Computer Ethics

Edited by Lavinia Marin (Delft University of Technology)
About this topic
Summary Computer ethics is a relatively new field of ethical inquiry, although some of its foundational texts range from 1960s. It can be seen as either a field of applied ethics (ethics applied to computers) or as form of professional ethics, but, more widely, as an attempt to re-think the human condition in light of digital technology developments. Fundamental ethical topics in this area include: responsibility, privacy, surveillance, automation and autonomy, the good life online, evil online, etc.
Key works Weckert, John (ed.). Computer ethics. Routledge, 2017 is an edited collection containing a selection of fundamental texts in computer ethics ranging from the 1960's until 2004.  Another comprehensive book is van den Hoven & Weckert 2008Information Technology and Moral Philosophy (2008)
Introductions Moor 1985  Floridi 2010 Müller 2012
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  1. The impacts of AI futurism: an unfiltered look at AI's true effects on the climate crisis.Paul Schütze - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (2):1-14.
    This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the impact of AI technologies on the climate crisis beyond their mere resource consumption. To critically examine this impact, I introduce the concept of AI futurism. With this term I capture the ideology behind AI, and argue that this ideology is inherently connected to the climate crisis. This is because AI futurism construes a socio-material environment overly fixated on AI and technological progress, to the extent that it loses sight of the existential threats (...)
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  2. Tailoring responsible research and innovation to the translational context: the case of AI-supported exergaming.Sabrina Blank, Celeste Mason, Frank Steinicke & Christian Herzog - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (2):1-16.
    We discuss the implementation of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) within a project for the development of an AI-supported exergame for assisted movement training, outline outcomes and reflect on methodological opportunities and limitations. We adopted the responsibility-by-design (RbD) standard (CEN CWA 17796:2021) supplemented by methods for collaborative, ethical reflection to foster and support a shift towards a culture of trustworthiness inherent to the entire development process. An embedded ethicist organised the procedure to instantiate a collaborative learning effort and implement RRI (...)
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  3. Fiduciary requirements for virtual assistants.Leonie Koessler - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (2):1-18.
    Virtual assistants (VAs), like Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant, and Apple’s Siri, are on the rise. However, despite allegedly being ‘assistants’ to users, they ultimately help firms to maximise profits. With more and more tasks and leeway bestowed upon VAs, the severity as well as the extent of conflicts of interest between firms and users increase. This article builds on the common law field of fiduciary law to argue why and how regulators should address this phenomenon. First, the functions of VAs (...)
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  4. Socializing the political: rethinking filter bubbles and social media with Hannah Arendt.Zachary Daus - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (2):1-10.
    It is often claimed that social media accelerate political extremism by employing personalization algorithms that filter users into groups with homogenous beliefs. While an intuitive position, recent research has shown that social media users exhibit self-filtering tendencies. In this paper, I apply Hannah Arendt’s theory of political judgment to hypothesize a cause for self-filtering on social media. According to Arendt, a crucial step in political judgment is the imagination of a general standpoint of distinct yet equal perspectives, against which individuals (...)
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  5. Use case cards: a use case reporting framework inspired by the European AI Act.Emilia Gómez, Sandra Baldassarri, David Fernández-Llorca & Isabelle Hupont - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (2):1-23.
    Despite recent efforts by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community to move towards standardised procedures for documenting models, methods, systems or datasets, there is currently no methodology focused on use cases aligned with the risk-based approach of the European AI Act (AI Act). In this paper, we propose a new framework for the documentation of use cases that we call use case cards, based on the use case modelling included in the Unified Markup Language (UML) standard. Unlike other documentation methodologies, we (...)
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  6. Quantum Technologies in Industry 4.0: Navigating the Ethical Frontier with Value-Sensitive Design.Steven Umbrello - 2024 - Procedia Computer Science 232:1654-1662.
