Kutoma Wakunuma

Tomorrow's ethics and today's response: An investigation into the ways information systems professionals perceive and address emerging ethical issues

This paper explores the question of how foresight and futures research can identify and address ethical issues in the field of Information Systems (IS). Starting from the premise that such IS are part of socio-technical systems, the interaction between technology and human actors raise ethical concerns. Early recognition of these concerns can address ethical issues and improve the use of the technology for a range of social and organisational goals. This paper discusses research conducted in two futures research projects. Both projects investigated emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs) and ethics. The first project established approaches for identifying future technologies and their related ethical concerns. This led to the identification of 11 emerging ICTs and their associated ethical concerns. The second project took these general ethical concerns and focused on their role in IS. Specifically, how IS professionals view future emerging technologies, their associated ethical concerns, and how they think these concerns could be addressed. The key findings are that IS professionals are primarily interested in the job at hand and less so in the ethical concerns that the job might bring; ethics is a concern that is best left for others to deal with. This paper considers the implications of research on ethics in emerging ICTs and draws general conclusions about the relevance of future technologies research in IS.

Intelligence Techniques in Computer Security and Forensics: At the Boundaries of Ethics and Law

Computational Intelligence (CI) techniques have been widely used in the domains of computer security and computer forensics. One problem that normative discussions of technologies face is that the technical capabilities under investigation tend to be unclear and that the experts in normative questions do not tend to be experts in technical developments and vice versa. The present paper therefore sets out to chart the ethical and legal problems arising from a new and fast moving field, namely that of computational intelligence and its application to computer security and forensics. Using artificial neural networks (ANNs) as an example of computational intelligence, the paper’s main aim is to create a link between what can now be perceived as technical developments and established discourses in ethics and the law. It aims to chart the territory to highlight likely ethical and legal problems related to ANNs and point in the direction of future research.

Improving brain computer interface research through user involvement - The transformative potential of integrating civil society organisations in research projects

Research on Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) often aims to provide solutions for vulnerable populations, such as individuals with diseases, conditions or disabilities that keep them from using traditional interfaces. Such research thereby contributes to the public good. This contribution to the public good corresponds to a broader drive of research and funding policy that focuses on promoting beneficial societal impact. One way of achieving this is to engage with the public. In practical terms this can be done by integrating civil society organisations (CSOs) in research. The open question at the heart of this paper is whether and how such CSO integration can transform the research and contribute to the public good. To answer this question the paper describes five detailed qualitative case studies of research projects including CSOs. The paper finds that transformative impact of CSO integration is possible but by no means assured. It provides recommendations on how transformative impact can be promoted.

Perceptions of ethics in IS: how age can affect awareness

Purpose – This aim of this paper was to highlight the awareness of ethical issues across the group of information systems (IS) professionals from a range of geographical regions. Design/methodology/approach – An initial survey was conducted that informed in-depth interviews with 26 IS professionals from across the globe. The study identified that around 70 per cent of the sample were over 50 years old. This provided an opportunity to consider age-related differences in perception regarding ethical awareness of both current and emerging technologies. Findings – The project revealed that the more mature IS professionals had a significantly higher level of awareness and perceived understanding regarding the importance of ethical issues than the younger IS professionals. Research limitations/implications – The research was limited to IS professionals and so the findings do not generalise further. Future research would be beneficial to find out if the higher level of ethical awareness is also evident across ol...

Understanding ethical issues of emerging AMI technologies in Europe (A Framework)

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is an information technology approach that is interactive, sensitive and responsive to a user’s environment. Emerging AmI technologies are intended to be intelligent and intuitive to a user’s needs and therefore embedded into a user’s everyday life without so much as being obtrusive. However, with any emergent technology such as AmI, ethical concerns arise. It would be desirable to have a better understanding of future technological developments, and in this case, AmI technological developments in order to allow ethical considerations to influence design and implementations of the technologies. However, the unavoidable contingency of future developments provides a fundamental limit to what we can know about the future. With this, this paper attempts to explore how this problem can be addressed by providing a framework of technical developments which include AmI technology developments that one can reasonably expect to materialise in the medium term future of 10 to 15 years and ethical issues that are currently expected to arise within the European Union (EU). This is done by analysing current European research funding documents with a view to exploring the trends, purposes, applications, artefacts, ethical issues, and governance structures that the European Commission foresees. The overall aim of the paper is to provide the conceptual basis of this framework.