Mains Practice Questions

Introduction

Technological advancements such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data, blockchain, and automation have revolutionized administrative processes. While enhancing efficiency, these innovations pose significant philosophical challenges to traditional concepts of ethics and accountability, which are rooted in human agency, transparency, and the public good.

Body

Technological Advancement Posing Challenges to:

• Traditional Administrative Ethics:
  • Dilution of Human Responsibility: Decisions are increasingly made by algorithms, raising questions about accountability.
    • For instance, when AI systems in law enforcement will misidentify individuals, it is unclear whether accountability rests with the developers, administrators, or the system itself.
      • Traditional ethics relies on human judgment, which incorporates empathy and moral reasoning. AI lacks these faculties, leading to ethically ambiguous decisions.
  • Bias in Technology: Algorithms often inherent biases from their training data, leading to discriminatory outcomes, as seen in credit scoring or hiring systems.
    • The principle of fairness, central to administrative ethics, is undermined when systemic biases are perpetuated without human oversight.
  • Erosion of Privacy: The use of big data and AI in governance (e.g., predictive policing, welfare monitoring) intrudes on individual privacy.
    • Privacy is a fundamental ethical value. Excessive surveillance risks treating citizens as subjects rather than stakeholders, contravening principles of human dignity and autonomy.
• Administrative Accountability
  • Opacity of Technology
    • Black Box Algorithms: AI systems often operate as "black boxes" where decision-making processes are opaque even to their developers.
      • This undermines the transparency necessary for holding administrators accountable. Citizens cannot contest decisions whose rationale they cannot understand.
  • Automation of Moral Decisions: Technologies like autonomous vehicles must make moral decisions (e.g., whom to save in an unavoidable accident).
    • Delegating moral dilemmas to machines questions whether ethics can be codified and executed without human discretion.

Reconciling Technology with Administrative Ethics and Accountability:

• Embedding Ethics in Technology: Ethical frameworks such as AI ethics and value-sensitive design must guide the development of technologies.
• Redefining Accountability Frameworks: Accountability must adapt to the distributed nature of technological systems through robust regulation, like the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which holds organizations accountable for AI decisions.
• Balancing Privacy and Efficiency: Administrations must balance surveillance with privacy by employing tools like differential privacy or anonymization in data analytics.
• Human Oversight: Retaining human oversight in critical decisions ensures that moral and ethical considerations are not entirely outsourced to machines.

Conclusion

While technology has the potential to make governance more efficient and equitable, it challenges foundational concepts of ethics and accountability by introducing opacity, diluting responsibility, and eroding privacy. Administrators must ensure that these advancements align with ethical principles through proactive regulation, embedding values in design, and maintaining human oversight.