Abstract 

Nudges are policy instruments that have caught the attention of more attentive policymakers worldwide. They are gentle pushes that leverage certain human cognitive limitations rather than relying on coercive interventions and economic incentives and disincentives. This workshop will address some ethical aspects related to the pursued outcomes, the use of artificial intelligence tools and social robots, and the status of nudges compared to other forms of influence made available by emerging technologies.

Program

10:00-10:10 (WET) /  Introduction

10:10 - 10:50 / Stefano Calboli (University of Minho)

Toward an Ethical Design of Nudger Social Robots

The literature on the ethics of nudging is extensive, yet there are still unexplored areas. One of these concerns the use of social robots for nudging. In this talk, I aim to address this topic and emphasize the need to pay more attention to the processes involved in nudging. I will discuss three aspects that a process-oriented approach allows to reveal: enhancing safeguards, the ethical status of self-nudging, and a tradeoff between the processes and outcomes of nudging that potentially includes the risk of deceiving.

10:50 - 11:30 / Marta Santos Silva (University of Minho)

Green Nudges: Ethical and Legal Considerations in Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior

With private consumption contributing to over a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, the urgency to mitigate environmental impacts has led both public and private entities to explore Pro-Environmental Behavior (PEB) research, particularly leveraging nudges. While the efficacy of green nudges has been widely debated, their ethical and legal dimensions remain relatively underexplored, especially concerning their compliance with existing laws. Unlike traditional paternalistic nudges, which have sparked ethical concerns, green nudges aim to enhance societal well-being rather than focusing solely on individual improvement. This presentation delves into the ethical and legal considerations guiding the design and implementation of green nudges to ensure they operate within legal frameworks. By scrutinizing the principles that nudgers should adhere to, we aim to shed light on the intersection of ethical practice and legal compliance in promoting pro-environmental behaviour.

11:30 - 12:10 / Cristiana Cerqueira Leal (University of Minho)

Nudging in financial services through AI

Recent advancements in AI promise to revolutionize financial decision-making by leveraging algorithms to process vast amounts of individuals' financial data. AI plays an expanding role in optimizing nudging and has transformative potential in reshaping financial decision-making through hypernudging, gamification, financial recommender systems, and financial assistance.

Break 

14:10 - 14:50  / Viktor Ivankovic (Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb)

What (if anything) morally separates environmental from neurochemical behavioral interventions?

I elaborate several pairs of cases in which nudge-like interventions (EBIs) are compared to neurochemical behavioral interventions (NBI). The intuition is that NBIs are more morally troubling. If this cannot be vindicated, then we should entertain the Similarity Thesis – EBIs and NBIs share moral features to the extent that conclusions about one are implied about the other. I test this thesis by putting forward several possible moral grounds for setting them apart – physical invasiveness, disclosure and avoidance, and inevitability. Though these grounds might not fully vindicate the intuition against Similarity, clustering them together can establish some separation.

14:50 - 15:30 / Bart Engelen (Tilburg University)

 The Ethics of Personalized Digital Nudging

Whenever we use our smartphones to look up information, communicate with others or entertain ourselves, the digital environments we engage with are deliberately designed to shape our behavior. As such, we are continuously exposed to digital nudges. In this paper, I analyze and evaluate the ethical implications of the different ways in which such digital nudges can be personalized. I highlight the distinct ethical worries that arise with specific kinds of personalization, with the aim of assessing to what extent different kinds of personalization lessen or aggravate relevant worries about nudging more generally, such as manipulation and domination.