However, it's only really in the last year that we have really seen digital ethics hit the mainstream, with organisations in the private and public sector focusing their attention and, increasingly, resources, on these matters. So, what's caused this shift? Many organisations underwent an overnight transformation during the pandemic to survive and at the heart of this was the accelerated adoption of more advanced technologies such as automation and artificial intelligence (AI). Organisations are now taking a more serious look at what being data-driven means for them, developing data strategies that could shift entire business models. Without integrating digital ethics into this acceleration, the ethical risks proliferate.

Once upon a time, there was the AAAI 2005 Fall Symposium on Machine Ethics. It is the one event perhaps that I wish I could have attended, otherwise I do not entertain desires of being older. Much of the work in machine ethics can be traced back to the discussions at that seminar, but they also seemed to have spurred many questions that we still find interesting. When the AAAI 2021 Spring Symposium on Implementing AI Ethics was announced, it was not difficult to clear the schedule for "a deeper discussion on how intelligence, agency, and ethics may intermingle in organizations and in software implementations". The 2021 symposium has not per definition been the spiritual descendant of the 2005 seminar, but by composition of participants and discussion structure, I expect great ideas will be developed after this one as well.