In July 2017, China’s State Council released the country’s strategy for developing artificial intelligence, entitled ‘New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan’. This strategy outlined China’s aims to become the world leader in AI by 2030, to monetise AI into a trillion-yuan industry, and to emerge as the driving force in defining ethical norms and standards for AI. Several reports have analysed specific aspects of China’s AI policies or have assessed the country’s technical capabilities. Instead, in this article, we focus on (...) the socio-political background and policy debates that are shaping China’s AI strategy. In particular, we analyse the main strategic areas in which China is investing in AI and the concurrent ethical debates that are delimiting its use. By focusing on the policy backdrop, we seek to provide a more comprehensive and critical understanding of China’s AI policy by bringing together debates and analyses of a wide array of policy documents. (shrink)

One of the main difficulties in assessing artificial intelligence (AI) is the tendency for people to anthropomorphise it. This becomes particularly problematic when we attach human moral activities to AI. For example, the European Commission’s High-level Expert Group on AI (HLEG) have adopted the position that we should establish a relationship of trust with AI and should cultivate trustworthy AI (HLEG AI Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI, 2019, p. 35). Trust is one of the most important and defining activities in (...) human relationships, so proposing that AI should be trusted, is a very serious claim. This paper will show that AI cannot be something that has the capacity to be trusted according to the most prevalent definitions of trust because it does not possess emotive states or can be held responsible for their actions—requirements of the affective and normative accounts of trust. While AI meets all of the requirements of the rational account of trust, it will be shown that this is not actually a type of trust at all, but is instead, a form of reliance. Ultimately, even complex machines such as AI should not be viewed as trustworthy as this undermines the value of interpersonal trust, anthropomorphises AI, and diverts responsibility from those developing and using them. (shrink)

Current advances in research, development and application of artificial intelligence systems have yielded a far-reaching discourse on AI ethics. In consequence, a number of ethics guidelines have been released in recent years. These guidelines comprise normative principles and recommendations aimed to harness the “disruptive” potentials of new AI technologies. Designed as a semi-systematic evaluation, this paper analyzes and compares 22 guidelines, highlighting overlaps but also omissions. As a result, I give a detailed overview of the field of AI ethics. Finally, (...) I also examine to what extent the respective ethical principles and values are implemented in the practice of research, development and application of AI systems—and how the effectiveness in the demands of AI ethics can be improved. (shrink)

This paper discusses the problem of responsibility attribution raised by the use of artificial intelligence technologies. It is assumed that only humans can be responsible agents; yet this alone already raises many issues, which are discussed starting from two Aristotelian conditions for responsibility. Next to the well-known problem of many hands, the issue of “many things” is identified and the temporal dimension is emphasized when it comes to the control condition. Special attention is given to the epistemic condition, which draws (...) attention to the issues of transparency and explainability. In contrast to standard discussions, however, it is then argued that this knowledge problem regarding agents of responsibility is linked to the other side of the responsibility relation: the addressees or “patients” of responsibility, who may demand reasons for actions and decisions made by using AI. Inspired by a relational approach, responsibility as answerability thus offers an important additional, if not primary, justification for explainability based, not on agency, but on patiency. (shrink)

Safe-by-Design (SBD) frameworks for the development of emerging technologies have become an ever more popular means by which scholars argue that transformative emerging technologies can safely incorporate human values. One such popular SBD methodology is called Value Sensitive Design (VSD). A central tenet of this design methodology is to investigate stakeholder values and design those values into technologies during early stage research and development (R&D). To accomplish this, the VSD framework mandates that designers consult the philosophical and ethical literature to (...) best determine how to weigh moral trade-offs. However, the VSD framework also concedes the universalism of moral values, particularly the values of freedom, autonomy, equality trust and privacy justice. This paper argues that the VSD methodology, particularly applied to nano-bio-info-cogno (NBIC) technologies, has an insufficient grounding for the determination of moral values. As such, an exploration of the value-investigations of VSD are deconstructed to illustrate both its strengths and weaknesses. This paper also provides possible modalities for the strengthening of the VSD methodology, particularly through the application of moral imagination and how moral imagination exceed the boundaries of moral intuitions in the development of novel technologies. (shrink)

This article reports the findings of AI4People, an Atomium—EISMD initiative designed to lay the foundations for a “Good AI Society”. We introduce the core opportunities and risks of AI for society; present a synthesis of five ethical principles that should undergird its development and adoption; and offer 20 concrete recommendations—to assess, to develop, to incentivise, and to support good AI—which in some cases may be undertaken directly by national or supranational policy makers, while in others may be led by other (...) stakeholders. If adopted, these recommendations would serve as a firm foundation for the establishment of a Good AI Society. (shrink)

