Translating Principles into Practices of Digital Ethics: Five Risks of Being Unethical

“In environmental ethics, greenwashing (Delmas and Burbano 2011) is the malpractice of a private or public actor seeking to appear greener, more sustainable, or ecologically friendlier than it actually is.”

“In the ethics of AI, see for example (Wiener1960; Samuel 1960).”

“Hybrid intelligence models offer significant opportunities for innovation, without delegating professional judgment or ethical accountability to AI systems (Dellermann et al., 2019; Floridi, 2019).”

“…the framework is consistent with the prevailing academic discourse that ethical guidelines such as the CoDE must be translated into practice to provide a valuable impact for organizations (Blackman, 2020; Floridi, 2019; Hickok, 2020; Mittelstadt, 2019; Mökander et al., 2022; Morley et al., 2020).”

“…risk to the overarching governance aim of creating an ‘ecosystem of trust’ as practitioners might adjust ambiguous ethics guidelines to their own ‘optimal criteria’, rather than ‘criteria of social prefer-ability’ (Morley et al ., 2021, p. 243), opening the door to ethics shopping (Floridi, 2019).”

“Moreover, AI regulation is prone to be influences by ideological differences [2] and lobbying by AI companies themselves [27].”

“[ 104] The autonomy paradox emerges in professional contexts.”

“Los desarrolladores y usuarios de sistemas de IA deben asumir la responsabilidad por las decisiones tomadas por estos sistemas, incluso en casos de errores o sesgos (Ramió, 2019; Floridi, 2019).”

“…have dismissed this effort as a form of “ethics theatre” or “ethics washing” in which the professed public statements of ethical self-commitments are mainly a show for outside observers that is ultimately motivated by the industry’s desire to prevent or delay legal regulations [15, 67, 134, 189].”

“Policymakers, ethicists, and legal experts are crucial in ensuring responsible AI deployment [45, 46].”

“Though one would likely still want actual humans farther down the testing pipeline, and there remains the risk of using such systems for further ethics washing (Floridi, 2019), such an application should prove to be very useful in a tool-kit of possible audits.”

“Digital ethics are the moral principles and values that guide individual behavior in the digital world (Floridi, 2019).”

“63 % o f t ec hno l og i ca l w o r k e r s d ec l a r e t h a t t h e y n ee d m o r e ti m e a nd r e s ou r ce s t o t h i nk a bou t t h e i m p ac t o f t h e i r w o r k ( M ill e r & C o l d i c o tt , 2019 ) .”

“This disconnect shares some common ground with the idea of ‘ Ethics Bluewashing ’ proposed by Floridi (2019) and others.”

“Due to the evolving nature of the AI capabilities, a consistently forward-thinking approach is important for reducing risks and making ethical improvements [132,133].”

“In this direction, compliance with international standards and regional legislation on AI is not only limited to technical requirements but is also considered a reflection of ethical responsibility [3, 16].”

“Therefore, decision-makers must utilize transparent, interpretable AI models to critically evaluate technical outputs and maintain ethical oversight as leadership increasingly interacts with algorithms (Azeem al., 2023; Floridi, 2019).”

“Balancing AI-driven innovation with privacy protection is a critical challenge to ensure that technological advancements do not infringe on individual rights [14].”

“Specific risks and more examples are given in [14, 25], but disinformation, impersonation, digital bullying, or copyright violations are rampant due to generative AI.”

“However, there is a robust body of literature raising concerns about the way in which practical problems arising from the development and use of AI are abstracted into vague terms in ethical principles, as well as challenges in operationalizing AI ethics principles in practice (e.g. [25].).”

“This “tick-boxy” nature encourages a sort of ethics-washing, with practitioners shopping-around for theories which, if not strictly endorsing morally divergent aims, do not forbid them (cf. Floridi 2019; Morley et al. 2020).”

“This requires operationalising high-level guidance to match an organisation’s structure, workflows and unique digital challenges (Floridi, 2019; Mittelstadt, 2019; Morley et al., 2020 ; Hickok, 2020; Blackman, 2020; Mökander et al., 2022b ).”

“(Floridi 2019).”

