Necessity for ethics in social engineering research

Social engineering is deeply entrenched in the fields of both computer science and social psychology. Knowledge is required in both these disciplines to perform social engineering based research. Several ethical concerns and requirements need to be taken into account when social engineering research is conducted to ensure that harm does not befall those who participate in such research. These concerns and requirements have not yet been formalised and most researchers are unaware of the ethical concerns involved in social engineering research. This paper identifies a number of concerns regarding social engineering in public communication, penetration testing and social engineering research. It also discusses the identified concerns with regard to three different normative ethics approaches (virtue ethics, utilitarianism and deontology) and provides their corresponding ethical perspectives as well as practical examples of where these formalised ethical concerns for social engineering research can be beneficial.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/COSE2016-11-30hb201

MBA in social engineering: designed program for present society

Political environment is full of challenges and crises of deep consequences to society as well as to the environment and it has a strong incidence in terms of decision making in any field. It means that taking decisions is becoming more and more complex and difficult due to the fact that the implications are felt in a faster way and in a larger community. For engineers, the decision process is even more complex once the implications have serious impact not only to the target customers but also to the society as a whole and to the environment. This is an aspect that shows the necessity for engineers to search for the acquisition of an ability to respond to social necessities having in mind the cultural aspects when developing a project. The effects of this aspect in engineering education implies a different approach providing the future engineers with notions on policy, ethics and social sciences, which are so important to prepare them to the future work market that will require the respect and promotion of society and environment as assets [1]. Most of social groups have ambiguous understanding about science and technology; some understand it as responsible for the environmental deterioration and the voracious capitalism and others as the ones responsible for the better quality of life with the improvement of health systems, agricultural production and other accomplishments. Both perceptions are not far from the reality. In any case, the impacts can be seen along the history and more recently with the sophistication of the so called “information society”. This particular “information society” shows how strong the impact of any technology introduced in society can be. Real time communication and brutal amount of information available have drastically changed how people relate, make business and study [2]. The proposal of COPEC - Science and Education Research Council for the next five years is the offering of an MBA by Distance Learning due to the new global education demand. The new programs will be delivered in Portuguese in a first moment, for all Countries of CPLP - Portuguese Language Countries Community. The idea is to cover these countries that also are seeking for opportunities, as the majority of them are developing and are very wealthy countries. The first group of programs is: MBA in Social Engineering and MBA in International Engineering Educator, both with International Recognition.FCT -Federación Española de Enfermedades Raras(FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-022674

Beyond Research Ethics: Dialogues in Neuro-ICT Research

open access articleThe increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to help facilitate neuroscience adds a new level of complexity to the question of how ethical issues of such research can be identified and addressed. Current research ethics practice, based on ethics reviews by institutional review boards (IRB) and underpinned by ethical principlism, has been widely criticized. In this article, we develop an alternative way of approaching ethics in neuro-ICT research, based on discourse ethics, which implements Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) through dialogues. We draw on our work in Ethics Support, using the Human Brain Project (HBP) as empirical evidence of the viability of this approach

Bioethics: Reincarnation of Natural Philosophy in Modern Science

The theory of evolution of complex and comprising of human systems and algorithm for its constructing are the synthesis of evolutionary epistemology, philosophical anthropology and concrete scientific empirical basis in modern (transdisciplinary) science. «Trans-disciplinary» in the context is interpreted as a completely new epistemological situation, which is fraught with the initiation of a civilizational crisis. Philosophy and ideology of technogenic civilization is based on the possibility of unambiguous demarcation of public value and descriptive scientific discourses (1), and the object and subject of the cognitive process (2). Both of these attributes are no longer valid. For mass, everyday consciousness and institutional philosophical tradition it is intuitively obvious that having the ability to control the evolutionary process, Homo sapiens came close to the borders of their own biological and cultural identity. The spontaneous coevolutionary process of interaction between the «subject» (rational living organisms) and the «object» (material world), is the teleological trend of the movement towards the complete rationalization of the World as It Is, its merger with the World of Due. The stratification of the global evolutionary process into selective and semantic (teleological) coevolutionary and therefore ontologically inseparable components follows. With the entry of anthropogenic civilization into the stage of the information society, firsty, the post-academic phase of the historical evolution of scientific rationality began, the attributes of which are the specific methodology of scientific knowledge, scientific ethos and ontology. Bioethics as a phenomenon of intellectual culture represents a natural philosophical core of modern post- academic (human-dimensional) science, in which the ethical neutrality of scientific theory principle is inapplicable, and elements of public-axiological and scientific-descriptive discourses are integrated into a single logic construction. As result, hermeneutics precedes epistemology not only methodologically, but also meaningfully, and natural philosophy is regaining the status of the backbone of the theory of evolution – in an explicit for

A Value-Sensitive Design Approach to Intelligent Agents

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

Artificial intelligence and UK national security: Policy considerations

RUSI was commissioned by GCHQ to conduct an independent research study into the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for national security purposes. The aim of this project is to establish an independent evidence base to inform future policy development regarding national security uses of AI. The findings are based on in-depth consultation with stakeholders from across the UK national security community, law enforcement agencies, private sector companies, academic and legal experts, and civil society representatives. This was complemented by a targeted review of existing literature on the topic of AI and national security. The research has found that AI offers numerous opportunities for the UK national security community to improve efficiency and effectiveness of existing processes. AI methods can rapidly derive insights from large, disparate datasets and identify connections that would otherwise go unnoticed by human operators. However, in the context of national security and the powers given to UK intelligence agencies, use of AI could give rise to additional privacy and human rights considerations which would need to be assessed within the existing legal and regulatory framework. For this reason, enhanced policy and guidance is needed to ensure the privacy and human rights implications of national security uses of AI are reviewed on an ongoing basis as new analysis methods are applied to data

DNA, Data and Ethics

The biophysical differences between different kinds of DNA data banks are described. The different ethical implications of DNA fingerprint data banks, data banks of known gene sequences, and data banks of total genomic sequences are considered. Ethical approaches using the concept of the common good and those based on human rights are evaluated in the context of DNA data. Additional theological considerations are discussed. In conclusion, a 'one size fits all' approach to bioethics in this area is rejected

Searching for 'a third space’: a creative pathway towards international PhD students’ academic acculturation

Undertaking a PhD is a challenging endeavour. Pursuing a doctoral education in a ‘foreign’ context tends to increase the demands of this intellectual venture. The nature of research-based PhD programmes, often characterised by a lack of formal curricula where academic supervision lasts several years, may add another layer of complexity. Drawing upon an extended version of Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological theory of human development, this paper attempts to offer a greater understanding of both academic and non-academic concerns confronting international PhD students with a view to highlighting their implications for institutional policy and practice. Underpinned by a visual metaphor approach, our research findings advocate embedding the use of ‘a third space’ as a creative pathway and strategy for maximising students’ chances of achieving a successful PhD academic acculturation journey