    With the emergence of quantum technologies such as quantum computing, quantum communications, and quantum sensing, new potential has emerged for smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0. These technologies, however, present ethical concerns that must be addressed in order to ensure they are developed and used responsibly. This article outlines some of the ethical challenges that quantum technologies may raise for Industry 4.0 and presents the value sensitive design methodology as a strategy for ethics-by-design of quantum computing in Industry 4.0. This research (...)
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  7. What is conceptual disruption?Samuela Marchiori & Kevin Scharp - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-14.
    Recent work on philosophy of technology emphasises the ways in which technology can disrupt our concepts and conceptual schemes. We analyse and challenge existing accounts of conceptual disruption, criticising views according to which conceptual disruption can be understood in terms of uncertainty for conceptual application, as well as views assuming all instances of conceptual disruption occur at the same level. We proceed to provide our own account of conceptual disruption as an interruption in the normal functioning of concepts and conceptual (...)
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  8. Intentional astrobiological signaling and questions of causal impotence.Chelsea Haramia - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-9.
    My focus is on the contemporary astrobiological activity of Messaging ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (METI). This intentional astrobiological signaling typically involves embedding digital communications in powerful radio signals and transmitting those signals out into the cosmos in an explicit effort to make contact with extraterrestrial others. Some who criticize METI express concern that contact with technologically advanced extraterrestrial life could be seriously harmful to Earth or humanity. One popular response to this critique of messaging is an appeal to causal impotence sometimes referred (...)
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  9. AI and the need for justification (to the patient).Anantharaman Muralidharan, Julian Savulescu & G. Owen Schaefer - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-12.
    This paper argues that one problem that besets black-box AI is that it lacks algorithmic justifiability. We argue that the norm of shared decision making in medical care presupposes that treatment decisions ought to be justifiable to the patient. Medical decisions are justifiable to the patient only if they are compatible with the patient’s values and preferences and the patient is able to see that this is so. Patient-directed justifiability is threatened by black-box AIs because the lack of rationale provided (...)
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  10. Digital Slot Machines: Social Media Platforms as Attentional Scaffolds.Cristina Voinea, Lavinia Marin & Constantin Vică - forthcoming - Topoi:1-11.
    In this paper we introduce the concept of attentional scaffolds and show the resemblance between social media platforms and slot machines, both functioning as hostile attentional scaffolds. The first section establishes the groundwork for the concept of attentional scaffolds and draws parallels to the mechanics of slot machines, to argue that social media platforms aim to capture users’ attention to maximize engagement through a system of intermittent rewards. The second section shifts focus to the interplay between emotions and attention, revealing (...)
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  11. Why converging technologies need converging international regulation.Dirk Helbing & Marcello Ienca - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-11.
    Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, gene editing, nanotechnology, neurotechnology and robotics, which were originally unrelated or separated, are becoming more closely integrated. Consequently, the boundaries between the physical-biological and the cyber-digital worlds are no longer well defined. We argue that this technological convergence has fundamental implications for individuals and societies. Conventional domain-specific governance mechanisms have become ineffective. In this paper we provide an overview of the ethical, societal and policy challenges of technological convergence. Particularly, we scrutinize the adequacy of (...)
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  12. Socially disruptive technologies and epistemic injustice.J. K. G. Hopster - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-8.
    Recent scholarship on technology-induced ‘conceptual disruption’ has spotlighted the notion of a conceptual gap. Conceptual gaps have also been discussed in scholarship on epistemic injustice, yet up until now these bodies of work have remained disconnected. This article shows that ‘gaps’ of interest to both bodies of literature are closely related, and argues that a joint examination of conceptual disruption and epistemic injustice is fruitful for both fields. I argue that hermeneutical marginalization—a skewed division of hermeneutical resources, which serves to (...)
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  13. Moral sensitivity and the limits of artificial moral agents.Joris Graff - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-12.
