Ethical Issues in Network System Design

Today, most desktop computers and PCs are networked that is, they have the ability to link to other machines, usually to access data and other information held remotely. Such machines may sometimes be connected directly to each other, as part of an office or company computer system. More frequently, however, connected machines are at a considerable distance from each other, typically connected through links to global systems such as the Internet, or WorldWideWeb (WWW). The networked machine itself may be anything from a powerful company computer with direct Internet connections, to a small hobbyist machine, accessing a bulletin board through telephone and modem. It is important to remember that, whatever the type or the location of networked machines, their access to the network, and the network itself, was planned and constructed following deliberate design considerations. In this paper I discuss some ways in which the technical design of computer systems might appropriately be influenced by ethical issues, and examine pressures on computer scientists and others to technically control networkrelated actions perceived as 'unethical'. After examination of the current situation, I draw together the issues, and conclude by suggesting some ethically based recommendations for the future design of networked systems

Values of Ethical Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is impacting all fields, areas, and disciplines. It is difficult to think of a field that is not infiltrated by AI. AI witnesses groundbreaking advancement recently with the revolutions and evolutions of machine learning techniques (Siau and Yang, 2017; Hyder et al., 2019). With proper guidance and appropriate usage, AI can be one of the most powerful tools that can drastically transform the world. Because of the broad and deep impact of AI, the ethical issues surrounding AI are of great concern to many. As AI advances, it is important to ensure that AI is used and evolved ethically (Siau and Wang, 2020). With the exponential advancement of AI, ethical concerns and issues begin to emerge and attract peoples’ attention. Ethics can be described as the moral ways of restricting the behavior or actions of a person or a group and used rules and decision paths to help make decisions on what is good or right. For AI, it is making positive changes to our daily lives such as improving health care, enhancing safety, and boosting productivity (Wang and Siau, 2019a, b). Avoiding a dystopian future created by AI and incorporating ethical principles into AI decision making are the two biggest areas (Torresen, 2018). Ethical decision making by AI is a big challenge for developers, engineerings, business executives, policymakers, and society as a whole (Siau and Wang, 2018). Developers and technicians need to be trained in ethical reasoning so that they can make ethical design and implementation decisions, and the AI system will be programmed ethically. This research investigates the following questions: Why is ethical AI important? What are the values of ethical AI? Understanding the values of ethical AI is critical. The qualitative research methodology, Value-Focused Thinking approach, is adopted to interview subjects, collect their inputs, and construct a means-ends objective network (Keeney, 1996; Sheng et al. 2005, 2010). The means-ends objective network depicts the fundamental and means objectives to achieve the objective of maximizing ethical AI. Some of the means and fundamental objectives derived in this research include Maximize explainable AI, Maximize developers’ awareness of ethics, Maximize fairness and justice, and Maximize government’s oversight on AI. This research contributes to understanding the very important aspects of AI development and utilization – i.e., how to do so ethically and how to ensure that the end product, the AI, will function ethically

Understanding the Communicative and Social Processes of Engineering Ethics in Diverse Design Teams

Understanding the Communicative and Social Processes of Engineering Ethics in Diverse Design Teams As engineering, and specifically engineering design, is increasingly understood to be asocial activity, engineering education’s understanding of ethics needs to reflect this developingawareness. Within engineering and design teams, engineering educators are concerned not onlywith how individual students develop ethically, but also how everyday ethical decision-makingemerges during team interactions and becomes integrated in design solutions. The everydayethics approach calls on engineering educators and students to pay closer attention to the natureof design, how values are embedded in design through micro decision-making processes, andhow these values are reintegrated into the everyday life of end users. Furthermore, these ethicaldecisions often do not present themselves as traditional dilemmas, but are issues that areconfronted in the everyday process of design, and are influenced by the cultural and disciplinarybackgrounds of the members and the ethical climates of the team and the organization. In considering engineering ethics education in this context, we can draw from theextensive scholarship of group communication. This body of literature suggests that teammember interactions and communication have a major impact on a team’s decision-makingabilities, as well as the information that is discussed during the problem-solving process (Larson,2007; Postmes, Spears & Cihangir, 2001; Reimer, Reimer, & Czienskowski, 2010). Therefore,this project seeks to understand how everyday ethical decision-making is integrated in theprocesses and interactions of diverse engineering design team and their recognition of the long-term design consequences of the solutions they produce. To do so, this study combines social network analysis with structuration theory toexamine the structure of project teams while also examining the institutional and contextualfactors that contribute to team climate, and to the development of group norms that affect teaminteractions. Social network analysis (SNA) is a type of analysis that enables researchers toexamine the relationships among members of a given system or group. In contrast to the“organizational chart” that might show how communication is supposed to flow within theorganization, network analysis shows the actual communication and relationships that emergewithin the organization or team. Structuration accounts for the influence of institutional factorssuch as rules or norms of what is “acceptable” or “appropriate” behavior within a specific socialcontext, while also affording the actors within that context agency to enact influence on thosestructural influences. Primary data sources include a series of interviews and videotapedparticipatory observations, as well as the social network analysis survey. In the first few months of the project, we have purposefully selected four diverse projectteams within a service-learning design program at a Midwestern university. Researchers haveconducted observations of the team, and have piloted the social network analysis survey andinterview. The survey and interviews will be conducted for the four project teams within thenext three months. In the paper, we describe the study frameworks and methods, preliminaryresults from the pilot, and how the pilot informed the study design

