Interactive adaptive systems increasingly become part of our everyday life. Which factors could shape this development and under which conditions will interactions with technical systems be deemed socially appropriate? The "FActors of Social Appropriateness" (FASA) Model presented in this Open Access-book provides a structured approach to our understanding of social appropriateness in human-technology interaction. The FASA Model serves to inform design choices for sociosensitive and socioactive artificial assistants.

This paper aims to study the role of the social robot Probo in providing assistance to a therapist for robot assisted therapy with autistic children. Children with autism have difficulties with social interaction and several studies indicate that they show preference toward interaction with objects, such as computers and robots, rather than with humans. In 1991, Carol Gray developed Social Stories, an intervention tool aimed to increase children’s social skills. Social stories are short scenarios written (...) or tailored for autistic individuals to help them understand and behave appropriately in social situations. This study shows that, in specific situations, the social performance of autistic children improves when using the robot Probo, as a medium for social story telling, than when a human reader tells the stories. The robot tells Social Stories to teach ASD children how to react in situations like saying “hello”, saying “thank you” and “sharing toys”. The robot has the capability of expressing emotions and attention via its facial expressions and its gaze. The paper discusses the use of Probo as an added-value therapeutic tool for social story telling and presents the first experimental results. Keywords: social robot; ASD children; social story; robot assisted therapy. (shrink)

In ‘Assisted Gestative Technologies,’ Romanis argues for the conceptual creation of a new genus of assisted reproductive technologies, in recognition of the unique ethical, legal and social implications assistive gestative technologies raise.1 She argues this taxonomic classification might allow for ethicolegal determinations regarding one AGT to be generalised to other instances of this technology. Romanis correctly identifies a lack of appropriate regulations for dealing with the rapidly developing field of assisted and artificial gestation, noting the current discussion of (...) surrogacy law reform in the UK offers an opportunity to redress this. However, when reading this article what strikes me most is not how AGTs, ARTs or assisted conception are defined, but rather what constitutes a technology. Surrogacy is introduced as assisted gestation, but uterine transplantation as being on the spectrum of AGTs. While both might use assisted conception, for example, in vitro fertilisation, it is unclear what part of uterus donation or transplantation is to be considered technological? This is not to say such processes do not involve technologies—of course they do—but we do not typically describe surgery itself as an instance of technology. This distinction is relevant if the purpose of establishing this genus of AGTs is to group morally relevant characteristics of technologies together or create paradigm cases for casuistical reasoning. Considering the above …. (shrink)

This paper argues for the role of technology, such as artificial intelligence, which includes machine learning, in managing conflicts between herders and farmers in Nigeria. Conflicts between itinerant Fulani herders and farmers over the years have resulted in the destruction of lives, properties, and the displacement of many indigenous communities across Nigeria, with devastating social, economic and political consequences. Over time, the conflicts have morphed into ethnic stereotypes, allegations of ethnic cleansing, forceful appropriation and divisive entrenchment of labels (...) that are inimical to national existence. The reality of climate change and increased urbanization suggest that conflicts are likely to exacerbate over shrinking resources in the near future. Finding solutions to the conflicts, therefore requires innovative thinking capable of addressing the limits of past approaches. While mindful of the human and political dimension of the conflicts, I argue using the method of philosophical analysis that technology possesses the capacity for social transformation, and make a case for the modernization of grazing culture and the curbing of crossborder grazing through machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence. Machine Learning represents a transformative technology that addresses the security challenges of irregular migration, accommodates the nomadic and subsistent mode of farming associated with the conflicting parties while enabling a gradual but stable transition to full modernization. I conclude that machine learning holds many prospects for minimizing conflicts and attaining social cohesion between herders and farmers when properly complemented by other mechanisms of social cohesion that may be political in nature. (shrink)

In the fall of 1991, voters in Washington state were asked to consider a public initiative that sought to legalize physician-assisted death: Initiative 119. Drafted by Washington Citizens for Death with Dignity, the initiative was intended to amend the existing state natural death act in several ways:1) expand the definition of “terminal condition” to include patients in irrevers ible coma or persistent vegetative state;2) specifically name “artificial nutrition and hydration” as life-sustaining medical procedures that could be refused or withdrawn;3) (...) legally allow mentally competent patients with certifiably terminal conditions to request and receive “aid-in-dying” from their physician as a medical service.The first two proposed amendments were widely acknowledged as timely and appropriate; a coalition of medical, religious, and community organizations had been actively working on such additions for several years. It was the proposal to legalize “aid-in-dying,” however, that represented a radical shift in the conduct of physicians towards their patients and a dramatic shift in social policy. (shrink)

Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) in healthcare raise pressing questions about how much users should trust AI/ML systems, particularly for high stakes clinical decision-making. Ensuring that user trust is properly calibrated to a tool’s computational capacities and limitations has both practical and ethical implications, given that overtrust or undertrust can influence over-reliance or under-reliance on algorithmic tools, with significant implications for patient safety and health outcomes. It is, thus, important to better understand how variability in (...) trust criteria across stakeholders, settings, tools and use cases may influence approaches to using AI/ML tools in real settings. As part of a 5-year, multi-institutional Agency for Health Care Research and Quality-funded study, we identify trust criteria for a survival prediction algorithm intended to support clinical decision-making for left ventricular assist device therapy, using semistructured interviews (n=40) with patients and physicians, analysed via thematic analysis. Findings suggest that physicians and patients share similar empirical considerations for trust, which were primarilyepistemicin nature, focused on accuracy and validity of AI/ML estimates. Trust evaluations considered the nature, integrity and relevance of training data rather than the computational nature of algorithms themselves, suggesting a need to distinguish ‘source’ from ‘functional’ explainability. To a lesser extent, trust criteria were also relational (endorsement from others) and sometimes based on personal beliefs and experience. We discuss implications for promoting appropriate and responsible trust calibration for clinical decision-making use AI/ML. (shrink)

To become more broadly applicable, positions on AI ethics require perspectives from non-Western regions and cultures such as China and Japan. In this paper, we propose that the addition of the concept of harmony to the discussion on ethical AI would be highly beneficial due to its centrality in East Asian cultures and its applicability to the challenge of designing AI for social good. We first present a synopsis of different definitions of harmony in multiple contexts, such as music (...) and society, which reveals that the concept is, at its core, about well-balanced relationships and appropriate actions which give rise to order, balance, and aesthetically pleasing phenomena. The mediator for these well-balanced relationships isTaktwhich is an ability to act thoughtfully and sensibly according to the specific situation and to put things into proportion and order. We propose that the central challenge of building harmonizing AI is to make intelligent systems tactful and also to design and use them tactfully. For an AI system to become tactful, it needs to be able to have an advanced sensitivity to the specific contexts which it is in and their social and ethical implications and have the capability of approximately inferring the emotional and cognitive states of people with whom it is interacting. (shrink)

