Interactions between an intelligent software agent and a human user are ubiquitous in everyday situations such as access to information, entertainment, and purchases. In such interactions, the ISA mediates the user’s access to the content, or controls some other aspect of the user experience, and is not designed to be neutral about outcomes of user choices. Like human users, ISAs are driven by goals, make autonomous decisions, and can learn from experience. Using ideas from bounded rationality, we frame these interactions (...) as instances of an ISA whose reward depends on actions performed by the user. Such agents benefit by steering the user’s behaviour towards outcomes that maximise the ISA’s utility, which may or may not be aligned with that of the user. Video games, news recommendation aggregation engines, and fitness trackers can all be instances of this general case. Our analysis facilitates distinguishing various subcases of interaction, as well as second-order effects that might include the possibility for adaptive interfaces to induce behavioural addiction, and/or change in user belief. We present these types of interaction within a conceptual framework, and review current examples of persuasive technologies and the issues that arise from their use. We argue that the nature of the feedback commonly used by learning agents to update their models and subsequent decisions could steer the behaviour of human users away from what benefits them, and in a direction that can undermine autonomy and cause further disparity between actions and goals as exemplified by addictive and compulsive behaviour. We discuss some of the ethical, social and legal implications of this technology and argue that it can sometimes exploit and reinforce weaknesses in human beings. (shrink)

Autonomous mechanisms have been proposed to regulate certain aspects of society and are already being used to regulate business organisations. We take seriously recent proposals for algorithmic regulation of society, and we identify the existing technologies that can be used to implement them, most of them originally introduced in business contexts. We build on the notion of ‘social machine’ and we connect it to various ongoing trends and ideas, including crowdsourced task-work, social compiler, mechanism design, reputation management systems, and social (...) scoring. After showing how all the building blocks of algorithmic regulation are already well in place, we discuss the possible implications for human autonomy and social order. The main contribution of this paper is to identify convergent social and technical trends that are leading towards social regulation by algorithms, and to discuss the possible social, political, and ethical consequences of taking this path. (shrink)

The current paradigm of Artificial Intelligence emerged as the result of a series of cultural innovations, some technical and some social. Among them are apparently small design decisions, that led to a subtle reframing of the field’s original goals, and are by now accepted as standard. They correspond to technical shortcuts, aimed at bypassing problems that were otherwise too complicated or too expensive to solve, while still delivering a viable version of AI. Far from being a series of separate problems, (...) recent cases of unexpected effects of AI are the consequences of those very choices that enabled the field to succeed, and this is why it will be difficult to solve them. In this chapter we review three of these choices, investigating their connection to some of today’s challenges in AI, including those relative to bias, value alignment, privacy and explainability. We introduce the notion of “ethical debt” to describe the necessity to undertake expensive rework in the future in order to address ethical problems created by a technical system. (shrink)

Autonomous mechanisms have been proposed to regulate certain aspects of society and are already being used to regulate business organisations. We take seriously recent proposals for algorithmic regulation of society, and we identify the existing technologies that can be used to implement them, most of them originally introduced in business contexts. We build on the notion of 'social machine' and we connect it to various ongoing trends and ideas, including crowdsourced task-work, social compiler, mechanism design, reputation management systems, and social (...) scoring. After showing how all the building blocks of algorithmic regulation are already well in place, we discuss possible implications for human autonomy and social order. The main contribution of this paper is to identify convergent social and technical trends that are leading towards social regulation by algorithms, and to discuss the possible social, political, and ethical consequences of taking this path. (shrink)

The automated parsing of 130,213 news articles about the 2012 US presidential elections produces a network formed by the key political actors and issues, which were linked by relations of support and opposition. The nodes are formed by noun phrases and links by verbs, directly expressing the action of one node upon the other. This network is studied by applying insights from several theories and techniques, and by combining existing tools in an innovative way, including: graph partitioning, centrality, assortativity, hierarchy (...) and structural balance. The analysis yields various patterns. First, we observe that the fundamental split between the Republican and Democrat camps can be easily detected by network partitioning, which provides a strong validation check of the approach adopted, as well as a sound way to assign actors and topics to one of the two camps. Second, we identify the most central nodes of the political camps. We also learnt that Clinton played a more central role than Biden in the Democrat camp; the overall campaign was much focused on economy and rights; the Republican Party is the most divisive subject in the campaign, and is portrayed more negatively than the Democrats; and, overall, the media reported positive statements more frequently for the Democrats than the Republicans. This is the first study in which political positions are automatically extracted and derived from a very large corpus of online news, generating a network that goes well beyond traditional word-association networks by means of richer linguistic analysis of texts. (shrink)

Statistical approaches to Artificial Intelligence are behind most success stories of the field in the past decade. The idea of generating non-trivial behaviour by analysing vast amounts of data has enabled recommendation systems, search engines, spam filters, optical character recognition, machine translation and speech recognition, among other things. As we celebrate the spectacular achievements of this line of research, we need to assess its full potential and its limitations. What are the next steps to take towards machine intelligence?

