I guess the idea is to define a "standard" for ethics to which a maximum of people could agree. This will of course be imperfect. But the important thing is that it may challenge some other standards (pure productivity, return on investment, to name just a few). In that sense, even though it is imperfect, it may not be much worse ;)
Technology is definitely and great tool to help us in that direction. Of course, new ethical rules are not going to emerge from AI. Our idea is that if we try and define what we consider as ethics all together, more people will value (and use) it.
RE: Nemethics - A Collective Approach to Develop Decentralized Ethics for the 21th Century