Reflection: Whose Ethics Is Universal?

Prompts to consider

• The dominant AI ethics frameworks treat individual autonomy and consent as foundational. Think of a technology you use daily, a social media platform, a health app, a navigation system. What harms could it cause that an individual-consent model would fail to register, harms to communities, relationships, intergenerational knowledge, or ecological wellbeing?
• Ubuntu says your personhood is constituted by your relationships, you are not a prior individual who then forms connections. Does this feel philosophically true to your own experience? What would need to change in how you think about your rights and responsibilities if it were?
• Ziesche concludes that Western and non-Western approaches should be merged where compatible and reconciled where not. But who decides what counts as compatible? What power dynamics are embedded in the process of 'integrating' non-Western frameworks into a conversation still largely controlled by Western institutions and tech companies?