Social machines are systems formed by material and human elements interacting in a structured way. The use of digital platforms as mediators allows large numbers of humans to participate in such machines, which have interconnected AI and human components operating as a single system capable of highly sophisticated behavior. Under certain conditions, such systems can be understood as autonomous goal-driven agents. Many popular online platforms can be regarded as instances of this class of agent. We argue that autonomous social machines (...) provide a new paradigm for the design of intelligent systems, marking a new phase in AI. After describing the characteristics of goal-driven social machines, we discuss the consequences of their adoption, for the practice of artificial intelligence as well as for its regulation. (shrink)

We explore the question of whether machines can infer information about our psychological traits or mental states by observing samples of our behaviour gathered from our online activities. Ongoing technical advances across a range of research communities indicate that machines are now able to access this information, but the extent to which this is possible and the consequent implications have not been well explored. We begin by highlighting the urgency of asking this question, and then explore its conceptual underpinnings, in (...) order to help emphasise the relevant issues. To answer the question, we review a large number of empirical studies, in which samples of behaviour are used to automatically infer a range of psychological constructs, including affect and emotions, aptitudes and skills, attitudes and orientations (e.g. values and sexual orientation), personality, and disorders and conditions (e.g. depression and addiction). We also present a general perspective that can bring these disparate studies together and allow us to think clearly about their philosophical and ethical implications, such as issues related to consent, privacy, and the use of persuasive technologies for controlling human behaviour. (shrink)

Social machines are systems formed by technical and human elements interacting in a structured manner. The use of digital platforms as mediators allows large numbers of human participants to join such mechanisms, creating systems where interconnected digital and human components operate as a single machine capable of highly sophisticated behaviour. Under certain conditions, such systems can be described as autonomous and goal-driven agents. Many examples of modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be regarded as instances of this class of mechanisms. We (...) argue that this type of autonomous social machines has provided a new paradigm for the design of intelligent systems marking a new phase in the field of AI. The consequences of this observation range from methodological, philosophical to ethical. On the one side, it emphasises the role of Human-Computer Interaction in the design of intelligent systems, while on the other side it draws attention to both the risks for a human being and those for a society relying on mechanisms that are not necessarily controllable. The difficulty by companies in regulating the spread of misinformation, as well as those by authorities to protect task-workers managed by a software infrastructure, could be just some of the effects of this technological paradigm. (shrink)

The field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has undergone many transformations, most recently the emergence of data-driven approaches centred on machine learning technology. The present article examines that paradigm shift by using the conceptual tools developed by Thomas Kuhn, and by analysing the contents of the longest running conference series in the field. A paradigm shift occurs when a new set of assumptions and values replaces the previous one within a given scientific community. These are often conveyed implicitly, by the choice (...) of success stories that exemplify and define what a given field of research is about, demonstrating what kind of questions and answers are appropriate. The replacement of these exemplar stories corresponds to a shift in goals, methods, and expectations. We discuss the most recent such transition in the field of Artificial Intelligence, as well as commenting on some earlier ones. (shrink)

As we increasingly delegate decision-making to algorithms, whether directly or indirectly, important questions emerge in circumstances where those decisions have direct consequences for individual rights and personal opportunities, as well as for the collective good. A key problem for policymakers is that the social implications of these new methods can only be grasped if there is an adequate comprehension of their general technical underpinnings. The discussion here focuses primarily on the case of enforcement decisions in the criminal justice system, but (...) draws on similar situations emerging from other algorithms utilised in controlling access to opportunities, to explain how machine learning works and, as a result, how decisions are made by modern intelligent algorithms or 'classifiers'. It examines the key aspects of the performance of classifiers, including how classifiers learn, the fact that they operate on the basis of correlation rather than causation, and that the term 'bias' in machine learning has a different meaning to common usage. An example of a real world 'classifier', the Harm Assessment Risk Tool (HART), is examined, through identification of its technical features: the classification method, the training data and the test data, the features and the labels, validation and performance measures. Four normative benchmarks are then considered by reference to HART: (a) prediction accuracy (b) fairness and equality before the law (c) transparency and accountability (d) informational privacy and freedom of expression, in order to demonstrate how its technical features have important normative dimensions that bear directly on the extent to which the system can be regarded as a viable and legitimate support for, or even alternative to, existing human decision-makers. (shrink)

Intelligence rethought: AIs know us, but don't think like us Processing and learning from millions of past cases allows machines to know what we want better than we do, even if they don't think as we do.