Ethics and social networking sites: A disclosive analysis of Facebook

Paper has been accepted for publication in Information, Technology and People.Purpose: This paper provides insights into the moral values embodied by a popular social networking site (SNS), Facebook. We adopt the position that technology as well as humans has a moral character in order to disclose ethical concerns that are not transparent to users of the site. Design/methodology/approach: This study is based upon qualitative field work, involving participant observation, conducted over a two year period. Findings: Much research on the ethics of information systems has focused on the way that people deploy particular technologies, and the consequences arising, with a view to making policy recommendations and ethical interventions. By focusing on technology as a moral actor with reach across and beyond the Internet, we reveal the complex and diffuse nature of ethical responsibility in our case and the consequent implications for governance of SNS. Research limitations/implications: We situate our research in a body of work known as disclosive ethics and argue for an ongoing process of evaluating SNS to reveal their moral importance. Along with other authors in the genre, our work is largely descriptive, but we engage with prior research by Brey and Introna to highlight the scope for theory development. Practical implications: Governance measures that require the developers of social networking sites to revise their designs fail to address the diffuse nature of ethical responsibility in this case. Such technologies need to be opened up to scrutiny on a regular basis to increase public awareness of the issues and thereby disclose concerns to a wider audience. We suggest that there is value in studying the development and use of these technologies in their infancy, or if established, in the experiences of novice users. Furthermore, flash points in technological trajectories can prove useful sites of investigation. Originality/value: Existing research on social networking sites either fails to address ethical concerns head on or adopts a tool view of the technologies so that the focus is on the ethical behaviour of users. We focus upon the agency, and hence the moral character, of technology to show both the possibilities for, and limitations of, ethical interventions in such cases

A qualitative study of stakeholders' perspectives on the social network service environment

Over two billion people are using the Internet at present, assisted by the mediating activities of software agents which deal with the diversity and complexity of information. There are, however, ethical issues due to the monitoring-and-surveillance, data mining and autonomous nature of software agents. Considering the context, this study aims to comprehend stakeholders' perspectives on the social network service environment in order to identify the main considerations for the design of software agents in social network services in the near future. Twenty-one stakeholders, belonging to three key stakeholder groups, were recruited using a purposive sampling strategy for unstandardised semi-structured e-mail interviews. The interview data were analysed using a qualitative content analysis method. It was possible to identify three main considerations for the design of software agents in social network services, which were classified into the following categories: comprehensive understanding of users' perception of privacy, user type recognition algorithms for software agent development and existing software agents enhancement

More than just friends? Facebook, disclosive ethics and the morality of technology

Social networking sites have become increasingly popular destinations for people wishing to chat, play games, make new friends or simply stay in touch. Furthermore, many organizations have been quick to grasp the potential they offer for marketing, recruitment and economic activities. Nevertheless, counterclaims depict such spaces as arenas where deception, social grooming and the posting of defamatory content flourish. Much research in this area has focused on the ends to which people deploy the technology, and the consequences arising, with a view to making policy recommendations and ethical interventions. In this paper, we argue that tracing where morality lies is more complex than these efforts suggest. Using the case of a popular social networking site, and concepts about the morality of technology, we disclose the ethics of Facebook as diffuse and multiple. In our conclusions we provide some reflections on the possibilities for action in light of this disclosure

Marketing and sustainability

'Marketing and sustainability' is based on an original booklet written by Martin Charter in 1990. The text has been updated and re-written to take account of the changing and emerging debate of marketing’s role in relation to sustainable development. This booklet has been produced as a supporting publication for the Sustainable Marketing Knowledge Network (Smart: Know-Net) a web-based information and communication platform for marketers interested in sustainability, available at www.cfsd.org.uk/smart-know-ne

Conscript Your Friends into Larger Anonymity Sets with JavaScript

We present the design and prototype implementation of ConScript, a framework for using JavaScript to allow casual Web users to participate in an anonymous communication system. When a Web user visits a cooperative Web site, the site serves a JavaScript application that instructs the browser to create and submit "dummy" messages into the anonymity system. Users who want to send non-dummy messages through the anonymity system use a browser plug-in to replace these dummy messages with real messages. Creating such conscripted anonymity sets can increase the anonymity set size available to users of remailer, e-voting, and verifiable shuffle-style anonymity systems. We outline ConScript's architecture, we address a number of potential attacks against ConScript, and we discuss the ethical issues related to deploying such a system. Our implementation results demonstrate the practicality of ConScript: a workstation running our ConScript prototype JavaScript client generates a dummy message for a mix-net in 81 milliseconds and it generates a dummy message for a DoS-resistant DC-net in 156 milliseconds.Comment: An abbreviated version of this paper will appear at the WPES 2013 worksho

Dwarna : a blockchain solution for dynamic consent in biobanking

Dynamic consent aims to empower research partners and facilitate active participation in the research process. Used within the context of biobanking, it gives individuals access to information and control to determine how and where their biospecimens and data should be used. We present Dwarna—a web portal for ‘dynamic consent’ that acts as a hub connecting the different stakeholders of the Malta Biobank: biobank managers, researchers, research partners, and the general public. The portal stores research partners’ consent in a blockchain to create an immutable audit trail of research partners’ consent changes. Dwarna’s structure also presents a solution to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation’s right to erasure—a right that is seemingly incompatible with the blockchain model. Dwarna’s transparent structure increases trustworthiness in the biobanking process by giving research partners more control over which research studies they participate in, by facilitating the withdrawal of consent and by making it possible to request that the biospecimen and associated data are destroyed.peer-reviewe