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752Regulate artificial intelligence to avert cyber arms raceNature 556 (7701): 296-298. 2018.This paper argues that there is an urgent need for an international doctrine for cyberspace skirmishes before they escalate into conventional warfare.
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806The opportunities and challenges of blockchain in the fight against government corruption19th General Activity Report (2018) of the Council of Europe Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO). 2018.Broadly defined, government corruption is the abuse of public power for private gain. It can assume various forms, including bribery, embezzlement, cronyism, and electoral fraud. At root, however, government corruption is a problem of trust. Corrupt politicians abuse the powers entrusted to them by the electorate (the principal-agent problem). Politicians often resort to corruption out of a lack of trust that other politicians will abstain from it (the collective action problem). Corruption…Read more
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274Theory of signs and statistical approach to big data in assessing the relevance of clinical biomarkers of inflammation and oxidative stressProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115 (10): 2473-2477. 2018.Biomarkers are widely used not only as prognostic or diagnostic indicators, or as surrogate markers of disease in clinical trials, but also to formulate theories of pathogenesis. We identify two problems in the use of biomarkers in mechanistic studies. The first problem arises in the case of multifactorial diseases, where different combinations of multiple causes result in patient heterogeneity. The second problem arises when a pathogenic mediator is difficult to measure. This is the case of the…Read more
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313Towards a digital ethics: EDPS ethics advisory groupEDPS Ethics Advisory Group. 2018.The EDPS Ethics Advisory Group (EAG) has carried out its work against the backdrop of two significant social-political moments: a growing interest in ethical issues, both in the public and in the private spheres and the imminent entry into force of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018. For some, this may nourish a perception that the work of the EAG represents a challenge to data protection professionals, particularly to lawyers in the field, as well as to companies struggli…Read more
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3056How AI can be a force for goodScience Magazine 361 (6404): 751-752. 2018.This article argues that an ethical framework will help to harness the potential of AI while keeping humans in control.
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251Oxidative stress and inflammation induced by environmental and psychological stressors: a biomarker perspectiveAntioxidants and Redox Signaling 28 (9): 852-872. 2018.The environment can elicit biological responses such as oxidative stress (OS) and inflammation as a consequence of chemical, physical, or psychological changes. As population studies are essential for establishing these environment-organism interactions, biomarkers of OS or inflammation are critical in formulating mechanistic hypotheses. By using examples of stress induced by various mechanisms, we focus on the biomarkers that have been used to assess OS and inflammation in these conditions. We …Read more
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848That AI will have a major impact on society is no longer in question. Current debate turns instead on how far this impact will be positive or negative, for whom, in which ways, in which places, and on what timescale. In order to frame these questions in a more substantive way, in this prolegomena we introduce what we consider the four core opportunities for society offered by the use of AI, four associated risks which could emerge from its overuse or misuse, and the opportunity costs associated …Read more
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563Soft ethics and the governance of the digitalPhilosophy and Technology 31 (1): 1-8. 2018.What is the relation between the ethics, the law, and the governance of the digital? In this article I articulate and defend what I consider the most reasonable answer.
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317Local explanations via necessity and sufficiency: unifying theory and practiceMinds and Machines 32 185-218. 2022.Necessity and sufficiency are the building blocks of all successful explanations. Yet despite their importance, these notions have been conceptually underdeveloped and inconsistently applied in explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), a fast-growing research area that is so far lacking in firm theoretical foundations. Building on work in logic, probability, and causality, we establish the central role of necessity and sufficiency in XAI, unifying seemingly disparate methods in a single formal …Read more
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343Ethics-based auditing to develop trustworthy AIMinds and Machines 31 (2). 2021.A series of recent developments points towards auditing as a promising mechanism to bridge the gap between principles and practice in AI ethics. Building on ongoing discussions concerning ethics-based auditing, we offer three contributions. First, we argue that ethics-based auditing can improve the quality of decision making, increase user satisfaction, unlock growth potential, enable law-making, and relieve human suffering. Second, we highlight current best practices to support the design and i…Read more
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536The European legislation on AI: a brief analysis of its philosophical approachPhilosophy and Technology 34 (2). 2021.On 21 April 2021, the European Commission published the proposal of the new EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) — one of the most influential steps taken so far to regulate AI internationally. This article highlights some foundational aspects of the Act and analyses the philosophy behind its proposal.
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568Should we be afraid of AI?Aeon Magazine. 2019.Machines seem to be getting smarter and smarter and much better at human jobs, yet true AI is utterly implausible. This article explains the reasons why this is the case.