This article advocates for a hermeneutic model for children-AI (age group 7–11 years) interactions in which the desirable purpose of children’s interaction with artificial intelligence (AI) systems is children's growth. The article perceives AI systems with machine-learning components as having a recursive element when interacting with children. They can learn from an encounter with children and incorporate data from interaction, not only from prior programming. Given the purpose of growth and this recursive element of AI, the article argues for (...) distinguishing the interpretation of bias within the artificial intelligence (AI) ethics and responsible AI discourse. Interpreting bias as a preference and distinguishing between positive (pro-diversity) and negative (discriminative) bias is needed as this would serve children's healthy psychological and moral development. The human-centric AI discourse advocates for an alignment of capacities of humans and capabilities of machines by a focus both on the purpose of humans and on the purpose of machines for humans. The emphasis on mitigating negative biases through data protection, AI law, and certain value-sensitive design frameworks demonstrates that the purpose of the machine for humans is prioritized over the purpose of humans. These top–down frameworks often narrow down the purpose of machines to do-no-harm and they miss accounting for the bottom-up views and developmental needs of children. Therefore, applying a growth model for children-AI interactions that incorporates learning from negative AI-mediated biases and amplifying positive ones would positively benefit children’s development and children-centric AI innovation. Consequently, the article explores:What challenges arise from mitigating negative biases and amplifying positive biases in children-AI interactions and how can a growth model address these?To answer this, the article recommends applying a growth model in open AI co-creational spaces with and for children. In such spaces human–machine and human–human value alignment methods can be collectively applied in such a manner that children can (1) become sensitized toward the effects of AI-mediated negative biases on themselves and others; (2) enable children to appropriate and imbue top-down values of diversity, and non-discrimination with their meanings; (3) enforce children’s right to identity and non-discrimination; (4) guide children in developing an inclusive mindset; (5) inform top-down normative AI frameworks by children’s bottom-up views; (6) contribute to design criteria for children-centric AI. Applying such methods under a growth model in AI co-creational spaces with children could yield an inclusive co-evolution between responsible young humans in the loop and children-centric AI systems. (shrink)

Traditional medical practices and relationships are changing given the widespread adoption of AI-driven technologies across the various domains of health and healthcare. In many cases, these new technologies are not specific to the field of healthcare. Still, they are existent, ubiquitous, and commercially available systems upskilled to integrate these novel care practices. Given the widespread adoption, coupled with the dramatic changes in practices, new ethical and social issues emerge due to how these systems nudge users into making decisions and (...) changing behaviours. This article discusses how these AI-driven systems pose particular ethical challenges with regards to nudging. To confront these issues, the value sensitive design approach is adopted as a principled methodology that designers can adopt to design these systems to avoid harming and contribute to the social good. The AI for Social Good factors are adopted as the norms constraining maleficence. In contrast, higher-order values specific to AI, such as those from the EU High-Level Expert Group on AI and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, are adopted as the values to be promoted as much as possible in design. The use case of Amazon Alexa's Healthcare Skills is used to illustrate this design approach. It provides an exemplar of how designers and engineers can begin to orientate their design programs of these technologies towards the social good. (shrink)

Our social relations are changing, we are now not just talking to each other, but we are now also talking to artificial intelligence (AI) assistants. We claim AI assistants present a new form of digital connectivity risk and a key aspect of this risk phenomenon is related to user risk awareness (or lack of) regarding AI assistant functionality. AI assistants present a significant societal risk phenomenon amplified by the global scale of the products and the (...) increasing use in healthcare, education, business, and service industry. However, there appears to be little research concerning the need to not only understand the changing risks of AI assistant technologies but also how to frame and communicate the risks to users. How can users assess the risks without fully understanding the complexity of the technology? This is a challenging and unwelcome scenario. AI assistant technologies consist of a complex ecosystem and demand explicit and precise communication in terms of communicating and contextualising the new digital risk phenomenon. The paper then argues for the need to examine how to best to explain and support both domestic and commercial user risk awareness regarding AI assistants. To this end, we propose the method of creating a risk narrative which is focused on temporal points of changing societal connectivity and contextualised in terms of risk. We claim the connectivity risk narrative provides an effective medium in capturing, communicating, and contextualising the risks of AI assistants in a medium that can support explainability as a risk mitigation mechanism. (shrink)

An arms race for an artificial general intelligence would be detrimental for and even pose an existential threat to humanity if it results in an unfriendly AGI. In this paper, an all-pay contest model is developed to derive implications for public policy to avoid such an outcome. It is established that, in a winner-takes-all race, where players must invest in R&D, only the most competitive teams will participate. Thus, given the difficulty of AGI, the number of competing teams is (...) unlikely ever to be very large. It is also established that the intention of teams competing in an AGI race, as well as the possibility of an intermediate outcome, is important. The possibility of an intermediate prize will raise the probability of finding the dominant AGI application and, hence, will make public control more urgent. It is recommended that the danger of an unfriendly AGI can be reduced by taxing AI and using public procurement. This would reduce the pay-off of contestants, raise the amount of R&D needed to compete, and coordinate and incentivize co-operation. This will help to alleviate the control and political problems in AI. Future research is needed to elaborate the design of systems of public procurement of AI innovation and for appropriately adjusting the legal frameworks underpinning high-tech innovation, in particular dealing with patenting by AI. (shrink)

This paper considers the question: In what ways can artificial intelligence assist with interdisciplinary research for addressing complex societal problems and advancing the social good? Problems such as environmental protection, public health, and emerging technology governance do not fit neatly within traditional academic disciplines and therefore require an interdisciplinary approach. However, interdisciplinary research poses large cognitive challenges for human researchers that go beyond the substantial challenges of narrow disciplinary research. The challenges include epistemic divides between disciplines, the massive (...) bodies of relevant literature, the peer review of work that integrates an eclectic mix of topics, and the transfer of interdisciplinary research insights from one problem to another. Artificial interdisciplinarity already helps with these challenges via search engines, recommendation engines, and automated content analysis. Future “strong artificial interdisciplinarity” based on human-level artificial general intelligence could excel at interdisciplinary research, but it may take a long time to develop and could pose major safety and ethical issues. Therefore, there is an important role for intermediate-term artificial interdisciplinarity systems that could make major contributions to addressing societal problems without the concerns associated with artificial general intelligence. (shrink)

