Beneath the Hype: Engaging the Sociality of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is highly visible in today’s public media. With potential uses across domains such as healthcare, labour and transportation, its capacity to impact human lives is widely apparent. As it continues to enter into public view, concerns surrounding its research and application also arise. Here, narratives of techno-optimism, technological determinism, and dystopia often shape the AI imaginary with sensationalist displays of super-intelligence and existential concern. Counterpoised to these representations, this thesis investigates the sociality that inheres in everyday practices within artificial intelligence as emerging technology and as a field of study. Drawing on methods and scholarship from STS and socio-cultural anthropology, I explore the attitudes and experiences of specialists to analyze how entanglements of the socio-cultural, ethical and technical appear within more mundane, everyday practices of AI. Often overshadowed by popular, sensationalized understandings of technology, the focus on such experiences and practices allows for an initial view into a situated understanding of AI beneath the hype

Systemic Design for the innovation of home appliances The meaningfulness of data in designing sustainable systems

This work addressed the domestic environment considering this context as a complex system characterised by significant impacts in terms of resource consumption. Within the theoretical framework of Systemic Design (SD), this thesis focused on home appliances, in order to understand how to reduce the impact directly attributable to them, while optimising and simplifying daily tasks for the user. A design methodology towards environmental sustainability has been structured, by focusing on the use of data for design purposes and on creating value for the user through meaningful products. It considers the user, the product and the environment as central topics, by giving them the same relevance and the literature review is structured accordingly, investigating needs and requirements, ethical issues, but also current products and future scenarios. During my experience at TU Delft, I spent six months in the Department of Internet of Things at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Together with computer scientists, we developed a prototype to collect some missing data, establishing the importance of grounding the decision-making on reliable information. IoT and data gathering open a variety of possibilities in monitoring, accessing more precise knowledge of products and households useful for design purposes, up to understand how to fill the gap perceived by the user between needs and solutions. It considered the potential benefits of using IoT indicators to collect missing information about both the product, its use and its operating environment to address critical aspects in the design stage, thus extending products’ lifetime. This thesis highlighted the importance of building multidisciplinary design teams to investigate different classes of requirements, and the need for flexible tools to cope with complex and evolving requirements, the co-evolution of problem and solutions and investigating open-ended questions. This approach leaves room for addressing every step of the traditional life-cycle in a more circular way, shifting the focus from the life-cycle centrality of the previous century to a more complex vision about the product

The better angels of our digital nature?: Offensive cyber capabilities and state violence

Cybersecurity en cybergovernanc

Towards a Value Sensitive Design Framework for Attaining Meaningful Human Control over Autonomous Weapons Systems

The international debate on the ethics and legality of autonomous weapon systems (AWS) as well as the call for a ban are primarily focused on the nebulous concept of fully autonomous AWS. More specifically, on AWS that are capable of target selection and engagement without human supervision or control. This thesis argues that such a conception of autonomy is divorced both from military planning and decision-making operations as well as the design requirements that govern AWS engineering and subsequently the tracking and tracing of moral responsibility. To do this, this thesis marries two different levels of meaningful human control (MHC), termed levels of abstraction, to couple military operations with design ethics. In doing so, this thesis argues that the contentious notion of ‘full’ autonomy is not problematic under this two-tiered understanding of MHC. It proceeds to propose the value sensitive design (VSD) approach as a means for designing for MHC

Practicing narrative virtue ethics of technology in research and innovation

This dissertation develops a novel approach for practising ethics in research and innovation, called narrative virtue ethics of technology. The increasing speed of technological developments in fields such as AI, robotics, biomedicine, and nanotechnologies, calls for proactive ethical reflection on the impacts of technologies. As a response, myriad methods for practising ethics in research and innovation have been developed. The first part of this research reviews existing methods and analyses how they deal with the anticipation of ethical issues of emerging technologies, the shaping of ethical design practices, and the evaluation of ethical impacts of existing technologies. This is followed by a critical discussion of the existing methods, outlining their shortcomings and offering recommendations for improvements. Subsequently, a novel philosophical approach is developed that offers responses to the recommendations. This approach synthesises insights from work on virtue ethics by MacIntyre and Vallor with Ricoeur’s philosophical hermeneutics. Ricoeur’s narrative theory is used to construct an account of how technologies mediate people’s experience and understanding of the social world, centring on the hermeneutic concepts of textuality, literacy, temporality, and distancing. Accordingly, virtue ethics and the approach of narrative technologies are integrated into an account of technical practice that is linked with Ricoeur’s notion of the ethical aim as the good life, with and for others, in just institutions. Finally, the philosophical approach is translated into a concrete method consisting of three phases that offer ways for analysing technical practices, evaluating them, and developing a broad set of prescriptions, including the use of an ethical oath, civic education and democratic decision-making in research and innovation practices. To demonstrate how this method could be practically used, a concrete tool is developed and evaluated in practice: the Ethics Canvas. This is a collaborative tool that enables researchers to discuss the ethical impacts of their work

