The digital world is a new chapter in human development. Enabled by extraordinary technological advances, digitalisation has fundamentally transformed the way we live, work and communicate. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics are not merely assisting human beings in their working lives but learning to become just like them, thus threatening to replace human work with higher efficiency. This may conjure extreme cases of total replacement: in modern warfare robots and drones may replace humans on the front lines. Such ‘responsibility’ for machines also raises questions of ethics and liability. To what extent are humans still in control over their mechanic counterparts? Who carries the mandate to design and programme machines as well as to feed them with data? And once systems are operational, what ethical principles and legal regulations are they bound to follow? Who is responsible for the actions of machines and the decisions of algorithms? How prepared are we to deal with the implications of the 4th Industrial Revolution for human thought, labour and interaction?
