Ethics of Knowledge Organization in the Algorithmic Age: Utilitarian Coordination and Constraining Frameworks

Knowledge Organization (KO) is changing rapidly in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). AI now plays a growing role in organizing and classifying documents, while KO principles are being explored for potential application to make AI more fair, transparent, and effective. These changes raise major ethical questions. KO has never been neutral: the way knowledge is labeled and arranged shapes what is seen as legitimate, influences inclusion or exclusion, and reflects cultural values. AI can intensify these effects by creating and applying categories without clear human oversight. While KO ethics research has addressed issues such as bias, intellectual freedom, and cultural representation, it has rarely applied utilitarian approaches, especially in modern forms that combine multiple values and protect rights. This gap matters because AI-based KO systems face complex governance challenges. They need to coordinate the actions of human and machine agents, balance competing values, and plan for long-term impacts. Modern, pluralist utilitarianism offers tools for integrating multiple goals, adapting to change, and maintaining coherence across institutions. This paper argues that such utilitarian coordination is structurally necessary for large-scale, multi-agent KO systems but must be combined with rights-based, virtue, and care ethics to protect core values and ensure fairness, legitimacy, and inclusion in an AI-mediated knowledge environment.