Trend Trend F: Harmonising technology with human values

Summary

As AI and digital technology spread, digital harms such as copyright infringement, personal data leaks and platform monopolies are intensifying. Biotechnology such as gene editing, life extension and human cloning is raising ethical dilemmas at the same time. Closing the gap between technological progress and social acceptance is bringing global competition over norms and efforts to build social consensus to the fore. The trend groups issues on digital dysfunction and social risk, digital humanism and the social acceptability of biotechnology. Questions of human autonomy, identity and ethical responsibility, raised mainly in science fiction and dropped as a separate megatrend candidate, are also treated within this area and the social megatrend.