Colin will be appearing at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas July 10, 11: http://www.adelaidefestivalofideas.com.au/
Friday July 10, 2.30 - 4.00pm
Bonython Hall
The Mind: Mind over Matter?
Colin Allen
Natasha Mitchell
(Participating Chair)
Mandyam Srinivasan
Saturday 11 July, 10.00 - 10.45am
Elder Hall
Robot Morality
Colin Allen
Mind Over Matter
Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Brain Science: whatever you call it, over the last ten years, amazing advances in brain imaging and neural recording techniques have led to a revolution in how we think about thinking. Every edition of popular science magazines such as New Scientist or Scientific American features new discoveries in brain function: what is deja vu? how might you see sound? why should someone disown part of their own body?
Increasingly cognitive neuroscientists are venturing into domains once thought to be outside the limits of any kind of experimental enquiry. Perhaps now data exist to answer questions previously only considered by philosophers. Are moral beliefs absolute? Is the concept of God a natural consequence of our neural circuitry? Can the mind exist distinct from any physical reality? How could we ever decide?
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Save the Date: Workshop on Ethical Guidance for Research and Application of Pervasive and Autonomous Information Technology, March 3-4, 2010
Announcing a 2-day workshop on “Ethical Guidance for Research and Application of Pervasive and Autonomous Information Technology (PAIT)” March 3-4, 2010. The workshop will be a culminating event of a year-long process of planning, case development and analysis, and networking among information technology engineers and researchers, ethicists, and other interested persons. The workshop is funded by the National Science Foundation (grant number SES-0848097) and sponsored by Indiana University’s Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions and the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics.
Confirmed speakers include Helen Nissenbaum, Associate Professor in the Department of Culture and Communication and Senior Fellow of the Information Law Institute, New York University; and Fred H. Cate, Distinguished Professor and C. Ben Dutton Professor of Law, IU School of Law, and Director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, Indiana University Bloomington.
Technologies are being developed today using very small, relatively inexpensive, wireless-enabled computers and autonomous robots that will most likely result in the near-omnipresence of information gathering and processing devices embedded in clothing, appliances, carpets, food packaging, doors and windows, paperback books, and other everyday items to gather data about when and how (and possibly by whom) an item is used. The data can be analyzed, stored, and shared via the Internet. Some of these pervasive technologies will also be autonomous, making decisions on their own about what data to gather and share, which actions to take (sound an alarm, lock a door), and the like.
The potential benefits of pervasive and autonomous information technology (PAIT) are many and varied, sometimes obvious, sometimes obscure – as are the ethical implications of their development and deployment. The history of information technology suggests that long-standing issues including usability, privacy, and security, among others, as well as relatively new phenomena such as ethically blind autonomous systems, are best addressed early enough to become part of the culture of researchers and engineers responsible for identifying needs and designing solutions.
This project will create a firm ethical foundation for this nascent field by convening an international meeting of experts in PAIT, ethicists well versed in practical ethics, and other stakeholders. The meeting will feature discussions of previously-prepared case studies describing actual and anticipated uses of PAIT, invited presentations on key issues, working groups to identify and categorize ethical concerns, and other activities aimed at community-building and formulating ethical guidance to help researchers and designers of such systems recognize and address ethical issues at every stage, from design to deployment to obsolescence. The participants will form the core of a new interdisciplinary subfield of value-centered PAIT which will develop guidelines and conceptual tools to support communication and collaboration among and between researchers, engineers, and ethicists.
The Planning Committee (see http://poynter.indiana.edu/pait) is actively seeking experts interested in joining one or more informal working groups to help prepare for the workshop; if you are interested in being involved, please get in touch with the project director (see contact information below).
The PAIT workshop will precede the annual meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, which will begin on Thursday, March 4, 2010 at the historical Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Registration will be required for attendance at the PAIT workshop, but there will be no registration fee. PAIT participants are also encouraged to register to attend and participate in the Association’s annual meeting (see http://www.indiana.edu/~appe/).
For more information:
Kenneth D. Pimple, Ph.D., PAIT Project Director
Poynter Center, Indiana University
Bloomington IN 47405-3602
812-856-4986
FAX 812-855-3315
pimple@indiana.edu
http://poynter.indiana.edu/pait/
Confirmed speakers include Helen Nissenbaum, Associate Professor in the Department of Culture and Communication and Senior Fellow of the Information Law Institute, New York University; and Fred H. Cate, Distinguished Professor and C. Ben Dutton Professor of Law, IU School of Law, and Director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, Indiana University Bloomington.
