What are Drones and their Advantages?
Discuss about the Ethics and Social Issues.
Technology has been advancing exponentially to its highest possible level making human life much easier, one such example of a technologically advanced object is a drone. A drone, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is a flying robot that can be controlled by a remote or can fly autonomously by using software’s embedded in it. Back then, drones were created just for military purpose, but nowadays they are so popular and so cheap that almost everyone has a drone in their house. Some drones are specially made for only military purpose and they are equipped with myriads of advance technologies such as infra-red cameras, GPS, laser, weapons, wireless transmitters and many more(Okonkwo, 2017). Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or drone has progressed beyond expectations in recent years. Since, most of the UAVs are designed to overcome difficult terrains, reduce labour cost, reduce maintenance cost, so proliferation could be seen for potential use cases (Haidari et al. 2016).
If rules and regulations are considered, drones could be very helpful for instance, drones could be used for carrying lighter construction objects, providing medicines in areas where land transportation is almost impossible, finding people who are lost in forest and many more.
However, drones have disadvantages too such as ethical issue may arise due to usage of it in illegal areas where they are not allowed to fly any drones, spying people, disturbing people’s privacy and many more. It has several reasons for its use and there are also various different ethical concerns that are analysed by using the theory of Kantianism.
Although drones have been created to help humans but still there some ethical concerns which needs to be taken into consideration before using one. Most of the people who use drones are not aware of rules and regulation that have been put forward by a society or a government, so it is really important to learn all the rules and regulation before using drones. According to West and Bowman (2016), “The ethical ramifications of drone surveillance need to be considered because they are often overlooked or submerged into other decision-making criteria”. Actions performed by drones solely depends on the person controlling it unless the drone is autonomous, so any unethical act performed by autonomous is not a major concern but remote controlled drones are the ones that cause problems in society. Some of the major ethical issues with drones are listed below
- Privacy – Every individual has a fundamental right of having their privacy respected (Wilson 2015) but when a drone is used to stalk another person or is used to take photographs of their private properties then the privacy have not been respected so it could be considered as one of the ethical issues.
- Difficulties created while using too many drones in a limited space – Recently some companies like Amazon have started using drones as their delivery vehicle to deliver small products which is really great but imagine if thousands of drones flew in a limited space over universities or civilian area then drones may collide with one another and could blast which could harm defenceless civilians. In the year 2015 news made headlines as drones killed nearly 200 civilians (Churchill 2016).
- Noise pollution –Noise pollution is one of the ethical problems for almost all technologies. If someone flies a drone in a park when there is no one around then no one will have any problem with the noise however if a person is in the same location then there is a higher chance of that person getting annoyed as drones make a lot of noise.
- Security and Safety– Although UAVs are highly advanced technology but still it poses inability to work safely. As said earlier some drones are equipped with weapons so this kind of drones could be used for killing someone, Luppicini and So (2016) stated that “Granting permission to commercially fly a drone to anyone who can afford to buy one would be a license to kill”.
- Unemployment – Many companies have already started using drones in place of humans for instance pizza shops have started using drones for delivering pizza, shopping site like Amazon and other sites use drones to deliver small items in short period of time. So, in future these drones may replace humans which will eventually lead to unemployment.
Act utilitarianism is a branch of the given concept of utilitarianism which states that a person’s act can be conside4red moral or immoral only when the act produces the best results that are possible in that particular situation. The utilitarian Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill along with Henry Sidwick have described this happiness as a pleasure and the absence of pain. Act utilitarianism aims to define or rather justify an action by determining the best possible situation or the best possible action at that time (Carroll and Buchholtz 2014).
Disadvantages of drones
To understand the concept of this better, an example is provided. If two activities are to be compared which are watching TV till the next day or instead indulging in charity work, it can clearly be understood that charity tends to provide higher benefits to the people and is the best possible action, therefore, in the theory of act utilitarianism charity work will be considered to be more ethical in the given scenario.
As it is a branch of utility, the theory by Jeremy Bentham is a hedonistic theory and it starts with the assumption that humans are hedonistic and they would engage in activities that seek to provide them happiness and pleasure rather than avoiding pain even if the latter is better for the society. According to Fletcher (2013), this theory also reflects on the founder’s thought that the greatest happiness lies in the greatest number.
