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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SIENNA (Stakeholder-informed ethics for new technologies with high socio-economic and human rights impact)

Teaser

Summary

The SIENNA project is an European Commission-funded project in the Horizon 2020 programme with a budget of â‚¬ 4.0 million and a running time of three and a half years (1 October 2017 â€“ 1 April 2021). It involves a consortium of thirteen organizations from the European Union and other parts of the world including North America, South America, Africa and Asia. It aims to develop enhanced consideration of ethical and human rights issues in new and emerging technologies with major socio-economic impact and human rights relevance. To this effect, it will produce an ethical, legal and human-rights analysis of three such technology areas:

â€¢ human genomics
â€¢ human enhancement
â€¢ human machine interactions, specifically, Artificial Intelligence (AI) & robotics

It will subsequently develop and propose new ethics guidelines and codes and proposals for amending existing ethical and legal frameworks to accommodate for the issues raised by these technology areas. The proposals will be developed in close collaboration with stakeholders, including major national and international professional organizations, industry, policy makers, civil society, and higher education.

The precise objectives of the SIENNA project are the following:

Objective 1: To develop ethical frameworks based on social, ethical and legal analyses that address major present and future ethical issues in (a) human genomics, (b) human enhancement and (c) AI & robotics. These frameworks will take into account existing legal and ethical frameworks as well as stakeholder and public opinion, including the publicâ€™s acceptance and awareness of these technologies.

Objective 2: To translate and adapt these ethical frameworks, in collaboration with relevant stakeholders, so as to produce four practical tools and resources for each technology: (a) operational guidelines for research ethics committees for these technologies, (b) codes of responsible conduct for researchers who develop these technologies, (c) proposals for revisions of existing ethical frameworks, and (d) proposals for revisions of existing legal frameworks, all of which should have acceptance and approval of relevant stakeholders.

Objective 3: To generalise the approaches for developing, translating and adapting ethical frameworks that were established in (1) and (2) so that they can be applied to other new and emerging technologies, and to obtain acceptance from relevant stakeholders for these generalised approaches.

This project is important to society because it considers the ethical and human rights aspects of three major emerging technology areas that will have important socio-economic impact in the European Union and the rest of the world. It is one of very few projects with this focus and the ability to influence EU policy and practices regarding the development and use of these three technologies. It will aim to foster implementation of high ethics standards at EU and international level for the three technology areas through general ethical guidelines for society, codes of responsible conduct for researchers who develop the technologies and end users who use them, and will suggest improvements to existing ethical and legal frameworks. The project will also provide new approaches for developing, translating and adapting ethical frameworks for new and emerging technologies, and such approaches now hardly exist and are needed. The project is unique in its breadth, its international scope, its policy implications, its use of innovative new methodologies for analysis and the formulation of new tools.

Work performed

During the first 12 months of the project (October 2017 - September 2018), the consortium partners worked on:

a) The establishment of the approach and methodology for the project (work package 1, deliverables D1.1, D1.2; completed; with updates to come at month 18)
b) An overview of the state-of-the art in the three technology fields including a broad socio-economic impact assessment (tasks 2.1, 3.1 and 4.1; D2.1, D3.1, D4.1; completed)
c) An analysis of existing legislation in the three technology fields (tasks 2.2, 3.2, 4.2) (in progress)
d) An analysis of existing ethical codes and research ethics protocols in the three technology fields (tasks 2.3, 3.3 and 4.3; D2.3, D3.3, D4.1; completed)
e) An analysis of ethical issues in the three technology fields (tasks 2.4, 3.4 and 4.4), (in progress)
f) A survey of societal acceptance and awareness (tasks 2.5, 3.5 and 4.5) (in progress)
g) The establishment of the communications strategy and initial communications actions (tasks 7.1 through 7.6; D7.1, D7.2, D7.3; deliverables completed, tasks are ongoing)
h) Determination and fulfillment of the ethics requirements and data management plan (tasks 8.3 and 8.4; D8.3 and 8.4; deliverables completed and tasks ongoing)

All objectives for these 12 months were met, the deliverables were completed, and milestones were met. Two deliverables were slightly late (1 and 15 days), and three were one month late with prior permission.

Final results

The SIENNA project will produce many unique reports for which no similar publications exist. It will possibly be the first project to:

- Provide an extensive overview of existing ethics codes and research ethics protocols for human genomics, human enhancement and AI & Robotics in EU member states as well as internationally.
- Provide a comparative legal analysis of legislation for the three fields in EU member states and internationally, especially in relation to human rights issues.
- perform foresight analyses covering human genomics, human enhancement and AI & Robotics and utilize these foresight analysis for the identification of potential future ethical issues in these fields
- perform comprehensive ethical analyses of the three fields, covering both fundamental ethical issues and ethical issues in relation to specific products and application domains, and covering both present and potential future developments
- Conduct quantitative surveys in 11 countries, including in EU member states (7 countries), and one country each from North America, South America, Africa and Asia. the USA, to obtain publicâ€™s awareness and views of the three technology areas.
- Conduct expanded focus groups also referred to in the submission as â€œpanels of citizensâ€ in five EU member states in order to obtain qualitative data to further understand the views of the general publics on these three fields of technologies
- Develop ethical frameworks, guidelines and research ethics protocols for the three fields that include input from a wide range of stakeholders as well as consultations of the public
- Develop generalized methods for legal analysis, ethical analysis, and the development of ethical frameworks and guidelines and research ethics protocols for emerging technologies

Most of these results have not been attained yet, since the project is still in its early stages and we are doing a lot of foundational and preparatory work, although we have already started with dissemination of early results through presentations, interviews, blogs and other media. We expect to produce the listed results over the course of the project, and attain buy-in from relevant stakeholders for our recommendations, many of whom are already committed to the project through our stakeholder advisory board.