In the seventy years since AI became a field of study, the theoretical work of philosophers has played increasingly important roles in understanding many aspects of the AI project, from the metaphysics of mind and what kinds of systems can or cannot implement them, the epistemology of objectivity and algorithmic bias, the ethics of automation, drones, and specific implementations of AI, as well as analyses of AI embedded in social contexts (for example). Serious scholarship in AI ethics sometimes quotes (...) Asimov’s speculative laws of robotics as if they were genuine proposals, and yet Lem remains historically undervalued as a theorist who uses fiction as his vehicle. Here, I argue that Lem’s fiction (in particular his fiction about robots) is overlooked but highly nuanced philosophy of AI, and that we should recognize the lessons he tried to offer us, which focused on the human and social failures rather than technological breakdowns. Stories like “How the World Was Saved” and “Upside Down Evolution” ask serious philosophical questions about AI metaphysics and ethics, and offer insightful answers that deserve more attention. Highlighting some of this work from The Cyberiad and the stories in Mortal Engines in particular, I argue that the time has never been more appropriate to attend to his philosophy in light of the widespread technological and social failures brought about by the quest for artificial intelligence. In service of this argument, I discuss some of the history and philosophical debates around AI in the last decades, as well as contemporary events that illustrate Lem’s strongest claims in critique of the human side of AI. (shrink)

Given the current popularization of computer programming and the trends of informatization and digitization, colleges have actively responded by making programming lessons compulsory for students of all disciplines. However, students from different ethnic groups often have different learning responses to such lessons due to their respective cultural backgrounds, the environment in which they grew up, and their consideration for future employment. In this study, an AI-assisted programming module was developed and used to compare the differences between multi-ethnic college students in (...) terms of their theoretical and actual learning expectancy, motivation, and effectiveness. The module conducted analysis through the deep learning network and examined the relevant processes that the students underwent during programming lessons, as well as the types of errors they had committed. Their learning motivation for and actual learning performance in programming were then examined based on the cognitive learning theory. The results of the experiment, which involved 96 multi-ethnic college students, indicated that the two groups had dissimilar theoretical performance in terms of their expectancy and motivation for learning programming. The indigenous students’ main concern was whether programming would affect their families or tribes, and this concern affected and was reflected in their learning outcomes. In contrast, the learning motivation and goals of Han Chinese students were driven by the cognition of the value of programming to themselves. The research findings can contribute toward the cognition and understanding of multi-ethnic students when learning computer programming and development of the appropriate teaching methods, and serve as a reference for subsequent research on integrating multiculturalism into computer programming lessons. (shrink)

This article presents a novel set of ten play scenarios for robot-assisted play for children with special needs. This set of scenarios is one of the key outcomes of the IROMEC project that investigated how robotic toys can become social mediators, encouraging children with special needs to discover a range of play styles, from solitary to collaborative play. The target user groups in the project were children with Mild Mental Retardation,1 children with Severe Motor Impairment and children with Autism. (...) The play scenarios were developed against specific educational and therapeutic objectives that were discussed with panels of experts in various countries, during several user panel meetings for each of the above mentioned target user groups. These objectives were classified with reference to the ICF-CY, the International Classification of Functioning – version for Children and Youth. The article presents a detailed description of the play scenarios, each with its relevant educational and therapeutic objectives in five key developmental areas. While the play scenarios described in this paper originally were developed for and tested with the above user groups and with the IROMEC robot, the play scenarios can potentially be applied to other user groups and to a wide range of other applications involving human-robot interaction using different robotic toys. Keywords: human-robot interaction; assistive technology; play scenarios; autism; mild mental retardation; sever motor impairment; assisted play. (shrink)

Anwendungen Künstlicher Intelligenz, Maschinellen Lernens sowie Robotik und weitere informatische Systeme spielen in immer mehr Bereichen der menschlichen Lebenswelt eine immer wichtigere Rolle. Technik wird dabei auch weiterhin und zunehmend Medium menschlicher Kommunikation und Interaktion sein, darüber hinaus wird jedoch auch immer mehr menschliche Interaktion nicht nur durch sondern mit Technik stattfinden. Eine Dimension neuer Mensch-Technik-Relationen ist dabei das Phänomen sozialer Angemessenheit. Obgleich sich dieses nicht auf ein einfaches Regelwerk reduzieren lässt, verhalten sich Menschen in zwischenmenschlicher Interaktion ganz selbstverständlich sozial (...) angemessen und treffen in der Regel ohne Weiteres ‚den richtigen Ton‘. Wie aber verhält es sich mit ‚intelligenten‘ technischen Systemen? Können – sollten – diese mit Fähigkeiten zu entsprechendem Sozialverhalten ausgestattet werden, um damit auch eine weitere bedeutsame Grenze zwischen Mensch und Technik zum Verschwinden zu bringen? Anders gefragt: Ist es möglich und erforderlich, Technik zu sozialisieren? (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence is supposed to perform tasks autonomously, make competent decisions, and interact socially with people. From a psychological perspective, AI can thus be expected to impact users’ three Basic Psychological Needs, namely autonomy, competence, and relatedness to others. While research highlights the fulfillment of these needs as central to human motivation and well-being, their role in the acceptance of AI applications has hitherto received little consideration. Addressing this research gap, our study examined the influence of BPN Satisfaction on (...) Intention to Use an AI assistant for personal banking. In a 2×2 factorial online experiment, 282 participants watched a video of an AI finance coach with a female or male synthetic voice that exhibited either high or low agency. In combination, these factors resulted either in AI assistants conforming to traditional gender stereotypes or in non-conforming conditions. Although the experimental manipulations had no significant influence on participants’ relatedness and competence satisfaction, a strong effect on autonomy satisfaction was found. As further analyses revealed, this effect was attributable only to male participants, who felt their autonomy need significantly more satisfied by the low-agency female assistant, consistent with stereotypical images of women, than by the high-agency female assistant. A significant indirect effects model showed that the greater autonomy satisfaction that men, unlike women, experienced from the low-agency female assistant led to higher ITU. The findings are discussed in terms of their practical relevance and the risk of reproducing traditional gender stereotypes through technology design. (shrink)

