CfP: Philosophy and Technology’s special issue on The Governance of Algorithms (original) (raw)
Related papers
Stay Human. The quest for Responsibility in the Algorithmic Society1
2020
recent developments of Artificial Intelligence based on machine learning techniques through Big Data raise multiple ethical and legal concerns, all of which ultimately do turn around the issues of responsibility, which is increasingly invoked not as a remedy but as a character which shall shape the whole development process of AI as well as its functioning. The characters of AI, taken in its technical and social role, challenge some established ideas related to human agency, namely responsibility. Recently two scholars like Jack Balkin (director of the Yale Information Society Project he founded on 1997) and Frank Pasquale (author of The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information, 2015) proposed “new laws of robotics for the Algorithmic Society” inspired to Isaac Asimov’s ones, but targeting the human agents behind the development and the use of AI. On the other side, Responsible Research and Innovation model has been proposed as a model for the resp...
Stay Human. The quest for Responsibility in the Algorithmic Society
Journal of Ethics and Legal Technologies, 2020
Recent developments of Artificial Intelligence based on machine learning techniques through Big Data raise multiple ethical and legal concerns, all of which ultimately do turn around the issues of responsibility, which is increasingly invoked not as a remedy but as a character which shall shape the whole development process of AI as well as its functioning. The characters of AI, taken in its technical and social role, challenge some established ideas related to human agency, namely responsibility. Recently two scholars like Jack Balkin (director of the Yale Information Society Project he founded on 1997) and Frank Pasquale (author of The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information, 2015) proposed “new laws of robotics for the Algorithmic Society” inspired to Isaac Asimov’s ones, but targeting the human agents behind the development and the use of AI. On the other side, Responsible Research and Innovation model has been proposed as a model for the responsible development of AI. Whilst the reference to responsibility is appealing, nevertheless the inflation of its disparate usages may obscure the meaning associated with it. This article wants to contribute to the understanding of the issues behind the idea of preserving the human character of responsibility when confronted to the risks of its dissolution induced by the increasingly relevant roles played by AI in our societies.
Philosophy 115: Social and Ethical Issues in Computing
2020
This class introduces philosophical ethics through contemporary issues concerning computing technology. Topics include algorithmic bias and fairness, data privacy, cybersecurity, surveillance, free speech, automation, and artificial intelligence. A running theme will be how technologies are situated within social and political systems, and what kinds of ethical implications that brings. In her recent book Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O'Neil writes: Data is not going away. Nor are computers-much less mathematics. Predictive models are, increasingly, the tools we will be relying on to run our institutions, deploy our resources, and manage our lives. But as I've tried to show throughout this book, these models are constructed not just from data but from the choices we make about which data to pay attention to and which to leave out. Those choices are not just about logistics, profits, and efficiency. They are fundamentally moral.
A Political Sociology of Algorithms: Five Theses
STATES, POWER, & SOCIETIES: ASA POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY SECTION NEWSLETTER, 2024
In this short piece, I argue that political sociologists have much more to contribute to the discission on algorithms and power dynamics in society. I am inspired here by sociologists who brought power issues up front when analyzing algorithms (Aneesh 2009; Burrel and Fourcade 2021; Zajko 2022). For example, sociologist Aneesh Aneesh has proposed that global work processes are becoming algocratic (2009). My goal is to contribute to a much-needed discussion and, I argue that political sociologists should not reduce the question of power and algorithms to issues of regulation and governance. I do so through presenting five theses as a provocation. Before proceeding, I would like to start with two clarifying notes. First, by suggesting that we should not limit the question of algorithms and power to discussions of governance and regulation, I do not mean at all that these issues are trivial. On the contrary, we have been ruled by algorithms in many social processes, for example, governments have used predictive analytics to identify taxpayers that are most likely to be noncompliant (Bal 2019). Second, the term regulation is multi-laden in could refer to many things. Sometimes algorithmic governance is used interchangeably with regulations by algorithmic. I am avoiding this confusion, as I am not focus on governance and regulation specifically here. Now to the five theses.