    Machine ethics is the field that strives to develop ‘artificial moral agents’ (AMAs), artificial systems that can autonomously make moral decisions. Some authors have questioned the feasibility of machine ethics, by questioning whether artificial systems can possess moral competence, or the capacity to reach morally right decisions in various situations. This paper explores this question by drawing on the work of several moral philosophers (McDowell, Wiggins, Hampshire, and Nussbaum) who have characterised moral competence in a manner inspired by Aristotle. Although (...)
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  14. Mark Weiser and the Origins of Ubiquitous Computing. [REVIEW]Dustin Gray - 2024 - Metascience.
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  15. Moral Attribution in Moral Turing Test.Mubarak Hussain - 2023 - International Conference on Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry May 16-18, 2023 Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Usa.
    This paper argues Moral Turing Test (MTT) developed by Allen et al. for evaluating morality in AI systems is designed inaptly. Different versions of the MTT focus on the conversational ability of an agent but not the performance of morally significant actions. Arnold and Scheutz also argue against the MTT and state that without focusing on the performance of morally significant actions, the MTT is insufficient. Morality is mainly about morally relevant actions because it does not matter how good a (...)
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  16. Telepresence as a social-historical mode of being. ChatGPT and the ontological dimensions of digital representation.Alexandros Schismenos - 2024 - Lessico di Etica Pubblica (1-2/2023):37-52.
    Nel 1956, in piena guerra fredda, una conferenza di scienziati al Dartmouth College negli Stati Uniti annunciò il lancio di un audace progetto scientifico, l’Intelligenza Artificiale (I.A.). Dopo l’iniziale fallimento degli sforzi della “Hard AI” di produrre un’intelligenza simile a quella umana, alla fine del XX secolo è emerso il movimento della “Soft AI”. Invece di essere orientato a imitare il comportamento umano in relazione a compiti specifici, ha preferito cercare modi alternativi di eseguire i compiti basati sulle particolari funzioni (...)
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  17. AI for crisis decisions.Tina Comes - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-14.
    Increasingly, our cities are confronted with crises. Fuelled by climate change and a loss of biodiversity, increasing inequalities and fragmentation, challenges range from social unrest and outbursts of violence to heatwaves, torrential rainfall, or epidemics. As crises require rapid interventions that overwhelm human decision-making capacity, AI has been portrayed as a potential avenue to support or even automate decision-making. In this paper, I analyse the specific challenges of AI in urban crisis management as an example and test case for many (...)
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  18. Design culture for Sustainable urban artificial intelligence: Bruno Latour and the search for a different AI urbanism.Otello Palmini & Federico Cugurullo - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-12.
    The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between AI urbanism and sustainability by drawing upon some key concepts of Bruno Latour’s philosophy. The idea of a sustainable AI urbanism - often understood as the juxtaposition of smart and eco urbanism - is here critiqued through a reconstruction of the conceptual sources of these two urban paradigms. Some key ideas of smart and eco urbanism are indicated as incompatible and therefore the fusion of these two paradigms is assessed (...)
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  19. Is moral status done with words?Miriam Gorr - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-11.
    This paper critically examines Coeckelbergh’s (2023) performative view of moral status. Drawing parallels to Searle’s social ontology, two key claims of the performative view are identified: (1) Making a moral status claim is equivalent to making a moral status declaration. (2) A successful declaration establishes the institutional fact that the entity has moral status. Closer examination, however, reveals flaws in both claims. The second claim faces a dilemma: individual instances of moral status declaration are likely to fail because they do (...)
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  20. Ethics of generative AI and manipulation: a design-oriented research agenda.Michael Klenk - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-15.
    Generative AI enables automated, effective manipulation at scale. Despite the growing general ethical discussion around generative AI, the specific manipulation risks remain inadequately investigated. This article outlines essential inquiries encompassing conceptual, empirical, and design dimensions of manipulation, pivotal for comprehending and curbing manipulation risks. By highlighting these questions, the article underscores the necessity of an appropriate conceptualisation of manipulation to ensure the responsible development of Generative AI technologies.