The road to artificial intelligence: A case of data over theory Computers that could simulate human intelligence were once a futuristic dream. Now they are all around us – but not in the way their pioneers expected.

La scorciatoia - Come le macchine sono diventate intelligenti senza pensare in modo umano -/- Le nostre creature sono diverse da noi e talvolta più forti. Per poterci convivere dobbiamo imparare a conoscerle Vagliano curricula, concedono mutui, scelgono le notizie che leggiamo: le macchine intelligenti sono entrate nelle nostre vite, ma non sono come ce le aspettavamo. Fanno molte delle cose che volevamo, e anche qualcuna in più, ma non possiamo capirle o ragionare con loro, perché il loro comportamento è (...) in realtà guidato da relazioni statistiche ricavate da quantità sovrumane di dati. Eppure possono essere in certi casi più potenti di noi: ci osservano continuamente, e prendono decisioni al nostro posto. E allora come incorporarle nella nostra società senza rischi ed effetti collaterali? Questo libro - rigoroso, pungente, originale nell'approccio - ci spiega come siamo arrivati sin qui, e indica il percorso che ci aspetta prima di poterci fidare di questi nuovi agenti «alieni». La tecnologia non basta, occorre un dialogo tra scienze naturali e umane: è il passaggio cruciale per una convivenza sicura con questa nuova forma di intelligenza. (Il Mulino). (shrink)

Machina sapiens - l;algoritmo che ci ha rubato il segreto della conoscenza. -/- Le macchine possono pensare? Questa domanda inquietante, posta da Alan Turing nel 1950, ha forse trovato una risposta: oggi si può conversare con un computer senza poterlo distinguere da un essere umano. I nuovi agenti intelligenti come ChatGPT si sono rivelati capaci di svolgere compiti che vanno molto oltre le intenzioni iniziali dei loro creatori, e ancora non sappiamo perché: se sono stati addestrati per alcune abilità, altre (...) sono emerse spontaneamente mentre leggevano migliaia di libri e milioni di pagine web. È questo il segreto della conoscenza, ed è adesso nelle mani delle nostre creature? Cos'altro può emergere, mentre continuiamo su questa strada? (shrink)

Book. From the Publisher. An influential scientist in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) explains its fundamental concepts and how it is changing culture and society. -/- A particular form of AI is now embedded in our tech, our infrastructure, and our lives. How did it get there? Where and why should we be concerned? And what should we do now? The Shortcut: Why Intelligent Machines Do Not Think Like Us provides an accessible yet probing exposure of AI in its (...) prevalent form today, proposing a new narrative to connect and make sense of events that have happened in the recent tumultuous past, and enabling us to think soberly about the road ahead. -/- This book is divided into ten carefully crafted and easily digestible chapters. Each chapter grapples with an important question for AI. Ranging from the scientific concepts that underpin the technology to wider implications for society, it develops a unified description using tools from different disciplines and avoiding unnecessary abstractions or words that end with -ism. The book uses real examples wherever possible, introducing the reader to the people who have created some of these technologies and to ideas shaping modern society that originate from the technical side of AI. It contains important practical advice about how we should approach AI in the future without promoting exaggerated hypes or fears. -/- Entertaining and disturbing but always thoughtful, The Shortcut confronts the hidden logic of AI while preserving a space for human dignity. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in AI, the history of technology, and the history of ideas. General readers will come away much more informed about how AI really works today and what we should do next. -/- Table of Contents -/- ABOUT THE AUTHOR. PROLOGUE. 1 The Search for Intelligence. 2 The Shortcut. 3 Finding Order in the World. 4 Lady Lovelace Was Wrong. 5 Unintended Behaviour. 6 Microtargeting and Mass Persuasion. 7 The Feedback Loop. 8 The Glitch. 9 Social Machines. 10 Regulating, Not Unplugging. EPILOGUE. BIBLIOGRAPHY. INDEX. (shrink)

