Week+3+Moral+Life+of+Information

SI 500: Information in Social

Systems

Week 3: Moral Life of InformationSeptember 24, 2015

“You’ve got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going ‘cause you might not get there.” -- Yogi Berra [d. 9.23.15]

Moral Life of Information 2

Barbie Wants to Get to Know Your Child- New York Times Magazine,

9/16/15

Week 3


Outline for Week 3

Social Life of Documents Luciano Floridi’s Infosphere

Key concepts Criticisms Three examples

Influence on others

Implications for information professionals

Week 3


Why Should You Care? Philosophical underpinning of:

Human-Computer interaction and design Social computing and social media Information access and retrieval Library and information science Programming activities of all sorts

Foundation for information policy analysis Privacy, anonymous behavior, identity management

Path of inquiry for understanding online environments, broadly construed Games and gaming, tool rich digital libraries, virtual

reality

Week 3


Clues from the Readings Buckland: Information as Thing [1991]

Topography of information processes and outcomes; objects and events foreshadow dynamic environment of systems

Levy: What are documents? [2001]

Speaking things; fixed and fluid; human aspirations transmitted

We delegate documents to do our work.

Brown & Duguid: Social Life of Information [2000]

We endow documents with properties that mimic human agency; e.g.., trustworthiness (Think all kind of human relations and values, they play out same with information eg trust)

Week 3


Nonhuman Turn [Grusin 2015]

“… understood variously in terms of animals, affectivity, bodies, organic and geophysical systems, materiality, or technologies.” [vii]

Actor-network theory [Bruno Latour] Affect theory Animal studies [Donna Haraway] Brain sciences New materialism in feminism, philosophy New media theory [Lisa Nakamura] Object oriented philosophy

Week 3

Richard Grusin [ed.,] The Nonhuman Turn. U Minnesota Press, 2015.


Third Order Technologies

Week 3

HTTP://IMGS.XKCD.COM/COMICS/TECH_LOOPS.PNG

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tech_loops.png

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tech_loops.png


Outline for Week 3



Influence on others


Week 3

Flourishing Ethics

“The overall focus of ethics can and should be shifted away from the narrow anthropocentric goal of only human flourishing to the broader, and more reasonable, goal of the flourishing of life, ecosystems, and just civilizations.”

Luciano Floridi, 2004.

• http://www.philosophyofinformation.net

/

Week 3 9Moral Life of Information

• Sensitivities of an environmentalist• Rigor of a mathematician• Commitment to theory

http://www.philosophyofinformation.net/



Information Ethics - microethics

Week 3 Moral Life of Information 10

Information as Resource (IE as study of moral issues arising from): Availability, accessibility, accuracy

Information as Product (IE as the study of moral issue arising from the outcome of information use): Accountability, confideintly , trust, lying liability,

plagiarism, propaganda Information as Target (IE is the study of moral

issues of the information environment): (policy questions: we get info do something with it and it has impact Hacking, piracy, censorship, security, vandalism,

intellectual property, open source, censorship, freedom of expression, filtering, etc.

• Floridi, Information Ethics (2010)

Infosphere - microethics


First point Second point Third point

Infosphere - macroethics


Information EthicsFloridi: “there is something even more elemental than life – being – existence and flourishing of all entities and their global environment.” (p. 47) Ontocentrism: being/information has intrinsic worthiness.

Generalizes suffering/pain to encompass informational entities Every entity has in inherent dignity and deserves respect

Therefore, moral claims on the agent for constraint and guidance Lowest common denominator is an agent’s information state.

Levels of Abstraction Think of LoA as the model that describes the perspective of a moral

agent. E.g.: contrast a surgeon’s view with a psychiatrist ( for a liver surgeon

you are just liver but for psychiatrist he is interested in mind and personality)

E.g.: Floridi’s example of car buying agents.

Week 3 13Moral Life of Information

Ontology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology beingness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology

Presence: Level of Abstraction Example: Motion Detector(s)

Objects (potential observables): tree branch; cat; rock We have to observing points here(alarms). Level 1

movement detect karta hai level two infrared bhi detect karta hai.

At level of abstraction what it observes dependes on properties it has

Week 314

Moral Life of Information

• Floridi, Presence (2005)

What is a [Moral] Agent?


Transition system that is: Interactive (input/output) Autonomous

Can change its state without direct response to interaction Adaptable

Can change the transition rules (learning* from experience)

Capable of morally qualifiable actions Can cause moral good or evil.

What is a Moral Patient?


A patient is the recipient of the action of a moral agent.

Ethics derive from the intrinsic value we assign to entities. From human centric to bio centric to “info centric”

Floridi (p. 90): “If something can be a moral patient (respect and dignity), than its nature can be taken into consideration by a moral agent and contribute to shaping A’s action.”

Entropy: A Foundational Principle


Information entropy is the destruction, pollution, and depletion (marked reduction in quantity, content, quality, and value) of information objects. Ought not to be caused in the infosphere Ought to be prevented… Ought to be removed … The infosphere ought to be protected, extended, improved,

enriched and enhanced. Duty of moral agent: sustainable blooming of infosphere

Any process, action, or event with negative impact increases entropy and is, therefore, an “instance of evil.”


