Towards ethical agency in the smart home “living place” : on the conception and development of ethical smart home systems by elective projects within computer science education

Abstract

Smart Home applications exert immediate influence on inhabitants. While the widespread availability of supporting frameworks and technologies facilitates ad hoc application development, assessing and designing the impact on inhabitants have to be considered as well. In this paper, we outline a concept for an elective bachelor's project for computer science students planned for the upcoming winter term. This course builds on our experience with two elective courses on the topic of "machine ethics”. In this project, we understand the smart home "LIVING PLACE" at HAW Hamburg and its interior as ethical actors and outline how to advance this viewpoint to a testbed for experimenting with principles of (machine) ethics and embedding ethical values during system development.