The deep formal and conceptual link existing between artificial life and artificial intelligence can be highlighted using conceptual tools derived by Karl Popper's evolutionary epistemology.Starting from the observation that the structure itself of an organism embodies knowledge about the environment which it is adapted to, it is possible to regard evolution as a learning process. This process is subject to the same rules indicated by Popper for the growth of scientific knowledge: causal conjectures (mutations) and successive refutations (extinction). In the (...) field of machine learning such a paradigm is represented by genetic algorithms that, simulating biological processes, emulate cognitive processes. From a practical viewpoint, that perspective allows to identify the two different kinds of learning considered by artificial intelligence, knowledge acquisition and skill improvement, and to get a different view of the problem of heuristic knowledge in learning systems. From a theoretical point of view, these considerations can shade a new light on an old epistemological problem: why do we live in a learnable world? (shrink)

The circumscribed quadrature of professional ethics aims to show the necessary shift from deontology to professional ethics, from deontological codes to ethical codes. While deontology and the deontological codes that materialise from it set their sights on professionals' responsibilities, professional ethics and the ethical codes that should derive from it would set their sights on the professional act, on its successful performance. In this way, the stress comes to be placed not only on the professional's responsibility, although that too, but (...) also on the necessary orchestration of the responsibilities shared at numerous levels by everyone involved in the performance of the professional act. The author identifies and typifies five elements present in the professional act. Four of them involve direct the protagonism of the professional, the recipient of the professional service, the institution that makes the service possible and from which the professionals' service is offered, and finally the human factor, the people who are behind the aforementioned factors and their nature, the professional, the recipient of the services and institutions. And each of these factors paves the way for a series of diversified protagonisms: inter-professional cooperation, receiver of professional services and their human environment around them, macro and micro institutions, diverse human profiles. However, all of this takes place within the framework of the fifth important element in professional ethics: a given, specific society as a circumscription of the four elements cited above, which sets the moral bar, a set of convictions and desired collective ethics which unquestionably also affect the performance of professional acts. With this reflection, we take note of the necessary co-responsibility in the provision of professional services, a co-responsibility which we could express simply in healthcare terms: it is not enough to merely have sound healthcare professionals if we do not have good patients with favourable affective environments, nor sound healthcare institutions, nor serious people who are socially committed to their work and their role, nor a society that believes in and fosters given identifiers of the personal and professional health to which we aim. The reflections in this proposal embark on a pathway of reflection which, we believe, deserves to be further explored. (shrink)

Il pensiero morale al tempo del Rosmini -- I fondamenti teoretici della morale rosminiana -- Disegno generale della morale rosminiana -- La legge morale -- Il bene soggettivo, oggettivo, morale -- Il soggetto della morale -- Errore e peccato -- La coscienza morale -- Morale naturale e morale soprannaturale.

Cet article est une recension du livre L'altro Agostino de G. Lettieri. Il montre d'abord que, contrairement à ce que soutient l'auteur, avant l'Ad Simplicianum, Augustin tenait déjà la grâce comme nécessaire pour faire le bien et la considérait non seulement comme un donum scientiae mais aussi comme une inspiratio dilectionis, le don qui fait aimer le bien. En second lieu, il rejette comme non augustinienne l'idée d'une grâce toute-puissante et d'une prédestination au mal, qui, selon G. Lettieri, caractérise l'« (...) autre » Augustin, c'est-à-dire celui de la théologie élaborée à partir de l'Ad Simplicianum. En somme, ni le premier ni le second Augustin présentés par l'auteur ne correspondent au véritable Augustin. (shrink)

El artículo demuestra las huellas que existen en los Diálogos de Casiciaco de los comentariuos paulinos de Mario Victorino, particularmente en la exposición de la doctrina trinitaria, así como en la formulación de la fe cristiana.

El artículo versa sobre las fuentes inspiradoras del "De immortalitate animae", partiendo de las teorías clásicas que existen al respecto. Señala que, en la época que precedió al bautismo, la cultura de Agustín no se ajustaba al neoplatonismo tanto como se le ha presentado y que, a sus ojos, además de la novedad de la fé cristiana, todavía contaban mucho las sugerencias provenientes de la lectura de los clásicos latinos, no sólo Cicerón, sino también Varrón. Para demostrarlo se someten a (...) examen algunos pasajes del escrito, indicando las fuentes en las que se ha inspirado. (shrink)

El artículo viene a completar las anteriores investigaciones del autor sobre las fuentes de la antropología agustiniana. Entre éstas se ha subrayado el influjo del modelo antropológico de Antíoco de Ascalón, conocido a través de Varrón y Cicerón. Este ensayo rastrea las huellas del "De philosophia" de Varrón en los escritos de Agustín anteriores a "De ciuitate Dei", para evaluar la medida y el peso de esta presencia.