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2006A united framework of five principles for AI in societyHarvard Data Science Review 1 (1). 2019.Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already having a major impact on society. As a result, many organizations have launched a wide range of initiatives to establish ethical principles for the adoption of socially beneficial AI. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of proposed principles threatens to overwhelm and confuse. How might this problem of ‘principle proliferation’ be solved? In this paper, we report the results of a fine-grained analysis of several of the highest-profile sets of ethical principl…Read more
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6Čtvrtá revoluceKarolinum Press. 2019.Vývoj informačních a komunikačních technologií (ICT) radikálně proměňuje nejen to, jak rozumíme světu a jak vzájemně komunikujeme, ale také způsob, jakým se díváme sami na sebe a jak chápeme svou vlastní povahu, existenci a odpovědnost. Rozšíření ICT tak představuje čtvrtou revoluci v dlouhém procesu přehodnocování základní podstaty a role lidstva ve vesmíru: jakožto lidstvo netvoříme nehybný střed vesmíru (kopernikovská revoluce), nelišíme se nijak mimořádně od zbytku zvířecího světa (darwinovs…Read more
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205Enabling digital health companionship is better than empowermentThe Lancet 1 (4). 2019.Digital Health Tools (DHTs), also known as patient self-surveilling strategies, have increasingly been promoted by health-care policy makers as technologies that have the capacity to transform patients’ lives. At the heart of the debate is the notion of empowerment. In this paper, we argue that what is required is not so much empowerment but rather a shift to enabling DHTs as digital companions. This will enable policy makers and health-care system designers to provide a more balanced view—one t…Read more
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2847Establishing the rules for building trustworthy AINature Machine Intelligence 1 (6): 261-262. 2019.AI is revolutionizing everyone’s life, and it is crucial that it does so in the right way. AI’s profound and far-reaching potential for transformation concerns the engineering of systems that have some degree of autonomous agency. This is epochal and requires establishing a new, ethical balance between human and artificial autonomy.
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4349Trusting artificial intelligence in cybersecurity is a double-edged swordPhilosophy and Technology 32 (1): 1-15. 2019.Applications of artificial intelligence (AI) for cybersecurity tasks are attracting greater attention from the private and the public sectors. Estimates indicate that the market for AI in cybersecurity will grow from US$1 billion in 2016 to a US$34.8 billion net worth by 2025. The latest national cybersecurity and defence strategies of several governments explicitly mention AI capabilities. At the same time, initiatives to define new standards and certification procedures to elicit users’ trust …Read more
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752Innovating with confidence: embedding AI governance and fairness in a financial services risk management frameworkBerkeley Technology Law Journal 34. 2020.An increasing number of financial services (FS) companies are adopting solutions driven by artificial intelligence (AI) to gain operational efficiencies, derive strategic insights, and improve customer engagement. However, the rate of adoption has been low, in part due to the apprehension around its complexity and self-learning capability, which makes auditability a challenge in a highly regulated industry. There is limited literature on how FS companies can implement the governance and controls…Read more
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353The poor performance of apps assessing skin cancer riskBritish Medical Journal 368 (8233). 2020.Over the past year, technology companies have made headlines claiming that their artificially intelligent (AI) products can outperform clinicians at diagnosing breast cancer, brain tumours, and diabetic retinopathy. Claims such as these have influenced policy makers, and AI now forms a key component of the national health strategies in England, the United States, and China. While it is positive to see healthcare systems embracing data analytics and machine learning, concerns remain about the eff…Read more
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406As the range of potential uses for Artificial Intelligence (AI), in particular machine learning (ML), has increased, so has awareness of the associated ethical issues. This increased awareness has led to the realisation that existing legislation and regulation provides insufficient protection to individuals, groups, society, and the environment from AI harms. In response to this realisation, there has been a proliferation of principle-based ethics codes, guidelines and frameworks. However, i…Read more
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1632The AI gambit — leveraging artificial intelligence to combat climate change: opportunities, challenges, and recommendationsIn Josh Cowls, Andreas Tsamados, Mariarosaria Taddeo & Luciano Floridi (eds.), Vodafone Institute for Society and Communications. 2021.In this article we analyse the role that artificial intelligence (AI) could play, and is playing, to combat global climate change. We identify two crucial opportunities that AI offers in this domain: it can help improve and expand current understanding of climate change and it contribute to combating the climate crisis effectively. However, the development of AI also raises two sets of problems when considering climate change: the possible exacerbation of social and ethical challenges alread…Read more