Some critics of the given theory of act utilitarianism state that the theory sometimes tends to apply a prohibition on the activities involving leisure and aim to concentrate only on those activities that are the best for all (Dewey 2016). They also state that it grants those torturous acts as permissible if they produce enough benefits.
The given theory is very often contrasted with rule utilitarianism which states that a moral action can be in accordance with a moral rule providing maximum happiness. The main difference between the two is that act utilitarianism measures the decision as one time event and its benefits in a similar manner.
According to Crane and Matten (2016), Act utilitarianism suggests that an act can be only considered ethical if it provides maximum benefit. However, the drones although a boon to the mankind and can be considered as a grant of the modern technology, cause various kinds of ethical issues.
These issues related to:
Noise pollution- Drones are known to be causing lot of noise when they are moving about. Therefore, in cases where these drones will be helping the energy department of the government and the users by carrying out their tasks, they will also be harming the environment in general. The environment is a public group and benefits all the beings. Therefore, according to act utilitarianism, drones do not cause the best results in the given situation and are not ethical.
Security and privacy- Drones generally use a camera and a navigation system to reach their required destination. It can be stated that, by using these cameras, they can mitigate the privacy of the people. These drones can also be used by spies and hackers to hack the privacy of the people and other important issues (Woodard 2013). People with evil intentions can make use of these products and spoil the security of people. Hence, comparatively, it might be providing benefit to a selected group of people but it will hamper the happiness of a larger group and therefore this scenario also stands to be an ethical issue in the eyes of the theory.
Unemployment- As stated previously, drones are being used by several businesses and therefore they are taking away the jobs of the people (Durkheim 2013). Although drones prove to be a cheaper option for the business houses and tend to prevent them with various problems related to human resource, they have an impact on the employment of the people and cannot be considered the best action in the given case even though the absence of the drone is causing an inconvenience to the people. Hence, this is an issue related to the drone case with respect to the act utilitarianism.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the discussion it can be stated that technology has advanced greatly and has provided various boons to the different people and has made lives easier, however, it has its own perils. Drones have various ethical issues associated with it and they have a tendency to disrupt the privacy and security of the people. In context of Act Utilitarianism, there are various issues associated with the use of drones as they not provide benefit to a larger mass of people and it is suggested that its use should be restricted.
References
Carroll, A. and Buchholtz, A., 2014. Business and society: Ethics, sustainability, and stakeholder management. Nelson Education.
Churchill, RP 2016, ‘Drone Warfare: Ethical and Psychological Issue’, Ethical Issues with use of Drone Aircraft, vol. 6, no. 6, pp. 31-46.
Crane, A. and Matten, D., 2016. Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.
Dewey, J., 2016. Ethics. Read Books Ltd.
Durkheim, E., 2013. Professional ethics and civic morals. Routledge.
Fletcher, G., 2013. Act Utilitarianism. The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Utilitarianism.
Haidari, LA et al. 2016,‘The economic and operational value of using drones to transport vaccines’,Vaccine, vol. 34, no. 34, pp.4062–4067.
Luppicini, R and So, A 2016, ’Technology in Society’,A technoethical review of commercial drone use in the context of governance ethics and privacy, vol. 46, no. 8 pp.109–119.
Okonkwo, I 2017, DRONE TECHNOLOGY IN NIGERIA: LEGAL CONSIDERATION, viewed 20 December 2017, https://www.academia.edu/35019823/DRONE_TECHNOLOGY_IN_NIGERIA_LEGAL_CONSIDERATION
West, JP and Bowman, JS 2016, ‘The Domestic Use of Drones’, An Ethical Analysis of Surveillance Issues, vol.76, no. 4, pp. 649-659.
Wilson, RL 2015, ‘Ethical issues with use of Drone aircraft’, Ethics in Science, Technology and Engineering, 2015 IEEE International Symposium on, pp.1–4.
Woodard, C., 2013. The common structure of Kantianism and act-utilitarianism. Utilitas, 25(2), pp.246-265.
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