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  21. Diversity and language technology: how language modeling bias causes epistemic injustice.Fausto Giunchiglia, Gertraud Koch, Gábor Bella & Paula Helm - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-15.
    It is well known that AI-based language technology—large language models, machine translation systems, multilingual dictionaries, and corpora—is currently limited to three percent of the world’s most widely spoken, financially and politically backed languages. In response, recent efforts have sought to address the “digital language divide” by extending the reach of large language models to “underserved languages.” We show how some of these efforts tend to produce flawed solutions that adhere to a hard-wired representational preference for certain languages, which we call (...)
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  22. Embracing grief in the age of deathbots: a temporary tool, not a permanent solution.Aorigele Bao & Yi Zeng - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-10.
    “Deathbots,” digital constructs that emulate the conversational patterns, demeanor, and knowledge of deceased individuals. Earlier moral discussions about deathbots centered on the dignity and autonomy of the deceased. This paper primarily examines the potential psychological and emotional dependencies that users might develop towards deathbots, considering approaches to prevent problematic dependence through temporary use. We adopt a hermeneutic method to argue that deathbots, as they currently exist, are unlikely to provide substantial comfort. Lacking the capacity to bear emotional burdens, they fall (...)
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  23. Correction to: Weapons of moral construction? On the value of fairness in algorithmic decision-making.Simona Tiribelli & Benedetta Giovanola - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-1.
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  24. The conceptual exportation question: conceptual engineering and the normativity of virtual worlds.Thomas Montefiore & Paul-Mikhail Catapang Podosky - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-13.
    Debate over the normativity of virtual phenomena is now widespread in the philosophical literature, taking place in roughly two distinct but related camps. The first considers the relevant problems to be within the scope of applied ethics, where the general methodological program is to square the intuitive (im)permissibility of virtual wrongdoings with moral accounts that justify their (im)permissibility. The second camp approaches the normativity of virtual wrongdoings as a metaphysical debate. This is done by disambiguating the ‘virtual’ character of ‘virtual (...)
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  25. Engineers on responsibility: feminist approaches to who’s responsible for ethical AI.Eleanor Drage, Kerry McInerney & Jude Browne - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-13.
    Responsibility has become a central concept in AI ethics; however, little research has been conducted into practitioners’ personal understandings of responsibility in the context of AI, including how responsibility should be defined and who is responsible when something goes wrong. In this article, we present findings from a 2020–2021 data set of interviews with AI practitioners and tech workers at a single multinational technology company and interpret them through the lens of feminist political thought. We reimagine responsibility in the context (...)
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  26. Building trust with digital democratic innovations.Anna Mikhaylovskaya & Élise Rouméas - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-14.
    Digital Democratic Innovations (DDIs) have largely been conceived of, by the academic community, as a possible solution to the crisis of representative democracy. DDIs can be defined as initiatives or institutions designed with the goal of deepening citizens’ participation and influence on political decisions through the use of digital tools and platforms. There is a hope that DDIs (as well as usual, non-digital DIs) could help nurture political trust in governing institutions. Yet the vast majority of research on trust and (...)
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  27. How to teach responsible AI in Higher Education: challenges and opportunities.Andrea Aler Tubella, Marçal Mora-Cantallops & Juan Carlos Nieves - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-14.
    In recent years, the European Union has advanced towards responsible and sustainable Artificial Intelligence (AI) research, development and innovation. While the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI released in 2019 and the AI Act in 2021 set the starting point for a European Ethical AI, there are still several challenges to translate such advances into the public debate, education and practical learning. This paper contributes towards closing this gap by reviewing the approaches that can be found in the existing literature and (...)
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  28. The Duty to Promote Digital Minimalism in Group Agents.Timothy Aylsworth & Clinton Castro - 2024 - In Kantian Ethics and the Attention Economy: Duty and Distraction. Palgrave Macmillan.