This paper aims to study the role of the social robot Probo in providing assistance to a therapist for robot assisted therapy (RAT) with autistic children. Children with autism have difficulties with social interaction and several studies indicate that they show preference toward interaction with objects, such as computers and robots, rather than with humans. In 1991, Carol Gray developed Social Stories, an intervention tool aimed to increase children's social skills. Social stories are short scenarios (...) written or tailored for autistic individuals to help them understand and behave appropriately in social situations. This study shows that, in specific situations, the social performance of autistic children improves when using the robot Probo, as a medium for social story telling, than when a human reader tells the stories. The robot tells Social Stories to teach ASD children how to react in situations like saying “hello“, saying “thank you“ and “sharing toys“. The robot has the capability of expressing emotions and attention via its facial expressions and its gaze. The paper discusses the use of Probo as an added-value therapeutic tool for social story telling and presents the first experimental results. Keywords: social robot; ASD children; social story; robot assisted therapy. (shrink)

AgeTech involves the use of emerging technologies to support the health, well-being and independent living of older adults. In this paper we focus on how AgeTech based on artificial intelligence (AI) may better support older adults to remain in their own living environment for longer, provide social connectedness, support wellbeing and mental health, and enable social participation. In order to assess and better understand the positive as well as negative outcomes of AI-based AgeTech, a critical analysis of (...) ethical design, digital equity, and policy pathways is required. A crucial question is how AI-based AgeTech may drive practical, equitable, and inclusive multilevel solutions to support healthy, active ageing. In our paper, we aim to show that a focus on equity is key for AI-based AgeTech if it is to realize its full potential. We propose that equity should not just be an extra benefit or minimum requirement, but the explicit aim of designing AI-based health tech. This means that social determinants that affect the use of or access to these technologies have to be addressed. We will explore how complexity management as a crucial element of AI-based AgeTech may potentially create and exacerbate social inequities by marginalising or ignoring social determinants. We identify bias, standardization, and access as main ethical issues in this context and subsequently, make recommendations as to how inequities that stem form AI-based AgeTech can be addressed. (shrink)

We were astonished to read a recent media news item about a 51-year-old woman in Ontario who was offered and accepted medical assistance in dying (MAID) because she was experiencing multiple chemical sensitivities, also known by its preferred diagnostic term, idiopathic environmental intolerance (IEI). Reportedly, she could not access appropriate housing. We find this concerning, as providing MAID to individuals with refractory IEI symptoms on the basis of housing unavailability implies that there were no better management options available. This case (...) should prompt ethical reflection on whether our supports for the most vulnerable enable them to maintain basic human dignity, and whether systemic societal action in other ways could better support people with IEI. (shrink)

Voice-assistants are becoming increasingly popular and can be deployed to offers a low-cost tool that can support and potentially reduce falls, injuries, and accidents faced by older people within the age of 65 and older. But, irrespective of the mobility and walkability challenges faced by the aging population, studies that employed Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based voice-assistants to reduce risks faced by older people when they use public transportation and walk in built environment are scarce. This is because the (...) development of AI-based voice-assistants suitable for the mobility domain presents several techno–social challenges. Accordingly, this study aims to identify _user-centered_ service design and functional requirements, techno–social factors, and further design an architectural model for an AI-based voice-assistants that provide personalized recommendation to reduce falls, injuries, and accidents faced by older people. Accordingly, a scoping review of the literature grounded on secondary data from 59 studies was conducted and descriptive analysis of the literature and content-related analysis of the literature was carried out. Findings from this study presents the perceived techno-socio factors that may influences older people use of AI-based voice-assistants. More importantly, this study presents user-centred service design and functional requirements needed to be considered in developing voice-assistants suitable for older people. Implications from this study provides AI techniques for implementing voice-assistants that provide safe mobility, walkability, and wayfinding for older people in urban areas. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper considers novel ethical issues pertaining to near-future artificial intelligence (AI) systems that seek to support, maintain, or enhance the capabilities of older adults as they age and experience cognitive decline. In particular, we focus on smart assistants (SAs) that would seek to provide proactive assistance and mediate social interactions between users and other members of their social or support networks. Such systems would potentially have significant utility for users and their caregivers if they could (...) reduce the cognitive load for tasks that help older adults maintain their autonomy and independence. However, proactively supporting even simple tasks, such as providing the user with a summary of a meeting or a conversation, would require a future SA to engage with ethical aspects of human interactions which computational systems currently have difficulty identifying, tracking, and navigating. If SAs fail to perceive ethically relevant aspects of social interactions, the resulting deficit in moral discernment would threaten important aspects of user autonomy and well-being. After describing the dynamic that generates these ethical challenges, we note how simple strategies for prompting user oversight of such systems might also undermine their utility. We conclude by considering how near-future SAs could exacerbate current worries about privacy, commodification of users, trust calibration and injustice. (shrink)

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance, one key challenge is ensuring that AI aligns with certain values. However, in the current diverse and democratic society, reaching a normative consensus is complex. This paper delves into the methodological aspect of how AI ethicists can effectively determine which values AI should uphold. After reviewing the most influential methodologies, we detail an intuitionist research agenda that offers guidelines for aligning AI applications with a limited set of reliable moral intuitions, each underlying (...) a refined cooperative view of AI. We discuss appropriate epistemic tools for collecting, filtering, and justifying moral intuitions with the aim of reducing cognitive and social biases. The proposed methodology facilitates a large collective participation in AI alignment, while ensuring the reliability of the considered moral judgments. (shrink)

