Assuring the emotional and cultural intelligence of intelligent software systems

Intelligent software systems (e.g., conversational agents, profiling systems, recruitment systems) are often designed in a manner which may perpetuates anti-Black racism and other forms of socio-cultural discrimination. This may reinforce social inequities by supporting the automation of consequential and sometimes unfair decisions that may be made by such systems and which may have an adverse impact on credit scores, insurance payouts, and even health evaluations, just to name a few. My lightning talk will therefore emphasize the need to propose a new type of non-functional requirements called ECI (emotional and cultural intelligence) requirements that will aim at developing discrimination-aware intelligent software systems. Such systems will notably be able to behave empathetically toward everyone, including minoritized groups and will ensure they are treated fairly. My talk will also emphasize the need to develop novel system assurance solutions to assure these ECI requirements are sufficiently supported by intelligent software systems.Comment: 2 page

A PRISMA-driven systematic mapping study on system assurance weakeners

Context: An assurance case is a structured hierarchy of claims aiming at demonstrating that a given mission-critical system supports specific requirements (e.g., safety, security, privacy). The presence of assurance weakeners (i.e., assurance deficits, logical fallacies) in assurance cases reflects insufficient evidence, knowledge, or gaps in reasoning. These weakeners can undermine confidence in assurance arguments, potentially hindering the verification of mission-critical system capabilities. Objectives: As a stepping stone for future research on assurance weakeners, we aim to initiate the first comprehensive systematic mapping study on this subject. Methods: We followed the well-established PRISMA 2020 and SEGRESS guidelines to conduct our systematic mapping study. We searched for primary studies in five digital libraries and focused on the 2012-2023 publication year range. Our selection criteria focused on studies addressing assurance weakeners at the modeling level, resulting in the inclusion of 39 primary studies in our systematic review. Results: Our systematic mapping study reports a taxonomy (map) that provides a uniform categorization of assurance weakeners and approaches proposed to manage them at the modeling level. Conclusion: Our study findings suggest that the SACM (Structured Assurance Case Metamodel) -- a standard specified by the OMG (Object Management Group) -- may be the best specification to capture structured arguments and reason about their potential assurance weakeners