Building Moral Robots: Ethical Pitfalls and Challenges.

This paper examines the ethical pitfalls and challenges that non-ethicists, such as researchers and programmers in the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics, face when building moral machines. Whether ethics is "computable" depends on how programmers understand ethics in the first place and on the adequacy of their understanding of the ethical problems and methodological challenges in these fields. Researchers and programmers face at least two types of problems due to their general lack of ethical knowledge or expertise. The first type is so-called rookie mistakes, which could be addressed by providing these people with the necessary ethical knowledge. The second, more difficult methodological issue concerns areas of peer disagreement in ethics, where no easy solutions are currently available. This paper examines several existing approaches to highlight the ethical pitfalls and challenges involved. Familiarity with these and similar problems can help programmers to avoid pitfalls and build better moral machines. The paper concludes that ethical decisions regarding moral robots should be based on avoiding what is immoral (i.e. prohibiting certain immoral actions) in combination with a pluralistic ethical method of solving moral problems, rather than relying on a particular ethical approach, so as to avoid a normative bias.

Cognitive Enhancement Using ICT and Its Ethical Implications.

The utilization of digital tools aiming at the cognitive enhancement of students and adults, so that they can achieve better performance and professional or academic success, has increased in recent years. This paper focuses on ICT tools such as computer games, programming languages and educational software as means for cognitive enhancement and attempts to highlight their contributions. Issues of design and the limitations of digital tools are discussed. In the final section, the ethical implications of using educational ICT tools for cognitive enhancement from a virtue ethics perspective are presented.

Who Should Decide How Machines Make Morally Laden Decisions?

Who should decide how a machine will decide what to do when it is driving a car, performing a medical procedure, or, more generally, when it is facing any kind of morally laden decision? More and more, machines are making complex decisions with a considerable level of autonomy. We should be much more preoccupied by this problem than we currently are. After a series of preliminary remarks, this paper will go over four possible answers to the question raised above. First, we may claim that it is the maker of a machine that gets to decide how it will behave in morally laden scenarios. Second, we may claim that the users of a machine should decide. Third, that decision may have to be made collectively or, fourth, by other machines built for this special purpose. The paper argues that each of these approaches suffers from its own shortcomings, and it concludes by showing, among other things, which approaches should be emphasized for different types of machines, situations, and/or morally laden decisions.

Anti-inflammatory and healing action of oral gel containing borneol monoterpene in chemotherapy-induced mucositis in rats ( Rattus norvegicus )

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of gels containing the monoterpene borneol in induced oral mucositis using an animal model. Gels were prepared with borneol at 1.2% and 2.4% (w/w). Oral mucositis was induced by administration of three doses of 5-fluorouracil (30 mg/kg, i.p.) and injury with acetic acid (50%, v/v) soaked in filter paper applied to right cheek mucosa for 60s. Four subgroups comprising 12 animals each were formed. Six animals from each group were sacrificed at days seven and fourteen after oral mucositis induction. Mucous samples were processed and stained with hematoxylin-eosin and Masson's Trichrome. The semiquantitative evaluation involved observation of inflammatory parameters. ImageJ® software was used in the quantitative evaluation. For statistical analyses, Two-way ANOVA, followed by Tukey's post-test (p <0.05), were employed. Borneol 2.4% gel proved effective in the treatment of oral mucositis with statistically significant differences between groups for angiogenesis control, inflammatory cell count reduction and percentage neoformed collagen increase. The confirmation of anti-inflammatory and healing action of borneol in oral mucositis in rats renders it a good marker for predicting this activity for plant extracts rich in this substance

The wizard behind the curtain: programmers as providers.

It is almost universally accepted that traditional provider-patient relationships should be governed, at least in part, by the ethical principles set forth by Beauchamp and Childress (Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of biomedical ethics, 1979). These principles include autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice (Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of biomedical ethics, 1979). Recently, however, the nature of medial practice has changed. The pervasive presence of computer technology in medicine raises interesting ethical questions. In this paper we argue that some software designers should be considered health care providers and thus be subject the ethical principles incumbent upon "traditional" providers. We argue that these ethical responsibilities should be applied explicitly rather than as a passive, implicit, set of guidelines.

Professional Ethics of Software Engineers: An Ethical Framework.