Background: The introduction of healthcare AI to society as well as the clinical setting will improve individual health statuses and increase the possible medical choices. AI can be, however, regarded as a double-edged sword that might cause medically and socially undesirable situations. In this paper, we attempt to predict several negative situations that may be faced by healthcare professionals, patients and citizens in the healthcare setting, and our society as a whole. Discussion: We would argue that physicians abuse healthcare AI (...) through their excessive and dependent use of it, and they will focus only on the AI services in their office and patient medical data and information, and forget to observe the patient in their clinical encounters. In the era of AI introduction, data from the wearable terminal or AI advice will become the primary target of the physician’s interest, and could be regarded as a patient surrogate. Paternalism would be paradoxically resurrected by the introduction of state-of-the-art AI. A physician’s conflict of interest related to AI as a commercial product could strongly influence his or her actions in clinical settings. We also worry that the general public will become uneasy and hypersensitive slaves to information, compulsively and uninterruptedly requesting healthcare information concerning their own health and advice from AI. An AI system capable of expressing proper and timely empathy to suffering patients could deprive healthcare professionals of their roles in terms of hospitality and emotional exchange. Finally, entire societies would soon share and consolidate healthcare sensitive information from all in the general public as part of a totalitarian healthcontrolled society where individual privacy and personal secrets could be neglected. The advent of the healthcontrolled society could lead to the metamorphosis of the concept of privacy itself into something completely different. Conclusion: Although AI which surpasses human healthcare professionals may never appear, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst is the best approach to take. To this end, we present some potential countermeasures including conducting clinical research and social investigations concerning problems surrounding the introduction of AI and developing guidelines for its appropriate use. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to explore the technologization of peace work through “remote support monitors” that use social and digital media technologies like social media to alert local violence prevention actors to potentially violent situations during demonstrations. Design/methodology/approach Using a distributed cognition lens, the authors explore the information processing of monitors within peace organizations. The authors adopt a qualitative thematic analysis methodology composed of interviews with monitors and documents from their shared communication and discussion channels. The authors’ analysis (...) seeks to highlight how information is transformed between social and technical actors through the process of monitoring. Findings The authors’ analysis identifies that the technologization of monitoring for violence prevention to assist nonviolent activists produces two principal and related forms of transformation: appropriation and hidden attributes. Monitors “appropriate” information from sources to fit new ends and modes of representation throughout the process of detection, verification and dissemination. The verification and dissemination processes likewise render latent supporting informational elements, hiding the aggregative nature of information flow in monitoring. The authors connect the ideas of appropriation and hidden attributes to broader discourses in surveillance and trust that challenge monitoring and its place in peace work going forward. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to focus on the communicative and information processes of remote support monitors. The authors demonstrate that adoption of social and digital media information of incipient violence and response processes for its mitigation suggests both a social and technical precarity for the role of monitoring. (shrink)

Digitalisation and emerging technologies affect our lives and are increasingly present in a growing number of fields. Ethical implications of the digitalisation process have therefore long been discussed by the scholars. The rapid development of artificial intelligence has taken the legal and ethical discussion to another level. There is no doubt that AI can have a positive impact on the society. The focus here, however, is on its more negative impact. This article will specifically consider how the law and (...) ethics in their interaction can be applied in a situation where a disabled person needs some kind of assistive technology to participate in the society as an equal member. This article intends to investigate whether the EU Guidelines for Trustworthy AI, as a milestone of ethics concerning technology, has the power to change the current practice of how social and economic rights are applied. The main focus of the article is the ethical requirements ‘Human agency and oversight’ and, more specifically, fundamental rights. (shrink)

Human organizations’ adoption of the paradigm of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is associated with the growth of techno-empowerment, which is the process of transferring autonomy in decision-making to intelligent machines. Particular persuasive strategies have been identified that may coax people to use intelligent devices. However, there is a substantial research gap regarding what antecedents influence human intention to assign decision-making autonomy to artificial agents. In this study, ethological and evolutionary concepts are applied to explain the drivers for autonomous (...) class='Hi'>assistants’ techno-empowerment. The method used in the study was a 4 × 2 between-subject experiment made with 278 persons. The research tool used to collect the data was an online survey. The results show that more positive attitudes and higher trust, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use are correlated with higher intention to allow the autonomous assistant independence in decision-making. Second, the results suggest that the more human-like a non-human agent is, the higher the intention to empower it—but only if this agent simultaneously provides functional and visual anthropomorphic cues explainable by the mimicry effect. (shrink)

This paper is addressed to recent theoretical discussions of the Anthropocene, in particular Bernard Stiegler’s Neganthropocene (Open Universities Press, 2018), which argues: “As we drift past tipping points that put future biota at risk, while a post-truth regime institutes the denial of ‘climate change’ (as fake news), and as Silicon Valley assistants snatch decision and memory, and as gene-editing and a financially-engineered bifurcation advances over the rising hum of extinction events and the innumerable toxins and conceptual opiates that Anthropocene (...) Talk fascinated itself with—in short, as ‘the Anthropocene’ discloses itself as a dead-end trap…”. The objective of this paper is therefore twofold: (1) to discuss how the Anthropocene is appropriated to certain ideological discourses (paradoxically) to maintain the hegemony of precisely those systems of production that have most accelerated climate change etc.; (2) to consider how the factography of the Anthropocene is exploited in this process to mask the ideological character of industry-aligned “technocratic” environmental management. The paper is not concerned with specific case studies in terms of government and industry policy, or climate science, but rather with the ways in which the discourse of the Anthropocene has been inflected within the humanities and the broader cultural field—that is to say, ideologically, as a system or logic of meaning. How the Anthropocene “means” is, in this respect, a question of some importance. This paper does not attempt to address all the facets of this question, but focuses upon a central “apocalyptic” strain in the discourse of the Anthropocene drawn particularly from Francis Fukuyama’s millennial posthumanism and centred in the question of “sustainability” as catastrophe management—with the risk that real environmental degradation will become an alibi for a revived neoliberalism. In other words, that the critical Earth system transformations that characterise the Anthropocene are themselves commodities, and that the project of their amelioration is in process of defining a future (opportunistic) “crisis” rhetoric with a global political franchise. The ideological import of the Anthropocene stems precisely from the fact that it is planetary and, while catalysed by human agency, independent in its specific behaviour from it. The Anthropocene objectively presents as the contemporary counterpart of the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction and the most compelling argument for a new kind of technological “arms race.” But it also presents as the condition of an emerging ideological discourse which will determine how this race is run. From the discourse on “energy security” to the widespread “security crackdown” on environmental activists across the so-called developed & developing world, the Anthropocene has come to represent the co-option of a scientific factography for the thinly disguised resurgence of “ideological science” of the Fukuyamaesque variety (post-history, post-human). For Fukuyama, the true meaning of “posthuman” is thus the accomplishment of humanity’s historical mission. As the “End of History” designates an end of ideological struggle, so too the dénouement of the Anthropocene and the “ends of man” represent the accomplished purpose of species warfare: dominion, not simply over the world, but over all possible worlds. According to this narrative, science—like technology—must be uniquely at the service of the maintenance of the global order, organised around a universal appeal to “crisis management.” It is precisely for this reason that what calls itself post-human masks the return of an ever-more-apocalyptic Humanism. (shrink)

