Mapping the public debate on ethical concerns: algorithms in mainstream media

Algorithms are in the mainstream media news on an almost daily basis. Their context is invariably artificial intelligence and machine learning decision making. In media articles, algorithms are described as powerful, autonomous actors that have a capability of producing actions that have consequences. Despite a tendency to deification, the prevailing critique of algorithms focusses on ethical concerns raised by decisions resulting from algorithmic processing. However, this paper proposes that the ethical concerns discussed are limited in scope and it is not clear which concerns dominate the debate. The research presented in this paper contributes the first systematic mapping study of articles appearing in leading UK national papers from the perspective of widely accepted ethical concerns. The UK context is important because of UK public policy initiatives around artificial intelligence. In academic literature, the key ethical concerns have been well documented and numerous models have been developed. To review the media content from the perspective of ethical concerns, this paper uses the synthesised conceptual map of ethical concerns developed by Mittelstad et. al. Given the widespread use of that framework, as evident through citations, this paper's contribution is also an important illustration and experiment using that conceptual map

Development metrics measurement level for component reusability evaluation approach (CREA)

The study of software component reuse is rising in software development field and one of the methods used to reduce the production cost and time. Among the problems faced by software developers in component reuse, is the difficulty to determine which set of components are suitable to use in new software development. Thus, this study was conducted with the purpose; to define the characteristics of software component reusability evaluation approach (CREA) based on experienced software developer’s feedback, and to estimate the measurement level for each of the predefined metric. Three characteristics and sub characteristics, namely understandability (documentation level and observality), adaptability (customizability), and portability (external dependency) were identified that have been used to develop the metrics for CREA. The result for all metrics will be used as an input to the fuzzy inference system (FIS) for measuring the reusability level of the component

DEVELOPING A VIRTUAL OPEN-AIR MUSEUM OF VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE

Vernacular architecture is an integral part of the national cultural heritage. Today, however, many of these buildings exist only on old plans or photographs and the average citizen has no opportunity to get acquainted with this part of the national identity. Therefore, in our work, we present the development of two web applications with the aim of creating a virtual open-air museum for presenting vernacular architecture in the Czech Republic. The applications were created using open-source technologies, and are implemented with methods that allow easy transfer from one operating system to another. The presented content is a carefully selected sub-sample of more than 10,000 available records representing all regional types of vernacular architecture. The result is one application designed for editors to manage the presented content and one application allowing interactive viewing of the available geo-located records designed for the general public. Individual records can be searched either directly using the map window or by querying the attribute table. These records contain descriptive information about the object, as well as historical photographs and plans and, for some objects, additional information in the form of 3D models, PDF documents and other files. The applications are designed in such a way that their content can be freely expanded in the future and thus contribute to the popularization of vernacular architecture among the general public, which was the main reason for their creation

MergePoint: A Graphical Web-App for merging HTTP-Endpoints and IoT-Platform Models

More and more devices are connected to Internet of Things Platforms in various application domains. The resulting device integration effort is moderated by the concrete integration syntax and the technical abilities of the device integrator. Therefore, researchers from various communities have been investigating and designing component coupling architectures to achieve interoperability for more than 30 years. Emerging Smart Home scenarios challenges classical integration approaches as no single formal integration standard exists. In this paper we introduce a reference architecture called MergePoint that automates HTTP-Endpoint integration with smart home platforms such as openHAB in a plug-and-play manner. Based on a prototypical system implementation, our empirical evaluation demonstrates that average integration time can be reduced by 78% and average tool usability score is increased by 65% compared to textual integration approaches. MergePoint can serve as a reference implementation for practitioners that want to automate the integration between HTTP-Endpoints and IoT Platform Models

Composition opportuniste de fragments d'IHM pour une interaction adaptative en environnement ambiant

International audienceDans ce papier nous proposons une approche basée sur un système multi-agents adaptatif, en utilisant les principes de Méta-Interactions Homme-Machine et d'Opportunisme dans le but de résoudre le problème de la Composition d'Interactions Homme-Machine dans les espaces interactifs ambiants. L'idée de cette approche est de voir chaque composant comme un agent capable d'interagir avec les autres composants pour composer de manière autonome et ainsi suggérer à l'utilisateur de manière opportuniste des compositions de son environnement ambiant interactif. Nous avons choisi de présenter principalement deux aspects de la composition d'interactions homme-machine, la contrôlabilité et l'objectif de la composition. Enfin nous illustrons notre approche avec des cas d'utilisation dans le cadre d'un projet nommé neoCampus. Mots-clés informatique ubiquitaire ; espaces ambiants interactifs ; interactions homme-machine ; composition opportuniste de composants ; méta-interactions homme-machine ; théorie des systèmes multi-agents adaptatif

Optimization of Secure Coding Practices in SDLC as Part of Cybersecurity Framework

Cybersecurity is a global goal that is central to national security planning in many countries. One of the most active research fields is design of practices for the development of so-called highly secure software as a kind of protection and reduction of the risks from cyber threats. The use of a secure software product in a real environment enables the reduction of the vulnerability of the system as a whole. It would be logical to find the most optimal solution for the integration of secure coding in the classic SDLC (software development life cycle). This paper aims to suggest practices and tips that should be followed for secure coding, in order to avoid cost and time overruns because of untimely identification of security issues. It presents the implementation of secure coding practices in software development, and showcases several real-world scenarios from different phases of the SDLC, as well as mitigation strategies. The paper covers techniques for SQL injection mitigation, authentication management for staging environments, and access control verification using JSON Web Tokens

Next steps in knowledge-driven architecture composition

Software architecture knowledge management has itself positioned as a mature research stream over the last years. Superficially, architectural knowledge management is about documenting design and design decisions. In software-intensive systems, a concrete application scenario of architectural knowledge management deals with the question whether a provided functionality fits a required functionality. To automate the underlying integrationprocess, various research communities came up with, for example, interface definition languages and service matchers. However, formalizing the semantics ofa software interface is in practice currently regarded as a price too high to pay. In this paper, we provide the status of our incremental case-based integration method that aims at reducing the effort for formalizing integration knowledge without losing the ability to compose software components based on interface semantics automatically

A mapping language for IoT device descriptions

Component models for IoT devices regain popularity. As more and more devices must be semantically connected within IoT platforms, digital abstractions for these devices are needed. For this purpose, textual device descriptions which encapsulate device-specific characteristics are a suitable candidate. Such component descriptions formally describe a device’s information model as well as the offered functionality in a standardized way. However, smart IoT platforms mainly solve user goals by composing various IoT devices in a suitable manner. Current IoT descriptions, such as Eclipse Vorto do not address this need at all. In this paper, we introduce a formal mapping language that allows to capture functional interaction semantics already during device integration time. Our evaluation shows that only few mapping elements are needed to define functional mappings between operations as well as to capture the underlying communication pattern