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1362The ethics of algorithms: key problems and solutionsAI and Society. 2021.Research on the ethics of algorithms has grown substantially over the past decade. Alongside the exponential development and application of machine learning algorithms, new ethical problems and solutions relating to their ubiquitous use in society have been proposed. This article builds on a review of the ethics of algorithms published in 2016, 2016). The goals are to contribute to the debate on the identification and analysis of the ethical implications of algorithms, to provide an updated anal…Read more
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482Ethics-based auditing to develop trustworthy AIMinds and Machines. 2021.A series of recent developments points towards auditing as a promising mechanism to bridge the gap between principles and practice in AI ethics. Building on ongoing discussions concerning ethics-based auditing, we offer three contributions. First, we argue that ethics-based auditing can improve the quality of decision making, increase user satisfaction, unlock growth potential, enable law-making, and relieve human suffering. Second, we highlight current best practices to support the design and i…Read more
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838An Empathy Imitation Game: Empathy Turing Test for Care- and Chat-botsMinds and Machines 31 (3). 2021.AI, in the form of artificial carers, provides a possible solution to the problem of a growing elderly population Yet, concerns remain that artificial carers ( such as care-or chat-bots) could not emphathize with patients to the extent that humans can. Utilising the concept of empathy perception,we propose a Turing-type test that could check whether artificial carers could do many of the menial tasks human carers currently undertake, and in the process, free up more time for doctors to offer emp…Read more
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463The fight for digital sovereignty: what it is, and why it matters, especially for the EUPhilosophy and Technology 33 (3): 369-378. 2020.Digital sovereignty, and the question of who ultimately controls AI seems, at first glance, to be an issue that concerns only specialists, politicians and corporate entities. And yet the fight for who will win digital sovereignty has far-reaching societal implications. Drawing on five case studies, the paper argues that digital sovereignty affects everyone, whether digital users or not, and makes the case for a hybrid system of control which has the potential to offer full democratic legitimacy …Read more
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1042GPT-3: its nature, scope, limits, and consequencesMinds and Machines 30 (4). 2020.In this commentary, we discuss the nature of reversible and irreversible questions, that is, questions that may enable one to identify the nature of the source of their answers. We then introduce GPT-3, a third-generation, autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like texts, and use the previous distinction to analyse it. We expand the analysis to present three tests based on mathematical, semantic, and ethical questions and show that GPT-3 is not designed to pass a…Read more
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288Artificial intelligence as a public service: learning from Amsterdam and HelsinkiPhilosophy and Technology 33 (4). 2020.In September 2020, Helsinki and Amsterdam announced the launch of their open AI registers—the first cities in the world to offer such a service. The AI registers describe what, where, and how AI applications are being used in the two municipalities; how algorithms were assessed for potential bias or risks; and how humans use the AI services. Examining issues of security and transparency, this paper discusses the potential for implementing AI in an urban public service setting and how this might …Read more
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440The ethics of digital well-being: a thematic reviewScience and Engineering Ethics 26 (4). 2020.This article presents the first thematic review of the literature on the ethical issues concerning digital well-being. The term ‘digital well-being’ is used to refer to the impact of digital technologies on what it means to live a life that isgood fora human being. The review explores the existing literature on the ethics of digital well-being, with the goal of mapping the current debate and identifying open questions for future research. The review identifies major issues related to several key…Read more
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932The Chinese approach to artificial intelligence: an analysis of policy, ethics, and regulationAI and Society 36 (1). 2021.In July 2017, China’s State Council released the country’s strategy for developing artificial intelligence, entitled ‘New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan’. This strategy outlined China’s aims to become the world leader in AI by 2030, to monetise AI into a trillion-yuan industry, and to emerge as the driving force in defining ethical norms and standards for AI. Several reports have analysed specific aspects of China’s AI policies or have assessed the country’s technical capabi…Read more
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343Algorithmic fairness in mortgage lending: from absolute conditions to relational trade-offsMinds and Machines 31 (1): 165-191. 2020.To address the rising concern that algorithmic decision-making may reinforce discriminatory biases, researchers have proposed many notions of fairness and corresponding mathematical formalizations. Each of these notions is often presented as a one-size-fits-all, absolute condition; however, in reality, the practical and ethical trade-offs are unavoidable and more complex. We introduce a new approach that considers fairness—not as a binary, absolute mathematical condition—but rather, as a relatio…Read more
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