI ethics.To confirm the validity of the theory and the tool, we conducted user experiments in which the AI research students had to consider the effects of their own research projects with using the tool. We could confirm that the tool actually induced the users to consider social impacts. Some students revealed in response to the questionnaire that the experiment provided them with an opportunity to reconsider their own research theme.In this study, the ethical design theory and tool will be briefly reviewed, and the experiments will be discussed.