Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Last week I was in Berlin at the invitation of the IEEE to help develop standards for responsible technology (P7000). One of the working groups (P7001) is looking at transparency, especially in relation to autonomous and semi-autonomous systems. In thi…
Diversion has various different meanings in the world of ethics.Distraction. An idea or activity serves as a distraction from what’s important. For example, @juliapowles uses the term “captivating diversion” to refer to ethicists becoming preoccupied w…
What are the ethics of diverting people from smoking to vaping?On the one hand, we have the following argument.E-cigarettes (“vaping”) offer a plausible substitute for smoking cigarettes.Smoking is dangerous, and vaping is probably much less dangerous….
In a recent commentary on #Brexit, Simon Jenkins notes that”disruption theory is much in vogue in management schools, so long as someone else suffers”.Here is Bruno Latour making the same point.”Don’t be fooled for a second by those who preach the call…
Many people start their journey into the ethics of automation and robotics by looking at Asimov’s Laws of Robotics.A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm (etc. etc.)As I’ve said before, I believe …
@ruchowdh objects to an article by @etzioni and @tianhuil calling for algorithms to audit algorithms. The original article makes the following points.Automated auditing, at a massive scale, can systematically probe AI systems and uncover biases or oth…
Some people think that ethical principles only apply to implemented systems, and that experimental projects (trials, proofs of concept, and so on) don’t need the same level of transparency and accountability.Last year, Google employees (as well as US s…
In the corner of the Internet where I hang out, it is reasonably well understood that big data raises a number of ethical issues, including data ownership and privacy.There are two contrasting ways of characterizing these issues. One way is to focus on…
@rachelcoldicutt notes that “Google Docs new grammar suggestion tool doesn’t like the word ‘funding’ and prefers ‘investment’ “.Many business people have an accounting mindset, in which all expenditure must be justified in terms of benefit to the organ…
Are algorithms trustworthy, asks @NizanGP.”Many of us routinely – and even blindly – rely on the advice of algorithms in all aspects of our lives, from choosing the fastest route to the airport to deciding how to invest our retirement savings. But shou…
What does #TechnologyEthics look like from the viewpoint of your average ethics professor? Not surprisingly, many ethics professors believe strongly in the value of ethics education, and advocate ethics awareness training for business managers and eng…
As I said in my previous post, I don’t think we can start to think about the ethics of technology nudges without recognizing the complexity of real-world nudges. So in this post, I shall look at how nudges are communicated in the real world, before con…