Technologies are being developed today using very small, relatively inexpensive, wireless-enabled computers and autonomous robots that will most likely result in the near-omnipresence of information gathering and processing devices embedded in clothing, appliances, carpets, food packaging, doors and windows, paperback books, and other everyday items to gather data about when and how (and possibly by whom) an item is used. The data can be analyzed, stored, and shared via the Internet. Some of these pervasive technologies will also be autonomous, making decisions on their own about what data to gather and share, which actions to take (sound an alarm, lock a door), and the like.
The potential benefits of pervasive and autonomous information technology (PAIT) are many and varied, sometimes obvious, sometimes obscure – as are the ethical implications of their development and deployment. The history of information technology suggests that long-standing issues including usability, privacy, and security, among others, as well as relatively new phenomena such as ethically blind autonomous systems, are best addressed early enough to become part of the culture of researchers and engineers responsible for identifying needs and designing solutions.
This project will create a firm ethical foundation for this nascent field by convening an international meeting of experts in PAIT, ethicists well versed in practical ethics, and other stakeholders. The meeting will feature discussions of previously-prepared case studies describing actual and anticipated uses of PAIT, invited presentations on key issues, working groups to identify and categorize ethical concerns, and other activities aimed at community-building and formulating ethical guidance to help researchers and designers of such systems recognize and address ethical issues at every stage, from design to deployment to obsolescence. The participants will form the core of a new interdisciplinary subfield of value-centered PAIT which will develop guidelines and conceptual tools to support communication and collaboration among and between researchers, engineers, and ethicists.
The Planning Committee (see http://poynter.indiana.edu/pait) is actively seeking experts interested in joining one or more informal working groups to help prepare for the workshop; if you are interested in being involved, please get in touch with the project director (see contact information below).
The PAIT workshop will precede the annual meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, which will begin on Thursday, March 4, 2010 at the historical Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Registration will be required for attendance at the PAIT workshop, but there will be no registration fee. PAIT participants are also encouraged to register to attend and participate in the Association’s annual meeting (see http://www.indiana.edu/~appe/).
For more information:
Kenneth D. Pimple, Ph.D., PAIT Project Director
Poynter Center, Indiana University
Bloomington IN 47405-3602
812-856-4986
FAX 812-855-3315
pimple@indiana.edu
http://poynter.indiana.edu/pait/
Friday, June 26, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Is a computer implicated in the D.C. train crash that killed nine?
Sarah Karush and Brian Westley, writers for the Associated Press, report that a Computer failure may have caused D.C. train crash.
Investigators looking into the deadly crash of two Metro transit trains focused Tuesday on why a computerized system failed to halt an oncoming train, and why the train failed to stop even though the emergency brake was pressed.
This isn't the first time that Metro's automated system has been called into question.
In June 2005, Metro experienced a close call because of signal troubles in a tunnel under the Potomac River. A train operator noticed he was getting too close to the train ahead of him even though the system indicated the track was clear. He hit the emergency brake in time, as did the operator of another train behind him.
Did a drone kill more than 60 people at a Pakistan funeral?
The New York Times reported on June 23rd that a Suspected U.S. Strike Kills at Least 60 in Pakistan. The strike on Tuesday hit a funeral in South Waziristan.
Details of the attack, which occurred in Makeen, remained unclear, but the reported death toll was exceptionally high. If the reports are indeed accurate and if the attack was carried out by a drone, the strike could be the deadliest since the United States began using the aircraft to fire remotely guided missiles at members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
Air Force plans for smaller, faster, and deadlier UAVs
Two recent articles have reported on the Air Force's plans for the next generation of UAVs. Michael Hoffman reports on The Plan for smaller, faster, deadlier UAVs on the AirForceTimes Website.
The Esquire magazine website has an article by Erik Sofge titled, Inside the Pentagon's New Plan for Drones That Don't Piss Off Pakistan.
the Air Force is planning to build a more selective breed of military drones, with swarms of bird-size bots shadowing targets and new unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) capable of launching mini-missiles at multiple targets at once. The mechanized assassin, it seems, is about to become a lot more professional.
Like most UAVs, these robots would most likely be used for surveillance and reconnaissance. But in an animated clip released by the Air Force late last year, a MAV lands on an enemy sniper, and, without so much as a prayer to its machine god, detonates itself. The new Air Force briefing doesn't elaborate on this miniature suicide-bomber concept, but it does include plans to have flocks of sparrow-size MAVs airborne by 2015, and even smaller, dragonfly-size robots by 2030. And with the recent news that Israel is developing an explosives-laden snakebot, the writing is on the wall: You can run from tomorrow's robotic hitmen, and you can hide, and they'll flap or squirm or glide into position and kill you anyway.
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