新兴技术中的伦理和监管问题

Ethical and Regulatory Issues in Emerging Technologies

新兴技术的主要特点是,它有可能对人和社会带来巨大受益,同时也有可能带来巨大风险,以至会威胁到人类未来世代的健康以及人类的生存;它还具有不确定性、善恶双重用途特性以及会提出一些我们从来没有遇见过的新的伦理挑战。如何在许多因素不确定的情况下对新兴技术的创新、研发和应用方面的风险受益比做出合适的评估,以及尊重作为利益攸关者的人,维护他们作为人的权利和尊严,这是新兴技术的两个基本伦理问题。与此相联系,文章着重讨论为人类造福、伦理先行、公平可及、消除歧视四个方面的伦理问题。关于新兴技术的监管,最为重要的是政府自上而下的监管,要对违规者问责、追责、惩罚,让违规者付出违规成本;同时还应指出,对于新兴技术的监管,政府、科学家、企业三驾马车是不充分的,必须有公共参与,即人文社科专家和公众代表在上游就应参与决策。对新兴技术不确定性的监管,应对的主要办法是采取防范原则,而其前提是:对科学技术风险的评估具有不确定性以及有必要采取行动。

The main characteristics of emerging technologies include: they possibly bring about great benefits to human beings and the society at large, meanwhile they possibly cause great risks to the extent that it might be possible for them to threaten the health of future generations and even human existence;they also have the characteristic such as uncertainty, dual use (benign use and malicious use) and raise some new ethical challenges which we have never ever meet in the past.There are two fundamental ethical issues in emerging technologies, one is how to make appropriate assessment of risks-benefits ratio in the innovation, research and development as well as their applications of emerging technologies when confronting many uncertain factors;and the other is how to respect all stakeholders as person, safeguard their rights and dignity as person.In close connection with what discussed above, this article focused on four ethical issues, such as for people's wellbeing, ethically thinking ahead, equitable access and elimination of discrimination.As for the regulation on emerging technologies, this article focuses on the top-down governmental regulation and accountability which requires the wrongdoers of paying their costs.This article also points out that only the triplet of the government, scientists and enterprises in regulation on emerging technologies is not sufficient, instead, the regulation needs the public engagement, the experts in the humanities and social scientists and the representative of the public should be involved in the decision-making in the upstream.As for the regulation on uncertainty, the main approach is to adopt precautionary principle, the precondition is that there is uncertainty in assessing the risks of the given science and technologies and the need to taking action to counteract against possible negative effects.