Closed Loop medical devices such as Closed Loop Deep Brain Stimulation and Brain Computer Interface are some of the emerging neurotechnologies. New generations of implantable brain–computer interfaces have recently gained success in human clinical trials. These implants detect specific neuronal patterns and provide the subject with information to respond to these patterns. Further, Closed Loop brain devices give control to the subject so that he can respond and decide on a therapeutic goal. Although the implants have improved subjects’ quality of (...) life, their use has raised varied ethical concerns. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the ethical implications specific to the therapeutic goals of closed loop brain implants. The authors analyze the related work qualitatively and quantitatively so as to help readers in understanding the various ethical implications of closed loop brain implants. (shrink)

An increasing number of technology firms are implementing processes to identify and evaluate the ethical risks of their systems and products. A key part of these review processes is to foresee potential impacts of these technologies on different groups of users. In this article, we use the expression Ethical Foresight Analysis to refer to a variety of analytical strategies for anticipating or predicting the ethical issues that new technological artefacts, services, and applications may raise. This article examines several existing EFA (...) methodologies currently in use. It identifies the purposes of ethical foresight, the kinds of methods that current methodologies employ, and the strengths and weaknesses of each of these current approaches. The conclusion is that a new kind of foresight analysis on the ethics of emerging technologies is both feasible and urgently needed. (shrink)

Current advances in research, development and application of artificial intelligence systems have yielded a far-reaching discourse on AI ethics. In consequence, a number of ethics guidelines have been released in recent years. These guidelines comprise normative principles and recommendations aimed to harness the “disruptive” potentials of new AI technologies. Designed as a semi-systematic evaluation, this paper analyzes and compares 22 guidelines, highlighting overlaps but also omissions. As a result, I give a detailed overview of the field of AI ethics. Finally, (...) I also examine to what extent the respective ethical principles and values are implemented in the practice of research, development and application of AI systems—and how the effectiveness in the demands of AI ethics can be improved. (shrink)

This article describes a heuristic argument for understanding certain physical systems in terms of properties that resemble the beliefs and goals of folk psychology. The argument rests on very simple assumptions. The core of the argument is that predictions about certain events can legitimately be based on assumptions about later events, resembling Aristotelian ‘final causation’; however, more nuanced causal entities must be introduced into these types of explanation in order for them to remain consistent with a causally local Universe.

Scientific theories of consciousness identify its contents with the spatiotemporal structure of neural population activity. We follow up on this approach by stating and motivating Dynamical Emergence Theory, which defines the amount and structure of experience in terms of the intrinsic topology and geometry of a physical system’s collective dynamics. Specifically, we posit that distinct perceptual states correspond to coarse-grained macrostates reflecting an optimal partitioning of the system’s state space—a notion that aligns with several ideas and results from computational neuroscience (...) and cognitive psychology. We relate DET to existing work, offer predictions for empirical studies, and outline future research directions. (shrink)

This paper attempts to describe and address a specific puzzle related to compositionality in artificial networks such as Deep Neural Networks and machine learning in general. The puzzle identified here touches on a larger debate in Artificial Intelligence related to epistemic opacity but specifically focuses on computational applications of human level linguistic abilities or properties and a special difficulty with relation to these. Thus, the resulting issue is both general and unique. A partial solution is suggested.

Healthcare robots enable practices that seemed far-fetched in the past. Robots might be the solution to bridge the loneliness that the elderly often experience; they may help wheelchair users walk again, or may help navigate the blind. European Institutions, however, acknowledge that human contact is an essential aspect of personal care and that the insertion of robots could dehumanize caring practices. Such instances of human–robot interactions raise the question to what extent the use and development of robots for healthcare applications (...) can challenge the dignity of users. In this article, therefore, we explore how different robot applications in the healthcare domain support individuals in achieving ‘dignity’ or pressure it. We argue that since healthcare robot applications are novel, their associated risks and impacts may be unprecedented and unknown, thus triggering the need for a conceptual instrument that is binding and remains flexible at the same time. In this respect, as safety rules and data protection are often criticized to lack flexibility, and technology ethics to lack enforceability, we suggest human dignity as the overarching governance instrument for robotics, which is the inviolable value upon which all fundamental rights are grounded. (shrink)