Hume’s guillotine and intelligent technologies

Emerging intelligent society shall change the way people are organised around their work and consequently also as a society. One approach to investigating intelligent systems and their social influence is information processing. Intelligence is information processing. However, factual and ethical information are different. Facts concern true vs. false, while ethics is about what should be done. David Hume recognised a fundamental problem in this respect, which is that facts can be used to derive values. His answer was negative, which is critical for developing intelligent ethical technologies. Hume’s problem is not crucial when values can be assigned to technologies, i.e. weak ethical artificial intelligence (AI), but it is hard when we speak of strong ethical AI, which should generate values from facts. However, this paper argues that Hume’s aporia is grounded on a mistaken juxtaposition of emotions and cognition. In the human mind, all experiences are based on the cooperation of emotions and cognitions. Therefore, Hume’s guillotine is not a real obstacle, but it is possible to use stronger forms of ethical AI to develop new ethics for intelligent society.

Experimental evaluation of tasking and teaming design patterns for human delegation of unmanned vehicles

This work discusses different approaches for the cooperation between humans as a supervisor and multiple unmanned vehicles (UVs). We evaluated the most promising approach experimentally with expert pilots of the German Air Force. The co-agency of humans and highly automated unmanned systems (i.e., human autonomy teaming, HAT) is described by the use of a design and description language for HAT design patterns. This design language is used to differentiate control modes for tasking, teaming, and swarming of UVs. The different control modes are then combined in a planner agent (PA) design pattern that further enables the UV guidance on scalable delegation levels from a single individual up to a team. The desired system behavior and interaction concept of the PA for these scalable delegation levels is then transferred to the domain of manned-unmanned teaming in fighter aircraft missions. To demonstrate the applicability of the system, we implemented the concept into our fast-jet simulator of the Institute of Flight Systems (IFS) and conducted an experimental campaign with expert pilots. The results of the experiment showed (1) task delegation with the PA design pattern is faster and reduces the error potential; (2) scalable delegation levels enable a pilot and situation-specific task delegation; (3) the delegation of teams is faster and reduces the error potential; however, in some situations, deeper access through the scalable delegation levels is needed; (4) the concept is intuitive and the transparency and trust in UVs and swarms were very high; and (5) the pilots could imagine operating such systems in the future. Overall speaking the presented PA design pattern is suited for the guidance of UVs and the scalable delegation levels are beneficial.

The iconography of vehicle automation—a focus group study

SAE level 2 and 3 semi-autonomous vehicles are widely available but, due to the nature of automation, their in-vehicle displays are required to communicate more complex information to the driver. Examination of interfaces from a variety of manufacturers revealed a clear lack of consistency in the way key information is displayed. Different manufacturers have adopted icons varying in shape and colour to convey the same message. When driving a semi-autonomous vehicle, mode awareness is critical for trust, performance and safety. Standardisation of icons has been shown to have many benefits including opening products up to wider international markets by helping overcome language and cultural barriers, by providing a method of communication which can surpass them. However, the current lack of standardisation in icon design could cause mode confusion and has little cross-vehicle compatibility. To understand the impact of mode confusion on users, a focus group was held in which participants were asked to interpret the meaning of icons from a variety of different driver interfaces. Ambiguity in user interpretations makes the case for the introduction of new ISO standard icons to better support drivers in SAE level 2 and 3 automated vehicles.

Factors influencing content credibility in Facebook’s news feed

This study reports an exploratory inquiry into the problematic phenomenon of fake news on Facebook, aiming at providing an inside view on how users in the United Kingdom (UK) value the credibility of news posts on Facebook in a post-Brexit era. Participants (n = 201) were asked to review four different Brexit-related Facebook posts that linked to news articles from UK tabloids that were published between 2016 and 2019. Two of the posts were debunked as fake news, while the other two were verified as real news. The authors of each Facebook post were different: two from UK tabloids and two from unknown individuals. Respondents were asked to identify the credibility of the news posts in Facebook’s news feed. The results indicate that the author of the post significantly influences users’ perceived credibility. For instance, a fake news post from an individual is perceived as the least trustworthy, while a real news post from an individual and a fake news post from a tabloid are somewhat similarly perceived. The content of a post is seen as most trustworthy when it is a real news post from a tabloid and as least credible when it is a fake news post from an individual. Finally, in two cases, credibility can predict willingness to interact with a post. The research concludes with a set of recommendations for future research.

Approaches for assessing communication in human-autonomy teams

Evaluation of team communication can provide critical insights into team dynamics, cohesion, trust, and performance on joint tasks. Although many communication-based measures have been tested and validated for human teams, this review article extends this research by identifying key approaches specific to human-autonomy teams. It is not possible to identify all approaches for all situations, though the following seem to generalize and support multi-size teams and a variety of military operations. Therefore, this article will outline several key approaches to assessing communication, associated data requirements, example applications, verification of methods through HAT use cases, and lessons learned, where applicable. Some approaches are based on the structure of team communication; others draw from dynamical systems theory to consider perspectives across different timescales; other approaches leverage features of team members’ voices or facial expressions to detect emotional states that can provide windows into other workings of the team; still others consider the content of communication to produce insights. Taken together, these approaches comprise a varied toolkit for deriving critical information about how team interactions affect, and are affected by, coordination, trust, cohesion, and performance outcomes. Future research directions describe four critical areas for further study of communication in human-autonomy teams.