Building a moral framework for a digital future

The development of digital media in the last decade has been staggering, and the social, cultural and moral consequences of its growth was mostly unforeseen and unprecedented. With the rise of A.I, the recent and constant phenomena of Fake News, and the questionable practices involving businesses storing, gathering and selling personal data, it’s crucial that we consider the sort of future we’re heading towards. The danger, however, is twofold - firstly, we seem to not take the ethical dangers of the future of digital media seriously enough, and secondly, the majority of ethical frameworks which we have built over the centuries are inapplicable to the sorts of ethical issues which a digital world presents. This paper aims to address those two issues, by firstly exploring the complexities of the ethics which Artificial Intelligence, Fake News, and digital personal data present, and then discussing potential methods for ethical evaluation, and precautionary measures for safeguarding users. I shall firstly consider whether artificial intelligence could grow to level of complexity and autonomy that it becomes accountable for its own behaviour, and not the software designers; secondly, how the layout of social media plays a great deal of influence on the spread and power of Fake News; and finally, how our present online lives may come back to haunt us in the future due to the digital storage of personal data.