This chapter proposed a novel design methodology called Value-Sensitive Design and its potential application to the field of artificial intelligence research and design. It discusses the imperatives in adopting a design philosophy that embeds values into the design of artificial agents at the early stages of AI development. Because of the high risk stakes in the unmitigated design of artificial agents, this chapter proposes that even though VSD may turn out to be a less-than-optimal design methodology, it currently provides a (...) framework that has the potential to embed stakeholder values and incorporate current design methods. The reader should begin to take away the importance of a proactive design approach to intelligent agents. (shrink)

There is a growing literature on the concept of e-trust and on the feasibility and advisability of “trusting” artificial agents. In this paper we present an object-oriented model for thinking about trust in both face-to-face and digitally mediated environments. We review important recent contributions to this literature regarding e-trust in conjunction with presenting our model. We identify three important types of trust interactions and examine trust from the perspective of a software developer. Too often, the primary focus of research in (...) this area has been on the artificial agents and the humans they may encounter after they are deployed. We contend that the humans who design, implement, and deploy the artificial agents are crucial to any discussion of e-trust and to understanding the distinctions among the concepts of trust, e-trust and face-to-face trust. (shrink)

This paper provides a new analysis of e - trust , trust occurring in digital contexts, among the artificial agents of a distributed artificial system. The analysis endorses a non-psychological approach and rests on a Kantian regulative ideal of a rational agent, able to choose the best option for itself, given a specific scenario and a goal to achieve. The paper first introduces e-trust describing its relevance for the contemporary society and then presents a new theoretical analysis of this phenomenon. (...) The analysis first focuses on an agent’s trustworthiness , this one is presented as the necessary requirement for e-trust to occur. Then, a new definition of e-trust as a second-order-property of first-order relations is presented. It is shown that the second-order-property of e-trust has the effect of minimising an agent’s effort and commitment in the achievement of a given goal. On this basis, a method is provided for the objective assessment of the levels of e-trust occurring among the artificial agents of a distributed artificial system. (shrink)

While there has been much interest in this topic, no generally accepted definition of dual use has been forthcoming. As a contribution to this issue, it is maintained that three related kinds of things comprise the category of dual use: research, technologies and artefacts. In regard to all three kinds, difficulties are identified in making clear distinctions between those that are and are not dual use. It is suggested that our classification should take account of actual capacities and willingness to (...) make use of these objects for ‘bad ends’ and not the mere possibility that this could be done, and here three ‘contextual factors’ are identified. A (provisional) definition is proposed that takes account of threats and risks. (shrink)

The Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) has declared that to achieve accredited status, “engineering programs must demonstrate that their graduates have an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility.” Many engineering professors struggle to integrate this required ethics instruction in technical classes and projects because of the lack of a formalized ethics-in-design approach. However, one methodology developed in human-computer interaction research, the Value-Sensitive Design approach, can serve as an engineering education tool which bridges the gap between design and ethics (...) for many engineering disciplines. The three major components of Value-Sensitive Design, conceptual, technical, and empirical, exemplified through a case study which focuses on the development of a command and control supervisory interface for a military cruise missile. (shrink)

Debates about dual-use research often turn on the potential for scientific research to be used to benefit or harm humanity. This dual-use potential is conventionally understood as the product of the magnitude of the harms and benefits of dual-use research, multiplied by their likelihood. This account, however, neglects important social aspects of the use of science and technology. In this paper, I supplement existing conceptions of dual-use potential to account for the social context of dual-use research. This account incorporates relational (...) and positional concerns that feature in the success or failure of dual-use. I then defend this account against foreseeable objections. (shrink)

Most recent studies of dual use research have focused on the life sciences, although some researchers have suggested that dual use research occurs across many disciplines. This research is an initial investigation into the prevalence of dual use research in other scientific disciplines by surveying senior editors of scientific journals, drawn from Journal Citation Reports. The survey was emailed to 7,500 journal editors with a response rate of 10.1 %. Approximately 4.8 % of life science editors reported they had to (...) consider whether to publish dual use research and 38.9 % said they decided to not publish the research in question. In disciplines other than the life sciences, 7.2 % of editors from other science disciplines reported that they had to consider whether to publish dual use research, and 48.4 % declined to publish it. The survey investigated relationships between dual use and the journal’s source of funding and place of publication, but no relationships were found. Further research is needed to better understand the occurrence of dual use research in other science disciplines. (shrink)