Floridi – Characteristics of the Infosphere

Reduction of informational friction Erosion of right to ignore [or the obligation to know]

Increase in common knowledge Increase in the responsibilities of the agents Centrality of the notion of informational privacy

Week 3

“ICTs make us think about the world informationally and make the world we experience informational.” – Floridi (2014): 40.

Responsibility and/or Accountability


Responsible = prescriptively available (e.g., put on trial) Requires intentions, consciousness, attitude

Accountable = prescription without accountability Example of seeing-eye dogs; pit bulls, etc Accountable without being responsible (censure not

punish) Pitbull bache ka muh kha gaya..trainer is responsible

pitbull is accountable.

Floridi: there can be moral agency in the absence of moral responsibility, as long as accountability can be assigned.


Three Quick Examples: - interactive, autonomous, adaptable

Amazon’s book recommender system

Health diagnostics intelligent agent

Interactive smartphone apps

Week 3

What Are Our Responsibilities?


Information ethics is an ethics of creative stewardship.

“homo poieticus”: an entity that takes care of reality to protect it and make it flourish

The more powerful the agent, the greater the duties and responsibilities become … for the well-being and flourishing

Stewardship not just virtuous users and consumers

The design implications are obvious, aren’t they?

Objection 1: Designers Always Retain Responsibility


“Can an artificial agent that changes its own programming become so autonomous that the original designer is no longer responsible for the behavior of the artificial agent?” Accepts Floridi’s definition of “Artificial Agent” (AA)

non-human autonomous interacts with environment adapts

Grodzinsky argues that AA can have learning* and intentionality* Asserts that designers “always have responsibilities for the

artificial agent they designed, implemented, and deployed.”

Grodzinsky, Frances S., Keith W Miller, Marty J. Wolf. “The ethics of designing artificial agents.” Ethics and Information Technology (2008) 10:115-121.


Objection 2: Humans Always Specify the Rules Artificial (moral) agents are trapped by criteria for

denying moral agency. An intelligent agent can close a loop from sensors

to effectors without human intervention. Mousetraps, toilet tank-fill valves, thermostats, cruise

control

What about self-regulating, self-organizing, and evolutionary computing?

For now, we will always find the human-made rules.

Week 3

Hew, Patrick Chisan, “Artificial moral agents are infeasible with foreseeable technologies.” Ethics and Information Technology (2014) 16:197-206.


Outline for Week 3



Influence on others


Week 3


Alison Adam on Gender Issues

Week 3

Gender *differences* -- research driven by statistics and business Deep criticism of gender as an explanatory variable

Student populations Methodologies Decisions versus process

Women in computing cyberstalking – privacy rights hacking - egalitarianism

The SIMS and polite behavior

• Adam, Gender Agenda (2008)

Alison AdamSheffield Hallam U.

Cheating in Online Environments


“… cheating is more than just breaking a rule or law; it is also bending or reinterpreting rules to the player’s advantage.” Anything other than getting through the

game all on your own “looking up the epiphany in a book”

Breaking the rules of the game – using cheats to gain unearned benefits

Cheating another player Social impact (harm) is the measure Introduction of deception and chaos

• Mia Consalvo, Cheating, MIT Press, 2007


Miguel Sicart on Ethical Game Play

Week 3

The outcome of designing the relations between the mechanical and semantic levels of abstraction

Most “ethical” games fail because they focus on capabilities and capacities at the mechanical level.

Ethical game play can exploit the tension between player as agent (avatar) within the gameworld and player as input provider for the “state machine”.

• Sicart, “Banality of Simulated Evil,” 2009


Miguel Sicart on Ethical Game Design

Week 3

Create an ethically relevant game world. Introduce ethics as important part of world (e.g. not Tetris or

Mario). Do not quantize your player’s actions: let them live in a

world that reacts to their values. World reacts to ethical choices. (e.g., Manhunt)

Exploit the tension of being an ethical player. Push the boundaries of ethical conventions while letting players

exert full ethical agency. (e.g., September 12th, Dues Ex, Shadow of the Colossus)

Insert other agents with constructivist capacities and possibilities. Open to players creating and implementing their own values.

(e.g., Eve Online) Challenge the poietic capacities of players, by expanding

or constraining them. Limit ability to do what is wrong in the gameworld. (e.g., Manhunt)

• Sicart, “Banality of Simulated Evil,” 2009


Outline for Week 3



Influence on others


Week 3


Why Should You Care? Philosophical underpinning of:

Human-Computer interaction Social computing Information access and retrieval Library and information science Programming activities of all sorts

Foundation for information policy analysis Privacy, anonymous behavior, identity management

Path of inquiry for understanding virtual online environments, broadly construed Games and gaming, tool rich digital libraries,

Week 3

Week 3

Thank you for your attention!

Paul ConwayAssociate ProfessorUniversity of Michigan School of [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]