The Sustainability Game::AI Technology as an Intervention for Public Understanding of Cooperative Investment

Cooperative behaviour is a fundamental strategy for survival; it positively affects economies, social relationships, and makes larger societal structures possible. People vary, however, in their willingness to engage in cooperative behaviour in a particular context. Here we examine whether AI can be effectively used to to alter individuals' implicit understanding of cooperative dynamics, and hence increase cooperation and participation in public goods projects. We developed an intervention---the Sustainability Game (SG)---to allow players to experience the consequences of individual investment strategies on a sustainable society. %, when personal well being, communal space, and resources limitations are taken into consideration. Results show that the intervention significantly increases individuals' cooperative behaviour in partially anonymised public goods contexts, but enhances competition one-on-one. This indicates our intervention does improve transparency of the systemic consequences of individual cooperative behaviour

Designing and implementing transparency for real time inspection of autonomous robots

The EPSRC's Principles of Robotics advises the implementation of transparency in robotic systems, however research related to AI transparency is in its infancy. This paper introduces the reader of the importance of having transparent inspection of intelligent agents and provides guidance for good practice when developing such agents. By considering and expanding upon other prominent definitions found in literature, we provide a robust definition of transparency as a mechanism to expose the decision-making of a robot. The paper continues by addressing potential design decisions developers need to consider when designing and developing transparent systems. Finally, we describe our new interactive intelligence editor, designed to visualise, develop and debug real-time intelligence

Improving Robot Transparency: An Investigation With Mobile Augmented Reality

Autonomous robots can be difficult to understand by their developers, let alone by end users. Yet, as they become increasingly integral parts of our societies, the need for afford- able easy to use tools to provide transparency grows. The rise of the smartphone and the improvements in mobile computing performance have gradually allowed Augmented Reality (AR) to become more mobile and affordable. In this paper we review relevant robot systems architecture and propose a new software tool to provide robot transparency through the use of AR technology. Our new tool, ABOD3-AR provides real-time graphical visualisation and debugging of a robot’s goals and priorities as a means for both designers and end users to gain a better mental model of the internal state and decision making processes taking place within a robot. We also report on our on-going research programme and planned studies to further understand the effects of transparency to naive users and experts

Acknowledging and citing core facilities Key contributions to data lifecycle should be recognised in the scientific literature

Core facilities play a central role in the life sciences by generating data and ensuring quality standards. Their contributions to research should be appropriately acknowledged or cited in research papers.Non peer reviewe

IEEE P7001: A proposed standard on transparency

This paper describes IEEE P7001, a new draft standard on transparency of autonomous systems. In the paper, we outline the development and structure of the draft standard. We present the rationale for transparency as a measurable, testable property. We outline five stakeholder groups: users, the general public and bystanders, safety certification agencies, incident/accident investigators and lawyers/expert witnesses, and explain the thinking behind the normative definitions of “levels” of transparency for each stakeholder group in P7001. The paper illustrates the application of P7001 through worked examples of both specification and assessment of fictional autonomous systems

Heterarchy of Transcription Factors Driving Basal and Luminal Cell Phenotypes in Human Urothelium

Cell differentiation is effected by complex networks of transcription factors that co-ordinate re-organisation of the chromatin landscape. The hierarchies of these relationships can be difficult to dissect. During in vitro differentiation of normal human uro-epithelial cells, formaldehyde-assisted isolation of regulatory elements (FAIRE-seq) and RNA-seq were used to identify alterations in chromatin accessibility and gene expression changes following activation of the nuclear receptor PPARG as a differentiation-initiating event. Regions of chromatin identified by FAIRE-seq as having altered accessibility during differentiation were found to be enriched with sequence-specific binding motifs for transcription factors predicted to be involved in driving basal and differentiated urothelial cell phenotypes, including FOXA1, P63, GRHL2, CTCF and GATA3. In addition, co-occurrence of GATA3 motifs was observed within sub-sets of differentiation-specific peaks containing P63 or FOXA1 after induction of differentiation. Changes in abundance of GRHL2, GATA3, and P63 were observed in immunoblots of chromatin-enriched extracts. Transient siRNA knockdown of P63 revealed that P63 favoured a basal-like phenotype by inhibiting differentiation and promoting expression of basal marker genes. GATA3 siRNA prevented differentiation-associated downregulation of P63 protein and transcript, and demonstrated positive feedback of GATA3 on PPARG transcript, but showed no effect on FOXA1 transcript or protein expression. This approach indicates that as a transcriptionally-regulated programme, urothelial differentiation operates as a heterarchy wherein GATA3 is able to co-operate with FOXA1 to drive expression of luminal marker genes, but that P63 has potential to transrepress expression of the same genes