A growing number of consumer technology companies are aiming to convince older people that humanoid robots make helpful tools to support aging-in-place. As hybrid devices, socially assistive robots (SARs) are situated between health monitoring tools, familiar digital assistants, security aids, and more advanced AI-powered devices. Consequently, they implicate older people’s privacy in complex ways. Such devices are marketed to perform functions common to smart speakers (e.g., Amazon Echo) and smart home platforms (e.g., Google Home), while other functions are more (...) specific to older people, including health and safety monitoring and serving as companions to mitigate loneliness. Privacy is a key value central to debates about the ethics of using SARs in aged care, yet there has been very little interchange between these debates and the robust theoretical discussion in the legal literature about the future of privacy and AI governance. Drawing on two qualitative studies of older people’s views on consumer SARs, the paper contributes novel findings about older people’s thinking on privacy and data governance at the intersection of their experiences with present day digital technologies and projections for future AI systems, and places their views in dialogue with debates about the future of privacy protection and AI governance. (shrink)

Many critics of the legalization of physician‐assisted death oppose it in part because they fear it will further disadvantage those who are already economically disadvantaged. This argument points to a serious problem of how economic considerations can influence medical decisions, but in the context of PAD, the concern is not borne out. We will provide empirical evidence suggesting that concerns about money influence medical decisions throughout the full course of illness, but at the end of life, financial pressure is much (...) more likely to influence a decision to pursue or reject aggressive life‐extending care than it is to influence a request for PAD. We will also address the question of whether financial pressure as a result of being poor—particularly in the context of an inadequate social safety net—robs people of their autonomy, rendering their informed request and consent invalid. We argue that it does not. We will emphasize the impracticality and injustice of rejecting the role of poverty as a legitimate factor in decision‐making, the irrational distinction between PAD and withdrawal of life‐sustaining care, and the more appropriate focus on the great flaws in the American health care system. (shrink)

A large body of literature considers the ethico-legal and regulatory issues surrounding assisted conception. Surrogacy, however, within this body of literature is an odd-fit. It involves a unique demand of another person—a form of reproductive labour—that many other aspects of assisted conception, such as gamete donation do not involve. Surrogacy is a form of assisted gestation. The potential alternatives for individuals who want a genetically related child but who do not have the capacity to gestate are ever increasing: with the (...) advent of uterus transplantation, and the anticipated development of artificial placentas.In this paper, I highlight the pertinent conceptual differences between technologies assisting conception and those assisting gestation to demonstrate that distinct issues arise when assisted gestative technologies are used. I argue that there is utility in considering AGTs as a genus of technologies. These technologies perform the same function from the perspective of putative parents and might exist on a spectrum of alternatives when they become more available. Moreover, since many of the same or very similar ethical, social and legal issues are raised by surrogacy, UTx and ectogestation, analysis of these issues will be better contextualised by considering these technologies together. Many of the matters currently being highlighted for reform in the context of surrogacy will inevitably impact on how other forms of assisted gestation are governed. The conversation should be broadened; we should consider how far other emerging technologies might be accommodated in revised regulatory schemes. (shrink)

Monitoring and assistive technologies (MATs) are being used more frequently in healthcare. A central ethical concern is the compatibility of these systems with the moral preferences of their users—an issue especially relevant to participatory approaches within the ethics-by-design debate. However, users’ incapacity to communicate preferences or to participate in design processes, e.g., due to dementia, presents a hurdle for participatory ethics-by-design approaches. In this paper, we explore the question of how the value preferences of users in the field of dementia (...) care can be integrated into AI-based MATs. First, we briefly introduce different ethics-by-design approaches and explain the challenges they face in dementia care. Next, we introduce a novel approach for addressing these challenges. Through a qualitative content analysis of interviews with persons with dementia and their family caregivers (n = 27), we identified multiple ideal–typical value preference profiles. We then applied these profiles in a computer simulation, by which we also introduce the concept of ethical compliance quantification to scale the moral preferences of the interviewees for the simulation. Finally, we discuss study results, the advantages of using computer simulations, and general study limitations before drawing conclusions for further research. The study contributes to the ongoing debate on participatory ethics-by-design by defining on the basis of empirical data ideal–typical value preference frameworks that can be used to guide MAT actions and their outcomes. Going forward, MAT end-users with dementia and other communication-impaired persons could be enabled to choose a value profile that best fits their moral preferences. (shrink)

This book provides an overview of computer techniques and tools — especially from artificial intelligence (AI) — for handling legal evidence, police intelligence, crime analysis or detection, and forensic testing, with a sustained discussion of methods for the modelling of reasoning and forming an opinion about the evidence, methods for the modelling of argumentation, and computational approaches to dealing with legal, or any, narratives. By the 2000s, the modelling of reasoning on legal evidence has emerged as a significant area (...) within the well-established field of AI & Law. An overview such as this one has never been attempted before. It offers a panoramic view of topics, techniques and tools. It is more than a survey, as topic after topic, the reader can get a closer view of approaches and techniques. One aim is to introduce practitioners of AI to the modelling legal evidence. Another aim is to introduce legal professionals, as well as the more technically oriented among law enforcement professionals, or researchers in police science, to information technology resources from which their own respective field stands to benefit. Computer scientists must not blunder into design choices resulting in tools objectionable for legal professionals, so it is important to be aware of ongoing controversies. A survey is provided of argumentation tools or methods for reasoning about the evidence. Another class of tools considered here is intended to assist in organisational aspects of managing of the evidence. Moreover, tools appropriate for crime detection, intelligence, and investigation include tools based on link analysis and data mining. Concepts and techniques are introduced, along with case studies. So are areas in the forensic sciences. Special chapters are devoted to VIRTOPSY (a procedure for legal medicine) and FLINTS (a tool for the police). This is both an introductory book (possibly a textbook), and a reference for specialists from various quarters. (shrink)

In the paper Assisted Gestative Technologies, Elizabeth Chloe Romanis advocates for the creation of a new category, which includes technological interventions that allow ‘persons who want to reproduce, potentially using their own genetic material, but are unable, or potentially unwilling, to undertake gestation’.1 Romanis conceptualises these technologies as a unified kind, a ‘genus’, and argues that they ‘collectively raise distinct ethical, legal and social issues from those related to assisted conception’.1 As I understand Romanis’ paper, her aims are twofold. (...) The first is conceptual: Romanis construes assisted gestative technologies as a separate kind with shared attributes and purposes, which differ from those of technologies that enable conception. The second is normative: Romanis champions the distinction between AGTs and other technologies as a useful way to tease apart relevant ‘ethical, legal and social issues’ that specifically concern AGTs. The reason for this, according to Romanis, is that gestation is ‘such a unique and demanding form of labour’.1 I agree with Romanis: gestation is indeed a unique and demanding form of labour, one with associated biological, cultural and political specificities with distinctive moral significance. It is for this very same reason that I believe that AGTs should not conceptually be considered as a unified category and should not be morally appraised as such, for relevant political and moral aspects of these technologies would be overlooked in the process. To clarify: Romanis’ use of genealogy to aid normative inquiry is a worthy endeavour. And I concur with the very convincing case she makes for the distinction between conception and gestation. My disagreement with Romanis rather concerns the conceptualisation of technologies such as gestational surrogacy, uterine transplantation and artificial placentas as a unified category, and the normative inquiry grounded in …. (shrink)