The Ethics of Algorithms: Mapping the Debate
In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increasingly delegated to algorithms, which may advise, if not decide, about how data should be interpreted and what actions should be taken as a result. More and more often, algorithms mediate social processes, business transactions, governmental decisions, and how we perceive, understand, and interact among ourselves and with the environment. Gaps between the design and operation of algorithms and our understanding of their ethical implications can have severe consequences affecting individuals as well as groups and whole societies. This paper makes three contributions to clarify the ethical importance of algorithmic mediation. It provides a prescriptive map to organise the debate. It reviews the current discussion of ethical aspects of algorithms. And it assesses the available literature in order to identify areas requiring further work to develop the ethics of algorithms.
This panel will explore algorithmic authority as it manifests and plays out across multiple domains. Algorithmic authority refers to the power of algorithms to manage human action and influence what information is accessible to users. Algorithms increasingly have the ability to affect everyday life, work practices, and economic systems through automated decision-making and interpretation of " big data ". Cases of algorithmic authority include algorithmically curating news and social media feeds, evaluating job performance, matching dates, and hiring and firing employees. This panel will bring together researchers of quantified self, healthcare, digital labor, social media, and the sharing economy to deepen the emerging discourses on the ethics, politics, and economics of algorithmic authority in multiple domains.
Understanding the Algorithm: Meaning, Socio-Legal Context and Concerns
Legal Issues in the Digital Age, 2021
At present, algorithms are becoming the heart of society by taking control over the decision-making process as societies are increasingly getting digitalised. There is a consistent theme that an unaccountable, black box technology has taken over the stage and is now making decisions for us, with us, and about us. But the contention around public participation in making decisions in science and technology needs to advance to a stage where there is a more direct conversation between the public and those developing the technologies. With the above mentioned conception of moderating emerging technologies’ development, primarily digital technology due to its overreaching effects on humans and what humans interpret it to be. Firstly, the research through a literature survey is aimed to understand the meaning and nuances of the word algorithm. Then the analysis based on case study is focused on the algorithmic questions, such as bias, privacy, design, transparency, and accountability. In a...
JIPITEC, 2018
Nowadays algorithms can decide if one can get a loan, is allowed to cross a border, or must go to prison. Artificial intelligence techniques (natural language processing and machine learning in the first place) enable private and public decision-makers to analyse big data in order to build profiles, which are used to make decisions in an automated way. This work presents ten arguments against algorithmic decision-making. These revolve around the concepts of ubiquitous discretionary interpretation, holistic intuition, algorithmic bias, the three black boxes, psychology of conformity, power of sanctions, civilising force of hypocrisy, pluralism, empathy, and technocracy. The lack of transparency of the algorithmic decision-making process does not stem merely from the characteristics of the relevant techniques used, which can make it impossible to access the rationale of the decision. It depends also on the abuse of and overlap between intellectual property rights (the “legal black box”). In the US, nearly half a million patented inventions concern algorithms; more than 67% of the algorithm-related patents were issued over the last ten years and the trend is increasing. To counter the increased monopolisation of algorithms by means of intellectual property rights (with trade secrets leading the way), this paper presents three legal routes that enable citizens to ‘open’ the algorithms. First, copyright and patent exceptions, as well as trade secrets are discussed. Second, the GDPR is critically assessed. In principle, data controllers are not allowed to use algorithms to take decisions that have legal effects on the data subject’s life or similarly significantly affect them. However, when they are allowed to do so, the data subject still has the right to obtain human intervention, to express their point of view, as well as to contest the decision. Additionally, the data controller shall provide meaningful information about the logic involved in the algorithmic decision. Third, this paper critically analyses the first known case of a court using the access right under the freedom of information regime to grant an injunction to release the source code of the computer program that implements an algorithm. Only an integrated approach – which takes into account intellectual property, data protection, and freedom of information – may provide the citizen affected by an algorithmic decision of an effective remedy as required by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU and the European Convention on Human Rights. Recommended citation: Guido Noto La Diega, Against the Dehumanisation of Decision-Making – Algorithmic Decisions at the Crossroads of Intellectual Property, Data Protection, and Freedom of Information, 9 (2018) JIPITEC 3 para 1