An ontology-based approach to engineering ethicality requirements

In a world where Artificial Intelligence (AI) is pervasive, humans may feel threatened or at risk by giving up control to machines. In this context, ethicality becomes a major concern to prevent AI systems from being biased, making mistakes, or going rogue. Requirements Engineering (RE) is the research area that can exert a great impact in the development of ethical systems by design. However, proposing concepts, tools and techniques that support the incorporation of ethicality into the software development processes as explicit requirements remains a great challenge in the RE field. In this paper, we rely on Ontology-based Requirements Engineering (ObRE) as a method to elicit and analyze ethicality requirements (‘Ethicality requirements’ is adopted as a name for the class of requirements studied in this paper by analogy to other quality requirements studied in software engineering, such as usability, reliability, and portability, etc. The use of this term (as opposed to ‘ethical requirements’) highlights that they represent requirements for ethical systems, analogous to how ‘trustworthiness requirements’ represent requirements for trustworthy systems. To put simply: the predicates ‘ethical’ or ‘trustworthy’ are not meant to be predicated over the requirements themselves). ObRE applies ontological analysis to ontologically unpack terms and notions that are referred to in requirements elicitation. Moreover, this method instantiates the adopted ontology and uses it to guide the requirements analysis activity. In a previous paper, we presented a solution concerning two ethical principles, namely Beneficence and Non-maleficence. The present paper extends the previous work by targeting two other important ethicality principles, those of Explicability and Autonomy. For each of these new principles, we do ontological unpacking of the relevant concepts, and we present requirements elicitation and analysis guidelines, as well as examples in the context of a driverless car case. Furthermore, we validate our approach by analysing the requirements elicitation made for the driverless car case in contrast with a similar case, and by assessing our method’s coverage w.r.t European Union guidelines for Trustworthy AI.</p

An Ontological Account of the Action Theory of Economic Exchanges

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in thedevelopment of ontologically well-founded conceptual models for Information Systems in areas such as Service Management, Accounting Information Systems and Financial Reporting. Economic exchanges are central phenomena in these areas. For this reason, they occupy a prominent position in modelling frameworks such as the REA (Resource-EventAction) ISO Standard as well as the FIBO (Financial Industry BusinessOntology). In this paper, we begin a well-founded ontological analysisof economic exchanges inspired by a recent ontological view on the nature of economic transactions. According to this view, what counts asan economic transaction is based on an agreement on the actions thatthe agents are committed to perform. The agreement is in turn based on convergent preferences about the course of action to bring about. This view enables a unified treatment of economic exchanges, regardless the object of the transaction, and complies with the view that all economictransactions are about services. In this paper, we start developing our analysis in the framework of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO)

The many facets of trust

Trust is an attitude that an agent (the trustor) has toward an entity (the trustee), such that the trustor counts upon the trustee to act in a way that is benefi- cial w.r.t. to the trustor’s goals. The notion of trust is relevantly discussed both in in- formation science and philosophy. Unfortunately, we still lack a satisfying account for this concept. The goal of this article is to contribute to filling this gap. First, we take issue with some central tenets shared by the main philosophical accounts, such as that there is just one relation of trust, that this relation has three argument places, and that trust is reliance plus some extra factor. Second, we provide a novel account of trust, also discussing different levels of trust. According to the account we put forth here, the logical form of trust sentences is expressed by a four-place relation. Further, we distinguish and characterize four kinds of trust relations and their connections. We also argue that trust and reliance are different phenomena. Third, on the basis of the proposed account, we extend the Reference Ontology of Trust (ROT). We call the new version of ROT that includes this extension ”ROT 3.0”. Finally, we discuss the implications of the new ontological definitions in the applications we have done of the concept of trust in other works, also pointing out future applications made possible by these novel accounts of trust

A Core Ontology for Economic Exchanges

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the development of well-founded conceptual models for Service Management, Accounting Information Systems and Financial Reporting. Economic ex- changes are a central notion in these areas and they occupy a prominent position in frameworks such as the Resource-Event Action (REA) ISO Standard, service core ontologies (e.g., UFO-S) as well as financial stan- dards (e.g. OMG’s Financial Industry Business Ontology - FIBO). We present a core ontology for economic exchanges inspired by a recent view on this phenomenon. According to this view, economic exchanges are based on an agreement on the actions that the agents are committed to perform. This view enables a unified treatment of economic exchanges, regardless the object of the transaction. We ground our core ontology on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO), discussing its formal and conceptual aspects, instantiating it as a reusable OntoUML model, and confronting it with the REA standard and the UFO-S service ontology

As Microgrids e o Poder Naval Auxiliando a Preservação do Meio Ambiente e Proteção da Fronteira: a Contribuição da Indústria Nacional de Defesa para o Desenvolvimento Econômico na Amazônia

O presente artigo tem objetivo de informar sobre o desenvolvimento das tecnologias dos Sistemas Microgrids e a importância do investimento da indústria naval nessas tecnologias. Os sistemas Microgrids se caracterizam pela integração de fontes de energia renováveis e sustentáveis para geração e distribuição de eletricidade em áreas isoladas. A Indústria Nacional de Defesa agregam tecnologia e desenvolvimento nas regiões onde estão instaladas, por isso, investir neste segmento de geração e distribuição de energia é estratégico para as Forças Armadas, bem como contribui para o desenvolvimento local sustentável. A utilização dos sistemas de Microgrids pela Indústria Nacional de Defesa nas áreas isoladas da região Amazônica é capaz de fomentar o desenvolvimento de tais regiões com participação do Poder Naval e, ao mesmo tempo, contribuindo para proteção das fronteiras e acesso às áreas mais isoladas pelas hidrovias deste território. Neste artigo são destacadas a viabilidade da implantação desse sistema, assim como experiências já realizadas e seus resultados