Defining ethical guidelines for ambient intelligence applications on a mobile phone.

Abstract

Ambient Intelligence applications based on information and communication technology embedded in our environment and everyday objects raise several ethical issues. Even if ethical principles tend to be easily acceptable they are not so easy to concretize for design guidance. In this paper we describe how we have defined ethical guidelines for ambient intelligence applications on a mobile phone parallel to the development of the mobile phone platform architecture. Our aim has been to define guidelines that are concrete enough to be easy to understand and easy to follow by service and application designers as well as by platform developers. Our work highlights that it is possible and beneficial to study ethical issues when developing platforms and architectures for future applications. In that way we can identify ethical concerns well before the actual commercial application development takes place and we can find solutions to the concerns together with technology developers.