Ethical Reflections of Human Brain Research and Smart Information Systems

open access journalThis case study explores ethical issues that relate to the use of Smart Infor-mation Systems (SIS) in human brain research. The case study is based on the Human Brain Project (HBP), which is a European Union funded project. The project uses SIS to build a research infrastructure aimed at the advancement of neuroscience, medicine and computing. The case study was conducted to assess how the HBP recognises and deal with ethical concerns relating to the use of SIS in human brain research. To under-stand some of the ethical implications of using SIS in human brain research, data was collected through a document review and three semi-structured interviews with partic-ipants from the HBP. Results from the case study indicate that the main ethical concerns with the use of SIS in human brain research include privacy and confidentiality, the security of personal data, discrimination that arises from bias and access to the SIS and their outcomes. Furthermore, there is an issue with the transparency of the processes that are involved in human brain research. In response to these issues, the HBP has put in place different mechanisms to ensure responsible research and innovation through a dedicated pro-gram. The paper provides lessons for the responsible implementation of SIS in research, including human brain research and extends some of the mechanisms that could be employed by researchers and developers of SIS for research in addressing such issues

Trust Model for Optimized Cloud Services

Cloud computing with its inherent advantages draws attention for business critical applications, but concurrently expects high level of trust in cloud service providers. Reputation-based trust is emerging as a good choice to model trust of cloud service providers based on available evidence. Many existing reputation based systems either ignore or give less importance to uncertainty linked with the evidence. In this paper, we propose an uncertainty model and define our approach to compute opinion for cloud service providers. Using subjective logic operators along with the computed opinion values, we propose mechanisms to calculate the reputation of cloud service providers. We evaluate and compare our proposed model with existing reputation models

Cryptocurrency with a Conscience: Using Artificial Intelligence to Develop Money that Advances Human Ethical Values

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are offering new avenues for economic empowerment to individuals around the world. However, they also provide a powerful tool that facilitates criminal activities such as human trafficking and illegal weapons sales that cause great harm to individuals and communities. Cryptocurrency advocates have argued that the ethical dimensions of cryptocurrency are not qualitatively new, insofar as money has always been understood as a passive instrument that lacks ethical values and can be used for good or ill purposes. In this paper, we challenge such a presumption that money must be ‘value-neutral.’ Building on advances in artificial intelligence, cryptography, and machine ethics, we argue that it is possible to design artificially intelligent cryptocurrencies that are not ethically neutral but which autonomously regulate their own use in a way that reflects the ethical values of particular human beings – or even entire human societies. We propose a technological framework for such cryptocurrencies and then analyse the legal, ethical, and economic implications of their use. Finally, we suggest that the development of cryptocurrencies possessing ethical as well as monetary value can provide human beings with a new economic means of positively influencing the ethos and values of their societies

Mechatronics & the cloud

Conventionally, the engineering design process has assumed that the design team is able to exercise control over all elements of the design, either directly or indirectly in the case of sub-systems through their specifications. The introduction of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and the Internet of Things (IoT) means that a design team’s ability to have control over all elements of a system is no longer the case, particularly as the actual system configuration may well be being dynamically reconfigured in real-time according to user (and vendor) context and need. Additionally, the integration of the Internet of Things with elements of Big Data means that information becomes a commodity to be autonomously traded by and between systems, again according to context and need, all of which has implications for the privacy of system users. The paper therefore considers the relationship between mechatronics and cloud-basedtechnologies in relation to issues such as the distribution of functionality and user privacy