Deborah G. Johnson
American philosopher (born 1945)
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Through Emerging technologies
She was President of the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology and President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology
Her book Computer Ethics (1985) was the first significant textbook in the discipline and rapidly became the main resource used in computer ethics courses at universities.
Career
Johnson earned her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Kansas in 1976. She began her academic career at Old Dominion University and held teaching and research positions at institutions including the University of Kansas, Wayne State University’s Monteith College, Princeton University, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). At RPI, she served as Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS), where she was also Department Chair (1996–1998) and Associate Dean of the School of Humanities & Social Sciences (1990–1992).
From 1998 to 2001, Johnson was Professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she also directed the Program in Philosophy, Science, and Technology and the Master's Program in Public Policy.
In 2001, Johnson joined the University of Virginia (UVA) as the Anne Shirley Carter Olsson Professor of Applied Ethics in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society (later renamed the Department of Engineering and Society) in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. She chaired the department from 2003 to 2012 and served as interim chair in 2021–2022. She retired in 2016 and holds the title of professor emeritus.
Johnson also held an adjunct professorship at the University of Bergen in Norway (2016–2020) as part of the ViSmedia project, where she worked on media, surveillance, and ethical issues in digital technologies.
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Scholarship and research
Johnson's scholarship has been foundational in shaping debates on issues such as computer privacy, surveillance, bias in algorithms, and the ethical responsibilities of engineers.
Her research explores how technology shaped by human values and societal structures, with a focus on sociotechnical systems.
She has authored or edited seven books, including Surveillance and Transparency as Sociotechnical Accountability: A House of Mirrors (with Priscilla Regan, 2014) and Engineering Ethics: Contemporary Debates (2020) for Yale University Press.
She has served on numerous national and international committees on ethics in technology, including advisory roles for the National Science Foundation and the Association for Computing Machinery.
Her work addresses topics such as accountability in artificial intelligence (AI), algorithmic decision-making, surveillance, privacy, and the ethics of autonomous systems. She has led and participated in numerous projects funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, including research on Surveillance and Transparency as Sociotechnical Systems of Accountability and Ethics for Developing Technologies: An Analysis of Artificial Agents. In her early work, Johnson argued that technological advances like computers challenge but do not fundamentally change established moral values and principles. Instead, the introduction of new technologies requires extending and reinterpreting existing moral norms and rules. In the process of extending and reinterpreting, the moral norms do change but stay within the thrust of the established norms and rules. This debate about whether ‘new ethics’ are needed or established moral norms are sufficient for new technologies is often referred to as the uniqueness debate. Johnson argued that new technologies lead to ‘new species of generic moral problems’.
Johnson argues that while computer systems exhibit intentionality and influence human actions, they lack independent moral agency because they do not possess mental states or autonomous intentions.
More recently, Johnson has contributed to discussions on algorithmic accountability especially when it comes to AI systems. Her work stresses that accountability is a social practice and cannot be achieved simply by programming AI.
Awards
She is a winner of the Covey Award, Weizenbaum Award, and Barwise Prize. Johnson is known for her works on the computer ethics and engineering ethics.