“This should include safeguards for the transparent and ethical use of AI (Floridi 2019; Laker et al. 2020).”

“…the general public, has resulted in the publication of more than 70 reports by large organizations in the last few years according to [8] and [9] points to the need to bring order to the resulting landscape of overabun-dance of ethical codes, guidelines, and frameworks, many of which suffer…”

“Corporations might choose to implement superficial measures to appear more ethically aligned than they are [20].”

“…suggests, attention must be paid as to “how ethics can be effectively and successfully applied and implemented [. . .] to make a positive difference” (Floridi, 2019, p. 185), in order to prevent the translation of “principles into practice [. . .] be[ing] undermined by some ethical risks” (2019,…”

“…sets of AI ethics policies available at present (Algorithm Watch 2020) rather than having “clear, shared, and publicly accepted ethical standards” (Floridi 2019a); (2) ethics bluewashing: pretending to work, or working superficially together towards establishing trustworthy AI instead of…”

“But explanation truthfulness or faithfulness is not an intrinsic or de facto property of XAI algorithms, and this assumption may not hold true unless it is explicitly validated [50, 64].”

“Additionally, ethics can be utilized to achieve marketing objectives [31].”

“(Garfield, 1995; Agrawal & Laukkonen, 2024) Sees no essential “other” to exploit; competitive logic recedes (Josipovic, 2016; 2019; Ho et al., 2023) Detects power-grabbing subgoals early, enabling self-correction (Renze & Guven, 2024) (Cheng et al., 2024) Actively “cares” for all entities,…”

“…principles, or standards to fit with their practices); ethics bluewashing (i.e. the technological version of environmental greenwashing); and ethics dumping (i.e. when unethical practices are done in regions where it is legally permissible or legal controls are simply too lax) (Floridi 2019).”

“Digital ethics, covering moral principles and rules of conduct in the digital world, is becoming an increasingly common concept as technology penetrates the educational process and, in particular, personal life (Floridi, 2019).”

“…current situation in the field, where the ethical turn is obvious: within only a few years, industry, academia, and international organisations have created more than 70 documents (norms, principles, regulations, directives, guidelines) for an ethical AI (Floridi et al. 2021; Morley et al. 2020).”

“These systems are claimed to have the potential to bring a wide-range of socio-economic benefits [14].”

“Ethics washing is described as “the malpractice of making misleading claims about, or implementing superficial measures in favour of, the ethical values and benefits of digital processes [...] in order to appear more digitally ethical than one is” (Floridi, 2021).”

“Whether these are cases of “ethics washing” (Floridi, 2019) or have actual benefit to wellbeing is currently unknown to the public and academia, as research on their effects is not shared publicly.”

“In this context, existing research on AI ethics has largely been discussed from a principle-based perspective, focusing on fairness, transparency, accountability, and explainability (Floridi 2019; Hagendorff 2022; Munn 2023; Wiese et al. 2025).”

“The model further recognizes that meaningful discussions of trust in AI require sustained ethical governance, informed by foundational work in digital philosophy [17].”

“Floridi ( 2019 ) , Bietti ( 2020 ) , and Schultz et al. ( 2024 ) distinguished between AI ethics washing and related phenomena.”

“It is equally important to avoid the exploitation and manipulation of ethics as a corporate means to justify actions retrospectively, commonly referred to as “ethics shopping” (Floridi 2019).”

“Ethics washing, meanwhile, involves organizations presenting superficial ethical commitments or overstating capabilities in responsible/explainable AI to deflect scrutiny (Floridi 2019).”

“Having established this common definition, we outline influences on AI policy across the private [19], [20] and public [5], [6], [19] sectors.”

“As Floridi 73 points out: Digital technologies are not just tools that are limited to changing the way we interact with the world … They are above all systems that shape (format) and increasingly influence the way we understand the world and relate to it, as well as the way we conceive of ourselves…”

“This facilitates "ethics shopping" or "ethics bluewashing" [58], respectively cherry-picking what can be satisfied and using superficial measures in favor of positive appearance.”

“Ethics washing refers to the malpractice of making “unsubstantiated claims” or “imple-menting superficial measures” regarding the ethical value of AI tools to appear ethical (Floridi 2019, p. 3).”

