Week 15 - IT Ethics

 Cultural Relativism Theory

Cultural relativism is the view that ethical and social standards reflect the cultural context of the background from which they are derived. Cultural Relativists uphold that cultures are fundamentally unlike each other and so are the ethical frameworks that structure relations between different cultures. So according to them, whether an action is wrong or right is determined by the ethical standards of the society that action has took place in. 


As such, the moral norms of a culture can not be evaluated by the ethical standards of another culture.
 

The fundamental logic of Cultural Relativism was established by Franz Boas in the first decades of 20th century and has gotten increasingly popular since then. Boas first articulated Cultural Relativism in 1887 with thoughts that state quote on quote "civilization is not something absolute, but is relative, and our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes."

In the modern day scenario, we all know spying or identity impersonation is considered not ethical in almost all societies. This can be relative tough, within time periods where there is a widely spread misinformation, this can change.

In the current military conflict going on in Ukraine, AI (Artificial Intelligence) is used to scan the faces of perished soldiers and identify key information about them and contact their families by determining their identity. As you can guess, this behavior is not considered ethical in peaceful circumstances because of the privacy right and because the collected data can be used to suppress the opposing voices.

But when in the circumstances of war there are no rules and rather than being viewed as a moral right violation it is a way to express the level of danger and heartbreaks a military conflict can cause, and as a legitimate way to help people with the help of IT solutions.

 References:

https://www.thoughtco.com/cultural-relativism-definition-3026122

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/24/ukraine-facial-recognition-identify-russian-soldiers

 

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