The purpose of this article is to propose an ethical framework for software engineers that connects software developers' ethical responsibilities directly to their professional standards. The implementation of such an ethical framework can overcome the traditional dichotomy between professional skills and ethical skills, which plagues the engineering professions, by proposing an approach to the fundamental tasks of the practitioner, i.e., software development, in which the professional standards are intrinsically connected to the ethical responsibilities. In so doing, the ethical framework improves the practitioner's professionalism and ethics. We call this approach Ethical-Driven Software Development (EDSD), as an approach to software development. EDSD manifests the advantages of an ethical framework as an alternative to the all too familiar approach in professional ethics that advocates "stand-alone codes of ethics". We believe that one outcome of this synergy between professional and ethical skills is simply better engineers. Moreover, since there are often different software solutions, which the engineer can provide to an issue at stake, the ethical framework provides a guiding principle, within the process of software development, that helps the engineer evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of different software solutions. It does not and cannot affect the end-product in and of-itself. However, it can and should, make the software engineer more conscious and aware of the ethical ramifications of certain engineering decisions within the process.

Majority vote and other problems when using computational tools.

Computational tools are essential for most of our research. To use these tools, one needs to know how they work. Problems in application of computational methods to variation analysis can appear at several stages and affect, for example, the interpretation of results. Such cases are discussed along with suggestions how to avoid them. The applications include incomplete reporting of methods, especially about the use of prediction tools; method selection on unscientific grounds and without consulting independent method performance assessments; extending application area of methods outside their intended purpose; use of the same data several times for obtaining majority vote; and filtering of datasets so that variants of interest are excluded. All these issues can be avoided by discontinuing the use software tools as black boxes.

Social media: a review and tutorial of applications in medicine and health care.

BACKGROUND: Social media are dynamic and interactive computer-mediated communication tools that have high penetration rates in the general population in high-income and middle-income countries. However, in medicine and health care, a large number of stakeholders (eg, clinicians, administrators, professional colleges, academic institutions, ministries of health, among others) are unaware of social media's relevance, potential applications in their day-to-day activities, as well as the inherent risks and how these may be attenuated and mitigated. OBJECTIVE: We conducted a narrative review with the aim to present case studies that illustrate how, where, and why social media are being used in the medical and health care sectors. METHODS: Using a critical-interpretivist framework, we used qualitative methods to synthesize the impact and illustrate, explain, and provide contextual knowledge of the applications and potential implementations of social media in medicine and health care. Both traditional (eg, peer-reviewed) and nontraditional (eg, policies, case studies, and social media content) sources were used, in addition to an environmental scan (using Google and Bing Web searches) of resources. RESULTS: We reviewed, evaluated, and synthesized 76 articles, 44 websites, and 11 policies/reports. Results and case studies are presented according to 10 different categories of social media: (1) blogs (eg, WordPress), (2) microblogs (eg, Twitter), (3) social networking sites (eg, Facebook), (4) professional networking sites (eg, LinkedIn, Sermo), (5) thematic networking sites (eg, 23andMe), (6) wikis (eg, Wikipedia), (7) mashups (eg, HealthMap), (8) collaborative filtering sites (eg, Digg), (9) media sharing sites (eg, YouTube, Slideshare), and others (eg, SecondLife). Four recommendations are provided and explained for stakeholders wishing to engage with social media while attenuating risk: (1) maintain professionalism at all times, (2) be authentic, have fun, and do not be afraid, (3) ask for help, and (4) focus, grab attention, and engage. CONCLUSIONS: The role of social media in the medical and health care sectors is far reaching, and many questions in terms of governance, ethics, professionalism, privacy, confidentiality, and information quality remain unanswered. By following the guidelines presented, professionals have a starting point to engage with social media in a safe and ethical manner. Future research will be required to understand the synergies between social media and evidence-based practice, as well as develop institutional policies that benefit patients, clinicians, public health practitioners, and industry alike.

Collaboration gets the most out of software.

By centralizing many of the tasks associated with the upkeep of scientific software, SBGrid allows researchers to spend more of their time on research.

