Smart information systems (SIS), those systems that incorporate artificial intelligence techniques, in particular machine learning and big data analytics, are widely expected to have a significant impact on our world. They raise significant hopes, for example to better understand and cure diseases, to revolutionize transport, to optimize business processes or reduce carbon emissions. At the same time, they raise many ethical and social concerns, ranging from worries about biases and resulting discrimination to the distribution of socio-economic and political power and their impact on democracy. A case in point is the discourse on the use of contact tracing apps during the novel coronavirus pandemic. Contact tracing has proven its effectiveness in disease containment for 500 years, but the application of advanced information technologies raises concerns about privacy, discrimination, and exclusion from essential public services to entirely new levels