Workshop: Ethical Guidance for Research and Application of Pervasive and Autonomous Information Technology

本次研讨会由科学、技术与社会计划和美国国家科学基金会计算机与信息科学与工程理事会支持，将讨论普及和自主信息技术研究和应用的伦理指导。今天正在开发的技术是使用非常小的、相对便宜的、具有无线功能的计算机，这很可能导致信息收集和处理设备几乎无处不在，这些设备嵌入在服装、电器、地毯、食品包装、门窗、平装书和其他日常用品中，以收集有关何时、如何（可能还有谁）使用某件物品的数据。这些数据可以通过互联网进行分析、存储和共享。其中一些无处不在的技术也将是自主的，它们自己决定收集和共享哪些数据，采取哪些行动（发出警报、锁门），等等。普及和自主信息技术的潜在好处是多种多样的，有时是明显的，有时是模糊的——它们的开发和部署的伦理含义也是如此。信息技术的历史表明，长期存在的问题，包括可用性、隐私和安全性等，以及相对较新的现象，如道德盲自治系统，最好尽早解决。当这些问题在早期得到解决时，它们可以成为负责识别需求和设计解决方案的研究人员和工程师文化的一部分。这将是无所不在和自主信息技术专家、精通实践伦理的伦理学家以及其他利益攸关方的一次国际会议。会议将包括：案例研究的讨论，描述普遍和自主信息技术的实际和预期用途，邀请关键问题的演讲，确定和分类伦理问题的工作组，以及旨在制定伦理原则的其他社区建设活动，以帮助研究人员和设计师认识和解决从设计到部署到淘汰的每个阶段的伦理问题。参与者将形成以价值为中心的普遍和自主信息技术的一个新的跨学科子领域的核心，该领域将通过制定指导方针和概念工具来建立原则，以支持研究人员，工程师和伦理学家之间的沟通和协作。

This workshop, supported by the Science, Technology & Society Program and the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at NSF, will discuss ethical guidance for research and application of pervasive and autonomous information technology. Technologies are being developed today using very small, relatively inexpensive, wireless-enabled computers 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 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. When such issues are addressed early, they can become part of the culture of researchers and engineers responsible for identifying needs and designing solutions. This will be an international meeting of experts in ubiquitous and autonomous information technologies, ethicists well-versed in practical ethics, and other stakeholders. The meeting will feature: discussions of case studies describing actual and anticipated uses of pervasive and autonomous information technology, invited presentations on key issues, working groups to identify and categorize ethical concerns, and other community-building activities aimed at formulating ethical principles to help researchers and designers 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 pervasive and autonomous information technology which will build on the principles by developing guidelines and conceptual tools to support communication and collaboration among researchers, engineers, and ethicists.