Increasing concerns have been raised regarding artificial intelligence (AI) bias, and in response, efforts have been made to pursue AI fairness. In this paper, we argue that the idea of structural injustice serves as a helpful framework for clarifying the ethical concerns surrounding AI bias—including the nature of its moral problem and the responsibility for addressing it—and reconceptualizing the approach to pursuing AI fairness. Using AI in healthcare as a case study, we argue that AI bias is a form (...) of structural injustice that exists when AI systems interact with other social factors to exacerbate existing social inequalities, making some groups of people more vulnerable to undeserved burdens while conferring unearned benefits to others. The goal of AI fairness, understood this way, is about pursuing a more just social structure with the development and usage of AI systems when appropriate. We further argue that all participating agents in the unjust social structure associated with AI bias bear a shared responsibility to join collective action with the goal of reforming the social structure, and we provide a list of practical recommendations for agents in various social positions to contribute to this collective action. (shrink)

This paper is designed to examine a practitioner oriented model for addressing ideas of corporate social responsibility and integrating those ideas into corporate strategy. Industry will be discussed as the appropriate level of analysis to assist managers in understanding their firm’s external environment and their approach to the more specific social environment. The industry-organization model is used to develop boundaries of competition and social responses. The five forces model will be extended to apply to the social (...) environment and will include industry dimensions, stakeholders, social issues, managerial attention and social impacts. (shrink)

It has become a truism that the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) is necessary and must help guide technological developments. Numerous ethical guidelines have emerged from academia, industry, government and civil society in recent years. While they provide a basis for discussion on appropriate regulation of AI, it is not always clear how these ethical guidelines were developed, and by whom. Using content analysis, we surveyed a sample of the major documents (_n_ = 47) and analyzed the accessible information (...) regarding their methodology and stakeholder engagement. Surprisingly, only 38% report some form of stakeholder engagement (with 9% involving citizens) and most do not report their methodology for developing normative insights (15%). Our results show that documents with stakeholder engagement develop more comprehensive ethical guidance with greater applicability, and that the private sector is least likely to engage stakeholders. We argue that the current trend for enunciating AI ethical guidance not only poses widely discussed challenges of applicability in practice, but also of transparent development (as it rather behaves as a black box) and of active engagement of diversified, independent and trustworthy stakeholders. While most of these documents consider people and the common good as central to their telos, engagement with the general public is significantly lacking. As AI ethics moves from the initial race for enunciating general principles to more sustainable, inclusive and practical guidance, stakeholder engagement and citizen involvement will need to be embedded into the framing of ethical and societal expectations towards this technology. (shrink)

Collecting data using an appropriate sampling technique is a challenging task for a researcher to do. The researchers will be unable to collect data from all possible situations, which will preclude them from answering the study’s research questions in their current form. In light of the enormous number and variety of sampling techniques/methods available, the researcher must be knowledgeable about the differences to select the most appropriate sampling technique/method for the specific study under consideration. In this context, this study also (...) looks into the basic concepts in probability sampling, kinds of probability sampling techniques with their advantages and disadvantages. Social science researchers will benefit from this study since it will assist them in choosing the most suitable probability sampling technique for completing their research smoothly and successfully. (shrink)

Since Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), historians and philosophers of science have paid increasing attention to the implications of disciplinarity. In this chapter we consider restrictions posed to interdisciplinary exchange between ecology and economics that result from a particular kind of commitment to the ideal of disciplinary purity, that is, that each discipline is defined by an appropriate, unique set of objects, methods, theories, and aims. We argue that, when it comes to the objects of study in (...) ecology and economics, ideas of disciplinary purity have been underwritten by the artificial-natural distinction. We then problematize this distinction, and thus disciplinary purity, both conceptually and empirically. Conceptually, the distinction is no longer tenable. Empirically, recent interdisciplinary research has shown the epistemological and policy-oriented benefits of dealing with models which explicitly link anthropogenic (i.e., “artificial”) and non-anthropogenic factors (i.e., “natural”). We conclude that, in the current age of the Anthropocene, it is to be expected that without interdisciplinary exchange, ecology and economics may relinquish global relevance because the distinct and separate systems to which each “pure” science was originally made to apply will only diminish over time. (shrink)

Ethically significant consequences of artificially intelligent artifacts will stem from their effects on existing social relations. Artifacts will serve in a variety of socially important roles—as personal companions, in the service of elderly and infirm people, in commercial, educational, and other socially sensitive contexts. The inevitable disruptions that these technologies will cause to social norms, institutions, and communities warrant careful consideration. As we begin to assess these effects, reflection on degrees and kinds of social agency will be (...) required to make properly informed decisions concerning the deployment of artificially intelligent artifacts in important settings. The social agency of these systems is unlike a human social agency, and this paper provides a methodological framework that is more suited for inquiry into artificial social agents than conventional philosophical treatments of the concept of agency. Separate aspects and dimensions of agency can be studied without assuming that agency must always look like adult human agency. This revised approach to the agency of artifacts is conducive to progress in the topics studied by AI ethics. (shrink)

This paper examines a case where Amazon’s cloud-based AI assistant Alexa accidentally ordered a dollhouse for a 6-year-old girl. In the press, the case was defined as a technical recognition problem. Building on this idea, we argue that the dollhouse case helps us to analyze the limits of current AI applications. By drawing on the writings of Gilles Deleuze and François Laruelle, we argue that these limits are not merely technical but more deeply embedded in the structures where the thinking (...) of AI can potentially happen. We point out that AI research has been compromised by the concepts of what constitutes both ‘artificial’ and by what constitutes ‘intelligence’. First, we use the notion of artificial non-intelligence to explain how different modes of digital capitalism such as voice commerce establish limits for AI. Second, we use the notion of non-artificial intelligence to illustrate the limits of associating AI’s modes of thinking with human thought. (shrink)

