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- Dykstra, Pearl, et al.
(author)
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Improving pandemic preparedness and management : Lessons learned and ways forward : independent expert report
- 2020
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Epidemics and pandemics have shaped human history and will continue to do so. The COVID-19 crisis has shown that there is need to understand how Europe can ensure better management of and preparedness for them. This joint advice builds on lessons learned from the current and from previous pandemics. It analyses their complexity, drawing on insights from research and scholarship and taking Europeanvalues and respect for fundamental rights as critical orientation. It is developed jointly by the European Commission’s independent Group of Chief Scientific Advisors, the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE) and Peter Piot, Special Advisor to the President of the European Commission on the response to COVID-19. Their recommendations include strengthened European and global solidarity and coordination in governance, research and community efforts to improve pandemic preparedness and management. This should address all aspects and causes of pandemics in their complex interplay, from biomedical and health to social and environmental ones. The advice covers efforts to prevent and pre-empt future pandemics; more coordinated response structures and mechanisms; the strengthening of essential systems, including healthcare, supply chains, public health, information and education; and protecting fundamental rights and social justice.
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- Nanni, Mirco, et al.
(author)
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Give more data, awareness and control to individual citizens, and they will help COVID-19 containment
- 2020
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In: Transactions on Data Privacy. - : Institut d'Investigació en Intel·ligència Artificial. - 1888-5063 .- 2013-1631. ; 23, s. 1-6
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The rapid dynamics of COVID-19 calls for quick and effective tracking of virus transmission chains and early detection of outbreaks, especially in the "phase 2" of the pandemic, when lockdown and other restriction measures are progressively withdrawn, in order to avoid or minimize contagion resurgence. For this purpose, contact-tracing apps are being proposed for large scale adoption by many countries. A centralized approach, where data sensed by the app are all sent to a nation-wide server, raises concerns about citizens' privacy and needlessly strong digital surveillance, thus alerting us to the need to minimize personal data collection and avoiding location tracking. We advocate the conceptual advantage of a decentralized approach, where both contact and location data are collected exclusively in individual citizens' "personal data stores", to be shared separately and selectively (e.g., with a backend system, but possibly also with other citizens), voluntarily, only when the citizen has tested positive for COVID-19, and with a privacy preserving level of granularity. This approach better protects the personal sphere of citizens and affords multiple benefits: it allows for detailed information gathering for infected people in a privacy-preserving fashion; and, in turn this enables both contact tracing, and, the early detection of outbreak hotspots on more finely-granulated geographic scale. The decentralized approach is also scalable to large populations, in that only the data of positive patients need be handled at a central level. Our recommendation is two-fold. First to extend existing decentralized architectures with a light touch, in order to manage the collection of location data locally on the device, and allowthe user to share spatio-temporal aggregates - if and when they want and for specific aims - with health authorities, for instance. Second, we favour a longerterm pursuit of realizing a Personal Data Store vision, giving users the opportunity to contribute to collective good in the measure they want, enhancing self-awareness, and cultivating collective efforts for rebuilding society.
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- Palm, Elin, 1973-
(author)
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The Ethics of Workspace Surveillance
- 2008
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The general framework of this thesis is that of ethical Technology Assessment (eTA). Whereas the first essay proposes an inclusive approach to technology assessment by delineating an ethical checklist, the following essays focus on two of the checklist points, i.e. “privacy” and “control, influence and power”, in relation to workspace surveillance. The core idea of Essay I (written in collaboration with Sven Ove Hansson) is that, due to its strong social impact, new technology and novel use of existing technology should be considered from the perspective of ethics. We suggest that assessments should be conducted on the basis of nine crucial ethical aspects of technology. In Essay II an in-depth analysis of the meaning and value of privacy in the realm of work is undertaken. The meaning and value of privacy is explained as well as why it should be protected. It is argued that two dimensions of privacy should be safeguarded; “informational privacy” and “local privacy” for the reason that workers’ personal autonomy is protected thereby. Essay III is concerned with how workspace surveillance requires that job-applicants claim their privacy interests in employment negotiations to a much larger extent than what was previously the case. In most cases however, a dependency asymmetry between employer and job-candidate makes the latter ill-equipped for doing so. This asymmetry serves as the point of departure for an analysis of the conditions under which consent should be considered a criterion on moral acceptability with regard to employment contracting. The analysis suggests ways of rectifying this imbalance, raising demands on the quality of contractual consent. Essay IV discusses the extent to which it should be morally permissible for current or prospective employees to trade off their privacy in employment negotiations. The analysis starts out from, and questions, a libertarian case for voluntary self-enslavement. It is concluded that not even an orthodox libertarian can justify trade offs of a social good like liberty. Neither should employees be allowed to abstain informational privacy for the reason that such a trade-off could harm their future selves. In Essay V a dimensional analysis is proposed as a means to identify actually or potentially privacy invasive surveillance practices. It discusses ways in which different types of surveillance intrude upon employees’ privacy in order to guide the evaluation of such practice. Even though negative implications cannot be avoided altogether, by means of the proposed analysis, minimally intrusive means of monitoring can be identified.
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- Siebert, Luciano Cavalcante, et al.
(author)
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Improving Confidence in the Estimation of Values and Norms
- 2021
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In: Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, Norms, and Ethics for Governance of Multi-Agent Systems XIII. - Cham : Springer. - 9783030723750 - 9783030723767 ; , s. 98-113
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Autonomous agents (AA) will increasingly be interacting with us in our daily lives. While we want the benefits attached to AAs, it is essential that their behavior is aligned with our values and norms. Hence, an AA will need to estimate the values and norms of the humans it interacts with, which is not a straightforward task when solely observing an agent’s behavior. This paper analyses to what extent an AA is able to estimate the values and norms of a simulated human agent (SHA) based on its actions in the ultimatum game. We present two methods to reduce ambiguity in profiling the SHAs: one based on search space exploration and another based on counterfactual analysis. We found that both methods are able to increase the confidence in estimating human values and norms, but differ in their applicability, the latter being more efficient when the number of interactions with the agent is to be minimized. These insights are useful to improve the alignment of AAs with human values and norms.
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| 7. |
- Verdiesen, Ilse, et al.
(author)
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Measuring Moral Acceptability in E-deliberation : A Practical Application of Ethics by Participation
- 2018
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In: ACM Transactions on Internet Technology. - : ACM. - 1533-5399 .- 1557-6051. ; 18:4, s. 43:1-43:20
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Current developments in governance and policy setting are challenging traditional top-down models of decision-making. Whereas, on the one hand, citizens are increasingly demanding and expected to participate directly on governance questions, social networking platforms are, on the other hand, increasingly providing podia for the spread of unfounded, extremist and/or harmful ideas. Participatory deliberation is a form of democratic policy making in which deliberation is central to decision-making using both consensus decision-making and majority rule. However, by definition, it will lead to socially accepted results rather than ensuring the moral acceptability of the result. In fact, participation per se offers no guidance regarding the ethics of the decisions taken, nor does it provide means to evaluate alternatives in terms of their moral "quality." This article proposes an open participatory model, Massive Open Online Deliberation (MOOD), that can be used to solve some of the current policy authority deficits. MOOD taps on individual understanding and opinions by harnessing open, participatory, crowd-sourced, and wiki-like methodologies, effectively producing collective judgements regarding complex political and social issues in real time. MOOD oilers the opportunity for people to develop and draft collective judgements on complex issues and crises in real time. MOOD is based on the concept of Ethics by Participation, a formalized and guided process of moral deliberation that extends deliberative democracy platforms to identify morally acceptable outcomes and enhance critical thinking and reflection among participants.
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