A group of around 40 students attended the premiere of the Lund Sustainable Engineers’ ‘Ethics’ pub’ this Thursday. The idea is to create a forum for future engineers to reflect on the ethic dilemmas concerning their future professions.
Thursday evening. It’s after six p.m., and participants are gathering in Cornelis’ pub. It’s time for the premiere of the Lund Sustainable Engineers, the LSE, Ethics’ pub in the union house. Mikael Novén, the initiator of the Ethics pub, enters the temporary stage. The discussion is to revolve around surveillance technology, and the guest of the evening is Magnus Oskarsson, a University Associate Professor at the Image Processing Department of the Centre for Mathematical Sciences.
Mikael Novén conducts an interview with Magnus Oskarsson on stage and discusses, among other things, how often the subject of ethics is raised in the workplace. At Magnus Oskarsson’s department, technologies are developed to recognize and interpret images that can be used for different types of surveillance.
Together with the audience they also discuss the responsibilities of the engineer in relation to the application of the technology. Magnus Oskarsson explains that the technology can be used to recognize the same face in different pictures, if the idea is to filter pictures of a specific person.
According to Magnus Oskarsson, ethics are rarely discussed during training or in his workplace.
”Even if we’re experts in the field of our profession, we’re not experts in the ethical aspects of technology”, he says.
Magnus Oskarsson himself has not raised any ethical aspects in his classes, as such questions have not been part of the course curriculum.
The discussions during the evening are also driven by student participation, and Mikael Novén often includes the audience in the conversation. He asks the audience if anyone could see themselves working with Image Processing Technology, to which a student answers ”No, I couldn’t because I don’t see this kind of technology leading to anything good”.
Mikael Novén is 23 years old and studies technical nanoscience at the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University.
”I’ve always taken an interest in ethics. I think that the LTH (and its students) are bad at raising issues of how technology impacts society. There was a need for a forum for us to discuss different issues.
He is one of the approximately ten people who got together to organize the event. They would like to create the opportunity for students from different programs to meet up for discussions.
”I think the subject of surveillance technology is relevant for many people. We’ve also thought about including topics like experiments on animals. But that would perhaps be introduced later this spring”.
The idea is that the Ethics’ pub will be held at least twice this spring, but no date has yet been set for the next occasion.
Text: Lovisa Waldeck
Photo: Tim Hansson
Translation: Jesper Lodin