    In this chapter, we turn our attention to the effects of the attention economy on our ability to act autonomously as a group. We begin by clarifying which sorts of groups we are concerned with, which are structured groups (groups sufficiently organized that it makes sense to attribute agency to the group itself). Drawing on recent work by Purves and Davis (2022), we describe the essential roles of trust (i.e., depending on groups to fulfill their commitments) and trustworthiness (i.e., the (...)
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  29. Can machine learning make naturalism about health truly naturalistic? A reflection on a data-driven concept of health.Ariel Guersenzvaig - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-12.
    Through hypothetical scenarios, this paper analyses whether machine learning (ML) could resolve one of the main shortcomings present in Christopher Boorse’s Biostatistical Theory of health (BST). In doing so, it foregrounds the boundaries and challenges of employing ML in formulating a naturalist (i.e., prima facie value-free) definition of health. The paper argues that a sweeping dataist approach cannot fully make the BST truly naturalistic, as prior theories and values persist. It also points out that supervised learning introduces circularity, rendering it (...)
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  30. Digital twins, big data governance, and sustainable tourism.Eko Rahmadian, Daniel Feitosa & Yulia Virantina - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (4):1-22.
    The rapid adoption of digital technologies has revolutionized business operations and introduced emerging concepts such as Digital Twin (DT) technology, which has the potential to predict system responses before they occur, making it an attractive option for smart and sustainable tourism. However, implementing DT software systems poses significant challenges, including compliance with regulations and effective communication among stakeholders, and concerns surrounding security, privacy, and trust with the use of big data. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a documentation framework (...)
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  31. Public health measures and the rise of incidental surveillance: Considerations about private informational power and accountability.B. A. Kamphorst & A. Henschke - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (4):1-14.
    The public health measures implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in a substantially increased shared reliance on private infrastructure and digital services in areas such as healthcare, education, retail, and the workplace. This development has (i) granted a number of private actors significant (informational) power, and (ii) given rise to a range of digital surveillance practices incidental to the pandemic itself. In this paper, we reflect on these secondary consequences of the pandemic and observe that, even though (...)
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  32. Conceptualising and regulating all neural data from consumer-directed devices as medical data: more scope for an unnecessary expansion of medical influence?Brad Partridge & Susan Dodds - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (4):1-8.
    Neurodevices that collect neural (or brain activity) data have been characterised as having the ability to register the inner workings of human mentality. There are concerns that the proliferation of such devices in the consumer-directed realm may result in the mass processing and commercialisation of neural data (as has been the case with social media data) and even threaten the mental privacy of individuals. To prevent this, some argue that all raw neural data should be conceptualised and regulated as “medical (...)
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  33. The Right to Break the Law? Perfect Enforcement of the Law Using Technology Impedes the Development of Legal Systems.Bart Custers - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (4):1-11.
    Technological developments increasingly enable monitoring and steering the behavior of individuals. Enforcement of the law by means of technology can be much more effective and pervasive than enforcement by humans, such as law enforcement officers. However, it can also bypass legislators and courts and minimize any room for civil disobedience. This significantly reduces the options to challenge legal rules. This, in turn, can impede the development of legal systems. In this paper, an analogy is made with evolutionary biology to illustrate (...)
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  34. Should we embrace “Big Sister”? Smart speakers as a means to combat intimate partner violence.Robert Sparrow, Mark Andrejevic & Bridget Harris - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (4):1-13.
    It is estimated that one in three women experience intimate partner violence (IPV) across the course of their life. The popular uptake of “smart speakers” powered by sophisticated AI means that surveillance of the domestic environment is increasingly possible. Correspondingly, there are various proposals to use smart speakers to detect or report IPV. In this paper, we clarify what might be possible when it comes to combatting IPV using existing or near-term technology and also begin the project of evaluating this (...)
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  35. Computer Ethics – Basic Problems and the Question of Its Foundation.Slobodan Sadžakov - 2023 - Filozofska Istrazivanja 43 (1):147-169.
