INSPIRE: Value-Function Handoffs in Human-Machine Compositions that are under Design for the Internet of Things

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INSPIREThis INSPIRE project is co-funded by the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) program in the Social and Economic Sciences Division, which is in the Directorate Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, the Office of Integrative Activities (OIA), and four programs in the Division of Computer and Network Systems, which is in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering: Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC), Networking Technology and Systems (NeTS), Computer Systems Research (CSR), and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS).General Audience Summary This interdisciplinary project brings together social scientists, computer scientists, engineers, and designers to engage in a collaborative research project. The goal of the project is to obtain a better understanding of value handoffs in complex systems that involve interconnected social and technological agents. The social agents may include humans and organizations, the technological agents may include devices and infrastructures. An example of such a system is the internet, a global communication network that allows almost all users of computers worldwide to connect and exchange information. When there are interactions between agents in such systems, there is a hand off of functions. With regards to the Internet, one such function is the preservation of information content; that handoff involves others that represent specific values such as reliability and trustworthiness. This project focuses on the Internet of things, an extension of the Internet to include physical devices (such as vehicles, buildings, and sensing devices) that are monitored and controlled remotely across that network. The research team will develop three case studies in in this broader domain: bio-sensing, smart homes, and visual data processing. The research team has developed a preliminary model for value handoffs. In each of the three case studies, they will collaborate with an identified technical researcher to use the model to shape the technology, and to gain insights from the technology to refine their model; the version of the model that results from numerous feedback processes that are to occur through the sequence of cases is expected to be applicable to a broad range of socio-technical systems. The results of this project will serve to meet an urgent need to foster rigorous thinking about humans and machines in relation to one another, to making things work well across society, in concert with human need, and in service of societal values. Among the values potentially under consideration in this project are security, privacy, trustworthiness, accountability, transparency, autonomy, intellectual property, freedoms of speech and association, justice, and fairness. Failures to protect value handoffs are likely to pose barriers to technical adoption, and to impose burdens on the least privileged in society. This indicates that models to guide decisions about value handoffs are likely to be of critical importance.Technical Summary The research team will develop three case studies in socio-technical integration research in the domain of the Internet of Things: bio-sensing, smart homes, and visual data processing. The PIs will learn from close study of particular cases about actual and potential handoffs of value-laden functions by characterizing them in terms of their provisional model; in turn, the model will undergo evolution as the project develops. The model that results after a number of feedback iterations through the three cases is expected to be applicable to a broad range of socio-technical systems. The project will also facilitate the development of new methods of work and patterns of interaction that could advance a more integrated and less reactive and oppositional process around value handoffs. In addition to making transformative contributions to process and methodology, the project makes transformative intellectual contributions in identifying how and where values are part of technology systems design, in particular as seen in three socially important technology systems (IoT, sensors, and smart homes). The project will bring to bring to light and address the ethical, political, and societal issues that are enmeshed with the design and development of real world complex socio-cyber-physical systems using insights from mature, highly developed theoretical ideas resulting from prior STS research. In the reverse direction, the project holds potential to contribute to the STS literature and to advance the field of STS field with new insights drawn from their collaborative experiences with technologists developing real world functioning systems, reinforcing and challenging controversial positions.