Trust in Robots

Robots are increasingly becoming prevalent in our daily lives within our living or working spaces. We hope that robots will take up tedious, mundane or dirty chores and make our lives more comfortable, easy and enjoyable by providing companionship and care. However, robots may pose a threat to human privacy, safety and autonomy; therefore, it is necessary to have constant control over the developing technology to ensure the benevolent intentions and safety of autonomous systems. Building trust in (autonomous) robotic systems is thus necessary. The title of this book highlights this challenge: “Trust in robots—Trusting robots”. Herein, various notions and research areas associated with robots are unified. The theme “Trust in robots” addresses the development of technology that is trustworthy for users; “Trusting robots” focuses on building a trusting relationship with robots, furthering previous research. These themes and topics are at the core of the PhD program “Trust Robots” at TU Wien, Austria

News about nanotechnology: a longitudinal framing analysis of newspaper reporting on nanotechnology.

Governments and businesses around the world have invested billions of pounds in nanotechnology research and development, and more than a thousand consumer products which manufacturers claim to involve nanotechnology are currently on the market. As such, the applications from this emerging field of science and technology have the potential for great impact on individuals and society, making it a recurring subject of news reporting worldwide. Scholars say mainstream news media are the primary places in which citizens learn about science and technology, therefore creating opportunities for democratic debate about these topics. This thesis explores the ways in which nanotechnology is reported in order to understand how journalists strive to make sense of it for their audiences. It analyses 759 articles from two opinion-leading newspapers – The Guardian and The New York Times – in order to address the following research questions: How do journalists frame nanotechnology for their audiences? How do the characteristic features of the framing processes change over time? And to what extent does the reporting open opportunities for meaningful, democratic discussion around nanotechnology? To answer these questions, the research evaluates literature around the reporting of science and technology, in particular nanotechnology. Using quantitative and qualitative approaches to framing, this thesis finds the coverage is overwhelmingly positive in its treatment of nanotechnology, suggesting it closely aligns with the business and government interests. Additionally, claims about the potential benefits of nanotechnology are prioritised over risk claims in news articles, with the most common risk and benefit claims being those that are more likely to materialise decades into the future, if ever. Altogether, in failing to discuss applications and potential risks of nanotechnology without drawing on popular culture references limits the opportunity for meaningful, democratic discussion and debate

Assessment of Responsible Innovation

Responsible Innovation encourages innovators to work together with stakeholders during the research and innovation process, to better align the outcomes of innovation with the values, needs and expectations of society. Assessing the benefits and costs of Responsible Innovation is crucial for furthering the responsible conduct of science, technology and innovation. However, there is until now only limited academic work on Responsible Innovation assessment. This book fills this lacuna. Assessment of Responsible Innovation: Methods and Practices presents tools for measuring, monitoring, and reporting upon the Responsible Innovation process and the social, environmental, scientific, and economic impacts of innovations. These tools help innovators to mitigate risk and to strengthen their strategic planning. This book aligns assessment tools and practices with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The prospects as well as the limitations of various Responsible Innovation assessment approaches and tools are discussed, as well as their applicability in various industry contexts. The book brings together leading scholars in the field to present the most comprehensive review of Responsible Innovation tools. It articulates the importance of assessment and value creation, the different metrics and monitoring systems that can be deployed and the reporting mechanisms, including the importance of effective communication

Challenges for engineering students working with authentic complex problems

Engineers are important participants in solving societal, environmental and technical problems. However, due to an increasing complexity in relation to these problems new interdisciplinary competences are needed in engineering. Instead of students working with monodisciplinary problems, a situation where students work with authentic complex problems in interdisciplinary teams together with a company may scaffold development of new competences. The question is: What are the challenges for students structuring the work on authentic interdisciplinary problems? This study explores a three-day event where 7 students from Aalborg University (AAU) from four different faculties and one student from University College North Denmark (UCN), (6th-10th semester), worked in two groups at a large Danish company, solving authentic complex problems. The event was structured as a Hackathon where the students for three days worked with problem identification, problem analysis and finalizing with a pitch competition presenting their findings. During the event the students had workshops to support the work and they had the opportunity to use employees from the company as facilitators. It was an extracurricular activity during the summer holiday season. The methodology used for data collection was qualitative both in terms of observations and participants’ reflection reports. The students were observed during the whole event. Findings from this part of a larger study indicated, that students experience inability to transfer and transform project competences from their previous disciplinary experiences to an interdisciplinary setting