    In this paper we have looked at some of the fundamental issues in computer ethics and the characteristics and specific problems of its constitution as a discipline. One of the important issues we have analysed is the problem of access (methods) to a number of new phenomena that have emerged as a result of the wider application of computer technology. Among other things, we pointed out the need to respect the ethical heritage and approach – as a basis for a (...)
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  36. The landscape of data and AI documentation approaches in the European policy context.Josep Soler-Garrido, Blagoj Delipetrev, Isabelle Hupont & Marina Micheli - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (4):1-21.
    Nowadays, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is present in all sectors of the economy. Consequently, both data-the raw material used to build AI systems- and AI have an unprecedented impact on society and there is a need to ensure that they work for its benefit. For this reason, the European Union has put data and trustworthy AI at the center of recent legislative initiatives. An important element in these regulations is transparency, understood as the provision of information to relevant stakeholders to support (...)
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  37. Generative AI models should include detection mechanisms as a condition for public release.Alistair Knott, Dino Pedreschi, Raja Chatila, Tapabrata Chakraborti, Susan Leavy, Ricardo Baeza-Yates, David Eyers, Andrew Trotman, Paul D. Teal, Przemyslaw Biecek, Stuart Russell & Yoshua Bengio - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (4):1-7.
    The new wave of ‘foundation models’—general-purpose generative AI models, for production of text (e.g., ChatGPT) or images (e.g., MidJourney)—represent a dramatic advance in the state of the art for AI. But their use also introduces a range of new risks, which has prompted an ongoing conversation about possible regulatory mechanisms. Here we propose a specific principle that should be incorporated into legislation: that any organization developing a foundation model intended for public use must demonstrate a reliable detection mechanism for the (...)
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  38. Smart cities as a testbed for experimenting with humans? - Applying psychological ethical guidelines to smart city interventions.Verena Zimmermann - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (4):1-15.
    Smart Cities consist of a multitude of interconnected devices and services to, among others, enhance efficiency, comfort, and safety. To achieve these aims, smart cities rely on an interplay of measures including the deployment of interventions targeted to foster certain human behaviors, such as saving energy, or collecting and exchanging sensor and user data. Both aspects have ethical implications, e.g., when it comes to intervention design or the handling of privacy-related data such as personal information, user preferences or geolocations. Resulting (...)
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  39. Person, thing, Robot: a moral and legal ontology for the 21st century and beyond: by David Gunkel. [REVIEW]Abootaleb Safdari - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (4):1-4.
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  40. Violent video games: content, attitudes, and norms.Alexander Andersson & Per-Erik Milam - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (4):1-12.
    Violent video games (VVGs) are a source of serious and continuing controversy. They are not unique in this respect, though. Other entertainment products have been criticized on moral grounds, from pornography to heavy metal, horror films, and Harry Potter books. Some of these controversies have fizzled out over time and have come to be viewed as cases of moral panic. Others, including moral objections to VVGs, have persisted. The aim of this paper is to determine which, if any, of the (...)
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  41. Current State of AI Governance.Jovana Davidovic - 2022 - Babl Ai Reports.
  42. The Metaverse: Virtual Metaphysics, Virtual Governance, and Virtual Abundance.Cody Turner - 2023 - Philosophy and Technology 36 (4):1-8.
    In his article ‘The Metaverse: Surveillant Physics, Virtual Realist Governance, and the Missing Commons,’ Andrew McStay addresses an entwinement of ethical, political, and metaphysical concerns surrounding the Metaverse, arguing that the Metaverse is not being designed to further the public good but is instead being created to serve the plutocratic ends of technology corporations. He advances the notion of ‘surveillant physics’ to capture this insight and introduces the concept of ‘virtual realist governance’ as a theoretical framework that ought to guide (...)
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  43. The contested role of AI ethics boards in smart societies: a step towards improvement based on board composition by sortition.Ludovico Giacomo Conti & Peter Seele - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (4):1-15.