En este artículo se plantean y responden algunas preguntas en torno al pecado original en el pensamiento agustiniano, desde los primeros tiempos de su elaboración hasta el Ad Simplicianum libri duo, del año 396, como es la relativa al cuándo y por qué, junto a la noción de un pecado de origen, Agustín comenzó a pensar en una implicación de todos los descendientes en la culpa, además de en los castigos de los progenitores. Se responde también a la pregunta sobre (...) cómo comenzó san Agustín a explicar o expresar tal implicación. (shrink)

El artículo pone de manifiesto las fuentes cristianas de la doctrina trinitaria en los primeros Diálogos de Agustín, contestando a las ideas de O. du Roy y señalando el influjo de Ambrosio y Mario Victorino.

En el artículo se reconstruyen las etapas principales de la reflexión agustiniana sobre la procesión del Espíritu Santo, a partir de la acogida inicial de la concepción de Mario Victorino, que identificaba con la generación aquella procesión, para pasar después a subrayar la sucesiva revisión crítica, señalando las sugerencias externas que lo movieron a profundizar en la cuestión.

Contra la hipótesis de que san Agustín había atribuido a los filósofos paganos el conocimiento de la Divina Trinidad, admitiendo así la posibilidad de conocer la Trinidad sin la encarnación, este estudio muestra primeramente que el obispo de Hipona había distinguido la idea de Dios Padre, tanto en los filósofos como en el Antiguo Testamento, de la idea de Dios, el Padre de Jesucristo. En segundo lugar, muestra que los pasajes en los que el evangelista habla de la revelación del (...) Padre realizada por Cristo el autor de los "Tractatus" los expone subrayando la naturaleza propia del conocimiento cristiano de Dios. (shrink)

En el artículo se hace una serie de observaciones al ensayo de A. Milano sobre el concepto de verdad y revelación cristiana en san Agustín, publicado en el libro "Quale verità" (Dehoniana 1999), señalando que el autor deja de lado algunas precisiones que los agustinólogos han hecho, particularmente las relativas al pensamiento de san Agustín acerca de la revelación trinitaria y de la relación Cristo-Verdad.

El artículo estudia las fuentes orientales de la teología de Juliano de Eclana en sus obras Ad Turbantium y Ad Florum. De la obra primera, se estudia un texto de Juan Crisóstomo y uno Pseudo-Basiliano. Del Ad Florum, se estudia la exaltación de la ortodoxia de Juan Crisóstomo, Basilio y Teodoro de Mopsuestia.

El artículo estudia la fuente varroniana de la exposición que de las artes liberales hace san Agustín en la segunda parte del "De ordine". Primero demuestra que la interpretación que de esa sección da I. Hadot es excesivamente neoplatónica. Después presenta argumentos nuevos a favor de la inspiración varroniana del discurso agustiniano sobre las artes liberales.

El artículo trata los aspectos literarios de los seis libros conservados del "Ad Florum", de Juliano de Eclana, para señalar cómo san Agustín, por su progresiva profundización en la fé cristiana, llegó a asumir una actitud cada vez más crítica ante los modelos culturales clásicos, mientras que Juliano siguió sólidamente anclado en ellos.

El artículo versa sobre la polémica cristológica entre San Agustín y Juliano de Eclana, y se estudian tres asuntos: si son exactos los conocimientos que sobre el apolinarismo tenía Juliano; si es posible descubrir la fuente de estas informaciones, y si esta fuente es el camino por el que llegaron a Juliano algunos conceptos aristotélicos, característicos de sus argumentaciones teológicas.

El artículo estudia el esquema de los "tria uitia" en el marco de la concepción antropológica que de ellos se puede recabar principalmente del "De uera religione", para buscar después sus fuentes literarias y filosóficas. Se señalan especialmente las que provienen de los estoicos, de la antigua Academia y de Antíoco de Ascalón, transmitidas al mundo latino por Cicerón y Varrón. Para ello se hacen el análisis y comparación de diversos textos del "De uera religione" con otros de Cicerón y (...) Varrón. (shrink)

El artículo expone el modelo antropológico y moral que Varrón presenta en su "De philosophia", y que se atribuye a Antíoco de Ascalón. Después muestra cómo Agustín, en sus primeras obras, especialmente "De moribus", "De ordine", "De animae quantitate", "De libero arbitrio" tiene en cuenta dicho modelo, de sabor ecléctico, pero fuertemente inspirado en la filosofía estoica y peripatética.