Ethical Concerns in Human Enhancement

The purpose of this chapter is on issue of fairness and equity in corporations and organizational settings due to advantages received as a result of human enhancement. In so doing, the purpose of this chapter will also analyze the paradigms of bioethics and (business) ethics and legality will be utilized in analyzing the issue of fairness and equity in corporations and organizational settings due to advantages received as a result of human enhancement. Human enhancement, used in this chapter, includes any activity by which we improve our bodies, minds, or abilities beyond what we regard today as normal. In relations to advantages in corporations and organizational settings, human enhancement, used in this chapter, means ways to make functional changes to human characteristic, also referred to as neuro-cognitive enhancements, beyond what we regard as typical, normal, or statistically normal range of functioning for an individual.

Semantic Analysis of Bloggers Experiences as a Knowledge Source of Average Human Morality

This chapter introduces an approach and methods for creating a system that refers to human experiences and thoughts about these experiences in order to ethically evaluate other parties', and in a long run, its own actions. It is shown how applying text mining techniques can enrich machine's knowledge about the real world and how this knowledge could be helpful in the difficult realm of moral relativity. Possibilities of simulating empathy and applying proposed methods to various approaches are introduced together with discussion on the possibility of applying growing knowledge base to artificial agents for particular purposes, from simple housework robots to moral advisors, which could refer to millions of different experiences had by people in various cultures. The experimental results show efficiency improvements when compared to previous research and also discuss the problems with fair evaluation of moral and immoral acts.

The Emergence of Artificial Autonomy

In this chapter we set forth a case study of the integration of philosophy and computer science using artificial agents, beings ruled by abductive logic and emergent behavior. Our first step in this chapter is to highlight different models that we developed of such agents (a set of them related with evolutionary game theory and one model of a narrative storyteller robot). As we indicate, each model exemplifies different aspects of the bottom of the hill of autonomy as an emergent property of artificial systems specified through three aspects (“Self control”, “Adaptivity to the environment” and “Response to environment”). In summary, our conception is that autonomy, when presented as an emergent characteristic, could fill the important place given it by elaborations in philosophical ethics and one that leads us to a clearer comprehension of where to direct our efforts in the field of artificial agents. We conclude this chapter with the notion that this reevaluation of autonomy is necessary for the enhanced comprehension of human morality.

Bridging Two Realms of Machine Ethics

We address problems in machine ethics dealt with using computational techniques. Our research has focused on Computational Logic, particularly Logic Programming, and its appropriateness to model morality, namely moral permissibility, its justification, and the dual-process of moral judgments regarding the realm of the individual. In the collective realm, we, using Evolutionary Game Theory in populations of individuals, have studied norms and morality emergence computationally. These, to start with, are not equipped with much cognitive capability, and simply act from a predetermined set of actions. Our research shows that the introduction of cognitive capabilities, such as intention recognition, commitment, and apology, separately and jointly, reinforce the emergence of cooperation in populations, comparatively to their absence. Bridging such capabilities between the two realms helps understand the emergent ethical behavior of agents in groups, and implements them not just in simulations, but in the world of future robots and their swarms. Evolutionary Anthropology provides teachings.

Ethical Responsibilities of Preserving Academicians in an Age of Mechanized Learning

In quickly-changing educational delivery modalities, the central role of the instructor is being redefined by technology. Examining some of the various causes with ethical frameworks of utilitarianism, relativism, and care ethics, the centrality of human agency in educational interaction is argued to be indispensable. While exploring the forefront of online, face-to-face, and massive open online courses, the shape and technique of teaching and learning as well as their corollary research methodologies are being modified with automated technology. Ethical engagement with new technologies like learning analytics, automatic tutors, and automated, rubric-driven graders is proposed to be a frontier of critical thinking.

We Can Make Anything

What limitations are we willing to accept on our development of new technologies? The shared sense among a great many of the idealistic supporters of our ever-growing range of tools and abilities is that the acquisition of knowledge is always a positive gain for the entirety of humanity, and that therefore there should be no (or few) restrictions on continued technology research. This mythology, which descends from the arrival of exclusive Humanism from the Enlightenment onwards, has become one of the greatest moral and prudential threats to human existence because it removes the possibility of accurately assessing the moral implications of our technology. Against this prevailing ethos of unbounded technological incrementalism, this essay uses the pejorative term cyberfetish to mark our dependence upon, and inability to accurately assess, our technology.

Robots in Warfare and the Occultation of the Existential Nature of Violence

We are at the cusp of a revolution in the development of autonomous weapons, yet current arguments both for and against such weapons are insufficient to the task at hand. In the context of Just war theory, arguments for and against the use of autonomous weapons focus on Jus in bello and in doing so miss addressing the implications of these weapons for the two other aspects of that theory- Jus ad bellum and Jus post bellum. This paper argues that fully autonomous weapons would likely undermine adherence to the Jus ad bellum and Jus post bellum prescriptions of Just war theory, but remote controlled weapons, if designed with ethical concerns in mind, might improve adherence to all of the theory's prescriptions compared to war as currently waged from a distance, as well as help to undo the occlusion of violence which has been a fundamental characteristic of all forms of modern war.

Machine Ethics Interfaces

The purpose of this chapter is to conceptualize cognitive nanorobots, an ethics of perception, and machine ethics interfaces. Three areas are developed as a foundational background. First is the context and definition of cognitive nanorobots (nano-scale machines that could be deployed to facilitate, aid, and improve the processes of cognition like perception and memory as a sort of neural nano-prosthetics). Second is philosophical concepts from Bergson and Deleuze regarding perception and memory, and time, image, difference, becoming, and reality. Third is a summary of traditional models of ethics (Ethics 1.0). These building blocks are then used to connect perception and ethics in the concept of machine ethics interfaces, for which an ethics of perception is required, and where an ethics of immanence (Ethics 2.0) is most appropriate. Finally, killer applications of cognitive nanorobots, and their limitations (neural data privacy rights and cognitive viruses) and future prospects are discussed.

Algorithms versus Hive Minds and the Fate of Democracy

For nearly two decades the Internet has been thought to presage two radically different political destinies. A dystopian outcome where that architecture becomes a sort of global panopticon used to monitor and manipulate its occupants and a utopian one where politics takes on anarchic and democratic which the heightened interconnection of the Internet makes possible. This essay uses these dichotomous possibilities as a way to understand how the Internet has evolved over the past generation, and how this development has been interpreted in the hopes of providing a clarified intellectual framework through which choices regarding its regulation and shaping in the public interest can be made.

Self-Referential Complex Systems and Aristotle's Four Causes

In this chapter the author addresses a need for inclusion of all four Aristotle's causes (material, efficient, formal, and final) in modern science. Reality of modern physics (beyond Newtonian physics) and science of consciousness (and life and society) should include all four causes and tangled hierarchies (no scientific discipline is the most fundamental – the starting point for the author was Jung, then Rosen, and Aristotle was included much later). The four causes resemble rules for a machine or software (computation that “glues” everything together (Dodig-Crnkovic, 2012)), but a non-deterministic “machine” not replicable in a different medium. “Self-reference” from the title includes self-awareness, something seemingly not possible without final cause. On the other hand, this recognition of our (presumed) non-determinism and freedom might remind us to be even more self-aware and anticipatory. Computation, communication, networking, and memory as something technology is good at could contribute to that goal.