    The recent proliferation of AI scandals led private and public organisations to implement new ethics guidelines, introduce AI ethics boards, and list ethical principles. Nevertheless, some of these efforts remained a façade not backed by any substantive action. Such behaviour made the public question the legitimacy of the AI industry and prompted scholars to accuse the sector of ethicswashing, machinewashing, and ethics trivialisation—criticisms that spilt over to institutional AI ethics boards. To counter this widespread issue, contributions in the literature have (...)
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  44. Can E-Sport Gamers Permissibly Engage with Off-Limits Virtual Wrongdoings?Thomas Montefiore & Paul Formosa - 2023 - Philosophy and Technology 36 (4):1-3.
  45. Instilling moral value alignment by means of multi-objective reinforcement learning.M. Rodriguez-Soto, M. Serramia, M. Lopez-Sanchez & J. Antonio Rodriguez-Aguilar - 2022 - Ethics and Information Technology 24 (9).
    AI research is being challenged with ensuring that autonomous agents learn to behave ethically, namely in alignment with moral values. Here, we propose a novel way of tackling the value alignment problem as a two-step process. The first step consists on formalising moral values and value aligned behaviour based on philosophical foundations. Our formalisation is compatible with the framework of (Multi-Objective) Reinforcement Learning, to ease the handling of an agent’s individual and ethical objectives. The second step consists in designing an (...)
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  46. Empathy training through virtual reality: moral enhancement with the freedom to fall?Anda Zahiu, Emilian Mihailov, Brian D. Earp, Kathryn B. Francis & Julian Savulescu - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (4):1-14.
    We propose to expand the conversation around moral enhancement from direct brain-altering methods to include technological means of modifying the environments and media through which agents can achieve moral improvement. Virtual Reality (VR) based enhancement would not bypass a person’s agency, much less their capacity for reasoned reflection. It would allow agents to critically engage with moral insights occasioned by a technologically mediated intervention. Users would gain access to a vivid ‘experience machine’ that allows for embodied presence and immersion in (...)
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  47. Melting contestation: insurance fairness and machine learning.Laurence Barry & Arthur Charpentier - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (4):1-13.
    With their intensive use of data to classify and price risk, insurers have often been confronted with data-related issues of fairness and discrimination. This paper provides a comparative review of discrimination issues raised by traditional statistics versus machine learning in the context of insurance. We first examine historical contestations of insurance classification, showing that it was organized along three types of bias: pure stereotypes, non-causal correlations, or causal effects that a society chooses to protect against, are thus the main sources (...)
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  48. Calibrating machine behavior: a challenge for AI alignment.Erez Firt - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (3):1-8.
    When discussing AI alignment, we usually refer to the problem of teaching or training advanced autonomous AI systems to make decisions that are aligned with human values or preferences. Proponents of this approach believe it can be employed as means to stay in control over sophisticated intelligent systems, thus avoiding certain existential risks. We identify three general obstacles on the path to implementation of value alignment: a technological/technical obstacle, a normative obstacle, and a calibration problem. Presupposing, for the purposes of (...)
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  49. Digitising reflective equilibrium.Charlie Harry Smith - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (3):1-12.
    Reflective equilibrium is overdue a twenty-first century update. Despite its apparent popularity, there is scant evidence that theorists ever thoroughly implement the method, and fewer still openly and transparently publish their attempts to do so in print—stymying its supposed justificatory value. This paper proposes digitising reflective equilibrium as a solution. Inspired by the global open science movement, it advocates for coupling a novel, digital implementation of the equilibrating process with new publication norms that can capitalise on the inherent reproducibility of (...)
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  50. Ethics framework for predictive clinical AI model updating.Michal Pruski - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (3):1-10.
    There is an ethical dilemma present when considering updating predictive clinical artificial intelligence (AI) models, which should be part of the departmental quality improvement process. One needs to consider whether withdrawing the AI model is necessary to obtain the relevant information from a naive patient population or whether to use causal inference techniques to obtain this information. Withdrawing an AI model from patient care might pose challenges if the AI model is considered standard of care, while use of causal inference (...)
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