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MENTAL MODEL · M5011

Technology Ethics Review

Technology Ethics Review
BehaviormediumOrganizational Behavior
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Updated 2026-09-11

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INTRODUCTION

English translation pending.

CORE DEFINITION

A technology ethics review evaluates a development project for ethical risk, typically through a multidisciplinary committee that examines who is affected and what harm the technology could cause. The practice grew out of research ethics boards and responsible innovation programs in medicine and artificial intelligence. The core claim is that identifying ethical risk early is far cheaper than repairing harm later, because some consequences cannot be reversed once a system is deployed at scale. Key qualifications are that the review must have the power to impose conditions, and that it should continue after launch rather than ending at approval.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

- Convene the reviewers: assemble people from several disciplines rather than only the project team. - Move it early: review at design time when changes are still cheap and reversible. - Attach conditions: make approval contingent on specific mitigations rather than a bare yes.

anchor

Anchor fast decisions

Ethical consequences of a technology appear only once it operates at scale, and by then the design and the data flows are expensive to change and the harm may already be distributed. Bringing several disciplines into the review surfaces effects that the project team, focused on delivery, would not notice. Making approval conditional on mitigations forces those findings into the design, which shifts the cost of ethical risk from after-the-fact repair to before-the-fact adjustment.

MINIMUM ACTION

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Source support: Explicit

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    zh.wikipedia.orghttps://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%8A%80%E8%A1%93%E5%80%AB%E7%90%86ZH · Explicit
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