Ethical & Cultural Issues
Evaluating the fairness and moral consequences of technological advancement.
Examiner's Eye - Avoid the 8-Mark Trap!
The 8-Mark Extended Essay: You are guaranteed to face an 8-mark "Discussion" essay in the exam. To achieve Band 3 (Top Marks), you must explicitly formulate a balanced argument detailing both the Benefits and the Drawbacks for the correct Stakeholders requested in the prompt (e.g., Company vs Customer, Individual vs Society). A heavily one-sided argument will automatically cap your grade severely.
Artificial Intelligence
Benefit: AI works 24/7 without fatigue, saving companies vast amounts on wages, and can perform dangerous tasks removing humans from physical risk.
Drawback: Huge moral implications surrounding Unemployment. Algorithms directly replace human workers (like checkout staff or data analysts), destroying local community incomes and eroding human sociability.
The Digital Divide
The invisible gap between those who have excellent internet/hardware access, and those who do not (due to geography or lower financial income).
Drawback: It creates catastrophic unequal opportunities. Poorer students struggle with online homework, whilst elderly individuals become isolated as essential banking shifts strictly outline.
Planned Obsolescence
Benefit: The company guarantees massive, continuous profit streams by forcing customers into rapid upgrade cycles.
Drawback: Companies unethically intentionally stop software updates for older devices, or use fragile internal components. This creates extreme financial strain for consumers pressured to buy newer models.
Globalisation & Society
Benefit: The internet dissolves borders. Communication is instant worldwide, allowing e-commerce to explode globally.
Drawback: Local high street businesses cannot compete with the aggressive 24/7 pricing of global monopolies like Amazon. Socially, the pressure to conform with global trends impacts mental health.
Interactive Lab: The Stakeholder Scale (AO2)
Scenario: "A national supermarket chain announces it is firing 60% of its local checkout cashiers and replacing them entirely with Autonomous AI Self-Checkout machines."
Task: Drag the arguments onto the scales to balance the 8-mark discussion for both the Company and the Community.
Check Your Understanding
1. You have an 8-mark question about a school forcing all students to implement BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). What is the critical mistake that will severely cap your grade?
2. Which concept perfectly describes a massive smartphone manufacturer deliberately deploying a software update that permanently slows down a two-year-old phone model?
Written Exam Scenario (AO2/AO3)
"A major city introduces a fleet of fully autonomous, AI-driven taxis. Discuss the positive and negative ethical and cultural impacts of this deployment on the city's inhabitants, the human taxi drivers, and the corporation." (8 marks)
Ethical (Programming Algorithms): In an inevitable crash scenario, the AI must explicitly choose who to hit (e.g., swerving into a wall killing the passenger vs hitting pedestrians), forcing developers to ethically value human lives in code.
Cultural (Job Loss): Human taxi drivers across the city will almost instantly lose their livelihoods to automated systems, causing massive economic disruption and cultural distress for their families.