Following the studies of Araujo et al. (AI Soc 35:611–623, 2020) and Lee (Big Data Soc 5:1–16, 2018), this empirical study uses two scenario-based online experiments. The sample consists of 221 subjects from Germany, differing in both age and gender. The original studies are not replicated one-to-one. New scenarios are constructed as realistically as possible and focused on everyday work situations. They are based on the AI acceptance model of Scheuer (Grundlagen intelligenter KI-Assistenten und deren vertrauensvolle Nutzung. Springer, Wiesbaden, 2020) (...) and are extended by individual descriptive elements of AI systems in comparison to the original studies. The first online experiment examines decisions made by artificial intelligence with varying degrees of impact. In the high-impact scenario, applicants are automatically selected for a job and immediately received an employment contract. In the low-impact scenario, three applicants are automatically invited for another interview. In addition, the relationship between age and risk perception is investigated. The second online experiment tests subjects’ perceived trust in decisions made by artificial intelligence, either semi-automatically through the assistance of human experts or fully automatically in comparison. Two task types are distinguished. The task type that requires “human skills”—represented as a performance evaluation situation—and the task type that requires “mechanical skills”—represented as a work distribution situation. In addition, the extent of negative emotions in automated decisions is investigated. The results are related to the findings of Araujo et al. (AI Soc 35:611–623, 2020) and Lee (Big Data Soc 5:1–16, 2018). Implications for further research activities and practical relevance are discussed. (shrink)

The social aspects of causality in medicine and healthcare have been emphasized in recent debates in the philosophy of science as crucial factors that need to be considered to enable, among others, appropriate interventions in public health. Therefore, it seems central to recognize the bearing of social causes (broadly understood, e.g., social inequalities and socio-economic status) in bringing about certain concrete pathologies. Being aware of the relevance of social causes in medicine and healthcare is particularly important (...) in the face of the role that artificial intelligence-based systems (such as machine learning algorithms) are increasingly playing in these high-stakes fields. In fact, these systems bear the dangerous potential of concealing relevant social causes. This is highly problematic not only because it reinforces issues of distributive injustice but also because it can pave the way for issues of epistemic injustice. The central aim of this chapter is to make a first effort to point out possible connections between the importance of recognizing social causes in medicine and healthcare and forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

For their deployment in human societies to be safe, AI agents need to be aligned with value-laden cooperative human life. One way of solving this “problem of value alignment” is to build moral machines. I argue that the goal of building moral machines aims at the wrong kind of ideal, and that instead, we need an approach to value alignment that takes seriously the categorically different cognitive and moral capabilities between human and AI agents, a condition I call deep agential (...) diversity. Domestication is the answer to a similarly structured problem: namely, how to integrate nonhuman animals that lack moral agency safely into human society and align their behavior with human values. Just like nonhuman animals, AI agents lack a genuinely moral agency; and just like nonhuman animals, we might find ways to train them to nevertheless assist us, and live and work among us – to “domesticate” them, in other words. I claim that the domestication approach does well in explaining many of our intuitions and worries about deploying AI agents in our social practices. (shrink)

A widespread need to explain the behavior and outcomes of AI-based systems has emerged, due to their ubiquitous presence. Thus, providing renewed momentum to the relatively new research area of eXplainable AI (XAI). Nowadays, the importance of XAI lies in the fact that the increasing control transference to this kind of system for decision making -or, at least, its use for assisting executive stakeholders- already affects many sensitive realms (as in Politics, Social Sciences, or Law). The decision-making power handover (...) to opaque AI systems makes mandatory explaining those, primarily in application scenarios where the stakeholders are unaware of both the high technology applied and the basic principles governing the technological solutions. The issue should not be reduced to a merely technical problem; the explainer would be compelled to transmit richer knowledge about the system (including its role within the informational ecosystem where he/she works). To achieve such an aim, the explainer could exploit, if necessary, practices from other scientific and humanistic areas. The first aim of the paper is to emphasize and justify the need for a multidisciplinary approach that is beneficiated from part of the scientific and philosophical corpus on Explaining, underscoring the particular nuances of the issue within the field of Data Science. The second objective is to develop some arguments justifying the authors’ bet by a more relevant role of ideas inspired by, on the one hand, formal techniques from Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, and on the other hand, the modeling of human reasoning when facing the explanation. This way, explaining modeling practices would seek a sound balance between the pure technical justification and the explainer-explainee agreement. (shrink)

In Australia and other countries, certain groups of women have traditionally been denied access to assisted reproductive technologies . These typically are single heterosexual women, lesbians, poor women, and those whose ability to rear children is questioned, particularly women with certain disabilities or who are older. The arguments used to justify selection of women for ARTs are most often based on issues such as scarcity of resources, and absence of infertility , or on social concerns: that it “goes against (...) nature”; particular women might not make good mothers; unconventional families are not socially acceptable; or that children of older mothers might be orphaned at an early age. The social, medical, legal, and ethical reasoning that has traditionally promoted this lack of equity in access to ARTs, and whether the criteria used for client deselection are ethically appropriate in any particular case, are explored by this review. In addition, the issues of distribution and just “gatekeeping” practices associated with these sensitive medical services are examined. (shrink)

This article considers the relationship between Christian pastoral care and Artificial Intelligence systems. Four aspects are identified from definitions of pastoral care: the horizon of contingency in mortality, the role of wisdom rather than mere information, the oppressive and/or liberatory potential of AI and the importance of empathic presence. In rejecting a transhumanist argument that mental processes are substrate-independent, it is contended that pastoral carers embrace, rather than seeking to circumvent, their crucial finitude in being humans who care. A (...) distinction is drawn between probabilistic reasoning and judgement in retaining a vital place for decision-making that is social. Whilst not eschewing value in AI systems, this article argues for critical evaluation of technologically framed contributions to addressing barriers to people's participation. The importance of empathy is highlighted—in the light of claims not only of robotic mimicry but of interindividual models of emotion. It is concluded that the notion of artificial care be ruled out although the possibilities of AI-assisted care are not dismissed. Opportunities for humans to abdicate from the responsibilities to care, in favour of AI substitutes, are deemed to be best avoided. (shrink)

Recent findings about the capabilities of smart animals such as corvids or octopi and novel types of artificial intelligence, from social robots to cognitive assistants, are provoking the demand for new answers for meaningful comparison with other kinds of intelligence. This book fills this need by proposing a universal theory of intelligence which is based on causal learning as the central theme of intelligence. The goal is not just to describe, but mainly to explain queries like why (...) one kind of intelligence is more intelligent than another, whatsoever the intelligence. Shiny terms like "strong AI," "superintelligence," "singularity" or "artificial general intelligence" that have been coined by a Babylonian confusion of tongues are clarified on the way. (shrink)