“…aspects of AI systems, and to help steer the development and deployment of such systems in directions that are ethically and socially benefi - cial or preferable (Floridi 2019; Floridi et al. 2018; Hickok 2020; Jobin et al. 2019; Morley et al. 2020; Sætra and Dana-her 2022; Van de Poel 2020).”

“…2021) and produces forms of tokenization of ethics to the bene fi t of the industry (Metcalf et al., 2019), as well as against the inef fi cacy of the released documents, which often translate into forms of ‘ ethics washing ’ (Floridi, 2019) lacking a concrete political impact (van Maanen, 2022).”

“These could confuse non-expert recipients through information overload; provide biased information if mitigation and auditing mechanisms are not set in place [3]; or worse leverage risks connected to intellectual property, trade secret, and third-parties privacy violations [7, 14]; as well as opportunities for gaming…”

“Existing AI ethics guidelines focus the effort on the “what” and fall short on clarifying the operationalization of AI ethics (Floridi 2019; Morley, Elhalal, et al. 2021; Morley, Kinsey, et al. 2021; Vakkuri et al. 2020; Vakkuri and Kemell 2019).”

“…products, services, or other solutions, in other contexts or places (e.g., by European organizations outside the EU) in ways that would be ethically unacceptable in the context or place of origin and (b) importing the outcomes of such unethical research activities’’ (Floridi, 2019, p. 190).”

“It is, however, time for the debate to move from what those ethical principles dictate to how they get implemented.(2) This work presents issues related to the current legal standing on data governance and explores for the first time how the definition of personal and non-personal data may impact personal robots under…”

“Corporate sustainability communication focuses on developing value propositions that address the needs of various stakeholders, particularly regarding social impact [84,85].”

“2017, 2019; Novoa-Heckel et al .”

“[20 – 22] emphasized the transformative impact of AI on society and the need for ethical considerations in AI governance.”

“We, therefore, recommend user empowerment measures, such as the ability to view, review, or adjust the moral or ideological “settings” of chatbots (Floridi 2019).”

“The rapid development of AI enables us to analyze large datasets, provide predictions on trends, and automate traditional processes in many areas (e.g. agriculture, energy, and manufacturing [10]) which can help to make better decisions [8].”

“…trap ’ (Felt et al., 2013), ending up as little more than publicity cam-paigns or attempts at ‘ ethics washing ’ , whereby organizations and companies merely promote ethical awareness for the sake of pro fi t or a favorable public image (Bietti, 2020; Floridi, 2019; Metcalf et al., 2019).”

“Machine-washing, coined by Wagner [48], is a deceptive strategy in AI and algorithms, fabricating an illusory façade of positive change, evading scrutiny, and potentially influencing regulations [49].”

“However, while there is general agreement about the need to build upon concepts like responsibility, transparency, fairness, privacy, sustainability and explicability (Yeung 2020; Hagendorff 2020; Jobin et al. 2019; Floridi 2019), their full adoption and embedding into the design and implementation of algorithmic syst…”

“Luciano Floridi [22] highlighted five unethical risks due to the increase of recommendations related to ethics in artificial intelligence applications: 1.”

“While ethics dumping can apply to any kind of research, it is most serious and most often discussed in health-related and biological contexts where there are international agreements and frameworks and international institutions monitoring their application or enforcement (Floridi 2019).”

“In AI ethics this challenge is currently referred to by the catchphrase “principles-to-practice gap” (e.g. Bleher & Braun, 2023 ; Corrêa et al., 2024; Floridi, 2019; Morley et al., 2020, 2021, 2023; Taddeo et al., 2024; Zhou & Chen, 2023); the issue at stake is the operationalization and…”

“Second, it creates conditions of moral hazard, insofar as the symbolic existence of ethics or AI oversight boards may be invoked to signal due diligence even when their recommendations are not substantively implemented (Floridi 2019a, b; Bovens 2007).”

“Floridi (2019) suggests that private organizations could be encouraged to adhere to ethical norms by adopting explicit and widely acknowledged ethical standards, hence reducing the likelihood of them manipulating their ethical principles.”