An increasing number of cities around the globe aim to become Smart Cities through the implementation of a range of Information and Communication technologies (ICT), AI applications and cloud-based IoT solutions. While the underlying motivations vary, all such transitions require large amounts of data. In this paper, we articulate and defend two claims about privacy in a Smart City. Our first claim is that some level of systematic data collection and processing is ethically permissible. However, there is an upper limit for what is permissible: We suggest that it is never permissible to collect and process data that significantly undermine people's autonomy. Our second claim specifies when such minor privacy infringements that do not significantly undermine people's autonomy are permissible: We suggest that the only policies legitimized by the first claim are those that promote the collective good.

It could hardly be denied that healthcare should be patient-centred. However, some of the practices commonly described as patient-centred care may have ethically problematic consequences. This article identifies and discusses twelve ethical conflicts that may arise in the application of (some variants of) person-centred care. The conflicts concern e.g. privacy, autonomous decision-making, safeguarding medical quality, and maintaining professional egalitarianism as well as equality in care. Awareness of these potential conflicts can be helpful in finding the best way to ensure that healthcare has its focus on the needs and interests of the patients. Patient-centred care may have to take different forms, depending of the nature of the disease, the patient’s life situation, and the economic, organizational and technological resources available to the healthcare unit.

In this paper we discuss what we believe to be one of the most important features of near-future AIs, namely their capacity to behave in a friendly manner to humans. Our analysis of what it means for an AI to behave in a friendly manner does not presuppose that proper friendships between humans and AI systems could exist. That would require reciprocity, which is beyond the reach of near-future AI systems. Rather, we defend the claim that social AIs should be programmed to behave in a manner that mimics a sufficient number of aspects of proper friendship. We call this “as-if friendship”. The main reason for why we believe that ‘as if friendship’ is an improvement on the current, highly submissive behavior displayed by AIs is the negative effects the latter can have on humans. We defend this view partly on virtue ethical grounds and we argue that the virtue-based approach to AI ethics outlined in this paper, which we call “virtue alignment”, is an improvement on the traditional “value alignment” approach.

This chapter explores how cognitive enhancement, by means of technology, in combination with a commitment to virtue ethics could improve our capacity for responsible decision making. Four examples of cognitive enhancement technologies are discussed: computer training, neurofeedback or electroencephalogram (EEG) biofeedback, transcranial direct stimulation (tDCS) and brain-computer interface (BCI). On describing and critically discussing the potential effects of these technologies it is argued that we ought to adopt a virtue ethical approach to this type of enhancement. Virtue ethics could, for example, provide a moral framework for the heightened cognitive skills to ensure that they are used virtuously and help us make responsible decisions about future technology. It will also be argued that cognitive enhancement and virtue ethics are, in many cases, complementary and indeed necessary for the good life. Plausibly, cultivating the virtues could improve quality of life both for the individual and the collective. 

In this article we argue that (i) the principle of need, on some interpretations, could be used to justify the spending of publically funded health care resources on cognitive enhancement and (ii) that this also holds true for individuals whose cognitive capacities are considered normal. The increased, and to an extent, novel demands that the modern technology and information society places on the cognitive capacities of agents, e.g., regarding good and responsible decision-making, have blurred the line between treatment and enhancement. More specifically, it has shifted upwards. As a consequence, principles of need on their most reasonable interpretations can be used to support publically funded cognitive enhancement. At least this is so, if broader aims than curing and ameliorating diseases are included in the goals of health care. We suggest that it would be plausible to see health care as accepting such broader goals already today.

This chapter takes a closer look at cognitive flexibility. Firstly, we define this core cognitive capacity and explain why it is good to have it to a high degree. Secondly, we examine the link between the meditation techniques promoted here (see Chap. 2 ) and increased cognitive flexibility, as well as the impact on other psychological capacities. Thirdly, we point out that high cognitive flexibility (as an example of such improved psychological capacities) does not guarantee responsible moral decision-making. Consequently we need a robust, and action guiding, moral framework which can anchor these capacities and guide vacillating agents. The chapter finishes with a brief discussion of the connection between improved core cognitive capacities and the installing of a set of key epistemic virtues. This subject is then expanded on in Chap. 5.

On providing a brief summary of the arguments presented in the book Chap. 6 turns to discuss the potential for combining a wider range of life-style practices for greater effects. Examples include classical education, physical as well as mental training and playing specialized computer games. A brief resume of Aristotle’s account of eudaimonia including the idea that agents who are successful in instilling virtues plausibly can be taken to lead happier lives than those who fail to do so is presented. This Chapter also comments on the potential of embedding structures and how such measures might incentivize more pro-social behavior.