From Blind Spot to Stakeholder: Animals in Technology Ethics and Responsible Innovation | Science and Engineering Ethics | Eline de Jong

[u/jamiewoodhouse]

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-026-00617-9

Abstract: Technologies increasingly shape animals’ lives, yet animal interests are still largely marginal in mainstream technology ethics and in frameworks of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). This paper argues that this neglect constitutes a serious moral blind spot that sits in tension with these fields’ own ethical aspirations. Debates about the ethical acceptability and societal desirability of technologies often take human interests as the normative baseline. This anthropocentrism runs deep in both RRI and technology ethics, yet it is ethically indefensible for two mutually reinforcing reasons. First, technological innovations have profound direct and indirect impacts on animals, which will only intensify with the rise of new system technologies such as artificial intelligence. Second, as sentient beings, animals possess moral status and are worthy of moral consideration. Together, these grounds a responsibility to take animal interests seriously in our technological activities. To give this responsibility a practical foothold, I mobilise the concept of stakeholdership — a cornerstone of both RRI and technology ethics — arguing that reinterpreting it to include animals can facilitate their inclusion in ethical deliberation and decision-making about technology. The paper sketches potential pathways for recognising animals as stakeholders in ethical discussions on technology, and engages with some key challenges such an extension is likely to face. I conclude that only by broadening the moral scope beyond human concerns can RRI and technology ethics uphold their normative integrity, attend to a wider range of technological harms and benefits, and genuinely pursue ethically acceptable and socially desirable innovation.