Moral Responsibility for Computing Artifacts: The Rules and Issues of Trust

“The Rules” are found in a collaborative document (started in March 2010) that states principles for responsibility when a computer artifact is designed, developed and deployed into a sociotechnical system. At this writing, over 50 people from nine countries have signed onto The Rules (Ad Hoc Committee, 2010). Unlike codes of ethics, The Rules are not tied to any organization, and computer users as well as computing professionals are invited to sign onto The Rules. The emphasis in The Rules is that both users and professionals have responsibilities in the production and use of computing artifacts. In this paper, we use The Rules to examine issues of trust

Mimesis across Empires: Artworks and Networks in India, 1765-1860

Review of Mimesis across Empires: Artworks and Networks in India, 1765-1860, Reviewed January 2014 by Marty Miller, Art & Design Librarian, Louisiana State University, [email protected]

A Sisterhood of Sculptors: American Artists in Nineteenth-Century Rome

Review of A Sisterhood of Sculptors: American Artists in Nineteenth-Century Rome, Reviewed January 2015 by Marty Miller, Art & Design Librarian, Middleton Library, Louisiana State University, [email protected]

Crafting Lives: African American Artisans in New Bern, North Carolina, 1770-1900

Review of Crafting Lives: African American Artisans in New Bern, North Carolina, 1770-1900, Reviewed May 2014 by Marty Miller, Art and Design Librarian, LSU Libraries, [email protected]

Why We Should Have Seen That Coming: Comments on Microsoft’s Tay “Experiment,” and Wider Implications

In this paper we examine the case of Tay, the Microsoft AI chatbot that was launched in March, 2016. After less than 24 hours, Microsoft shut down the experiment because the chatbot was generating tweets that were judged to be inappropriate since they included racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic language. We contend that the case of Tay illustrates a problem with the very nature of learning software (LS is a term that describes any software that changes its program in response to its interactions) that interacts directly with the public, and the developer’s role and responsibility associated with it. We make the case that when LS interacts directly with people or indirectly via social media, the developer has additional ethical responsibilities beyond those of standard software. There is an additional burden of care

On the Responsibility for Uses of Downstream Software

In this paper we explore an issue that is different from whether developers are responsible for the direct impact of the software they write. We examine, instead, in what ways, and to what degree, developers are responsible for the way their software is used “downstream.” We review some key scholarship analyzing responsibility in computing ethics, including some recent work by Floridi. We use an adaptation of a mechanism developed by Floridi to argue that there are features of software that can be used as guides to better distinguish situations where a software developer might share in responsibility for the software’s downstream use from those in which the software developer likely does not share in that responsibility. We identify five such features and argue how they are useful in the model of responsibility that we develop. The features are: closeness to the hardware, risk, sensitivity of data, degree of control over or knowledge of the future population of users, and the nature of the software (general vs. special purpose)

On Using Model For Downstream Responsibility

The authors identify features of software and the software development process that may contribute to the differences in the level of responsibility assigned to the software developers when they make their software available for others to use as a tool in building a second piece of software. They call this second use of the software downstream use

When AI Moves Downstream

After computing professionals design, develop, and deploy software, what is their responsibility for subsequent uses of that software “downstream” by others? Furthermore, does it matter ethically if the software in question is considered to be artificial intelligent (AI)? The authors have previously developed a model to explore downstream accountability, called the Software Responsibility Attribution System (SRAS). In this paper, we explore three recent publications relevant to downstream accountability, and focus particularly on examples of AI software. Based on our understanding of the three papers, we suggest refinements of SRAS

Oxygen isotopic evidence for accretion of Earth's water before a high-energy Moon-forming giant impact

The Earth-Moon system likely formed as a result of a collision between two large planetary objects. Debate about their relative masses, the impact energy involved, and the extent of isotopic homogenization continues. We present the results of a high-precision oxygen isotope study of an extensive suite of lunar and terrestrial samples.We demonstrate that lunar rocks and terrestrial basalts show a 3 to 4 ppm (parts per million), statistically resolvable, difference in Δ17O. Taking aubrite meteorites as a candidate impactor material, we show that the giant impact scenario involved nearly complete mixing between the target and impactor. Alternatively, the degree of similarity between the Δ17O values of the impactor and the proto-Earth must have been significantly closer than that between Earth and aubrites. If the Earth-Moon system evolved from an initially highly vaporized and isotopically homogenized state, as indicated by recent dynamical models, then the terrestrial basalt-lunar oxygen isotope difference detected by our study may be a reflection of post–giant impact additions to Earth. On the basis of this assumption, our data indicate that post–giant impact additions to Earth could have contributed between 5 and 30% of Earth’s water, depending on global water estimates. Consequently, our data indicate that the bulk of Earth’s water was accreted before the giant impact and not later, as often proposed