This presentation will examine emotions and ethics in technological development, trying to connect individual emotions, ‘emotional regimes’ of technological workplaces, and the developers’ reasoning about moral responsibility.
Long abstract:
Emotions have recently become a topic in the critical studies of technology and AI (Ruckenstein 2013, Arnelid, Johnson, Harrison 2022, Su et. al 2021). My research continues this exploration, focusing on the connection between emotions and reasoning around ethical responsibility in technology practitioners' work. I start from the assumption that workplaces are the sites of disciplining, where specific emotional regimes (Reddy 1997) are instilled and sustained to restrict the display of certain emotions in favour of others, e.g. happiness instead of anger. Through a series of interviews with software developers, designers and engineers, engaged in the development of AI-based technology, I examine differences between workplace regimes and their relation to the practitioners reasoning around their moral responsibility. I approach emotions as shared collective phenomena that co-create social categorizations (Ahmed 2004). In my presentation, I will examine how the absence of negative emotions is produced, talk about the specifics of data collection, and present the theoretical underpinnings of this exploration, looking at the connection between emotions as individual mental states, ‘emotional regimes’ of workplaces, and technology practitioners’ reasoning about ethics and moral responsibility.