Software educativo y principios éticos / Educational software and the ethical principles

El proceso de elaboración de un software educativo es una actividad que requiere de la participación de diferentes ciencias para la obtención de un resultado con calidad, o sea de la interdisciplinaridad. Al respecto, el grupo investigación-acción del Proyecto nacional para la producción de software educativo (SE) en la Educación Médica Superior, Galenomedia, durante sus más de seis años de trabajo, identificó que los aspectos más analizados en proyectos de investigación, publicaciones y tesis de maestría que abordan la elaboración de un software educativo, están relacionados con la Informática, la pedagogía y la ciencia en cuestión, dejando al margen frecuentemente el análisis de los aspectos éticos que también marcan pautas importantes en su desarrollo. El presente trabajo pretende reflexionar sobre algunos principios éticos que deben ser considerados en la elaboración y uso del software educativo en el campo de la salud con el objetivo de contribuir a perfeccionar su proceso de elaboración y con ello a una mejor formación de los profesionales de la salud

The process of creation of educational software requires the involvement of several sciences to achieve a quality result, that is, requires interdisciplinarity. In over six years of work, the research/action group of the national project for the production of educational software in the higher medical education, known as Galenomedia, found out that the most analyzed aspects in educational software-linked research projects, publications and Master of Sciences' theses had been informatics, pedagogy and sciences; however, the analysis of ethical aspects that may also establish important guidelines for the development of this type of software had been frequently neglected. The present paper was intended to make reflections on some of the ethical principles that should be borne in mind in creating and using educational software in the field of health care, in order to support the improvement of this process and the better formation of health professionals

The use of regional platforms for managing electronic health records for the production of regional public health indicators in France.

BACKGROUND: In France, recent developments in healthcare system organization have aimed at strengthening decision-making and action in public health at the regional level. Firstly, the 2004 Public Health Act, by setting 100 national and regional public health targets, introduced an evaluative approach to public health programs at the national and regional levels. Meanwhile, the implementation of regional platforms for managing electronic health records (EHRs) has also been under assessment to coordinate the deployment of this important instrument of care within each geographic area. In this context, the development and implementation of a regional approach to epidemiological data extracted from EHRs are an opportunity that must be seized as soon as possible. Our article addresses certain design and organizational aspects so that the technical requirements for such use are integrated into regional platforms in France. The article will base itself on organization of the Rhône-Alpes regional health platform. DISCUSSION: Different tools being deployed in France allow us to consider the potential of these regional platforms for epidemiology and public health (implementation of a national health identification number and a national information system interoperability framework). The deployment of the Rhône-Alpes regional health platform began in the 2000s in France. By August 2011, 2.6 million patients were identified in this platform. A new development step is emerging because regional decision-makers need to measure healthcare efficiency. To pool heterogeneous information contained in various independent databases, the format, norm and content of the metadata have been defined. Two types of databases will be created according to the nature of the data processed, one for extracting structured data, and the second for extracting non-structured and de-identified free-text documents. SUMMARY: Regional platforms for managing EHRs could constitute an important data source for epidemiological surveillance in the context of epidemic alerts, but also in monitoring a number of indicators of infectious and chronic diseases for which no data are yet available in France.

The social disutility of software ownership.

Software ownership allows the owner to restrict the distribution of software and to prevent others from reading the software's source code and building upon it. However, free software is released to users under software licenses that give them the right to read the source code, modify it, reuse it, and distribute the software to others. Proponents of free software such as Richard M. Stallman and Eben Moglen argue that the social disutility of software ownership is a sufficient justification for prohibiting it. This social disutility includes the social instability of disregarding laws and agreements covering software use and distribution, inequality of software access, and the inability to help others by sharing software with them. Here I consider these and other social disutility claims against withholding specific software rights from users, in particular, the rights to read the source code, duplicate, distribute, modify, imitate, and reuse portions of the software within new programs. I find that generally while withholding these rights from software users does cause some degree of social disutility, only the rights to duplicate, modify and imitate cannot legitimately be denied to users on this basis. The social disutility of withholding the rights to distribute the software, read its source code and reuse portions of it in new programs is insufficient to prohibit software owners from denying them to users. A compromise between the software owner and user can minimise the social disutility of withholding these particular rights from users. However, the social disutility caused by software patents is sufficient for rejecting such patents as they restrict the methods of reducing social disutility possible with other forms of software ownership.

A critique of positive responsibility in computing.

It has been claimed that (1) computer professionals should be held responsible for an undisclosed list of "undesirable events" associated with their work and (2) most if not all computer disasters can be avoided by truly understanding responsibility. Programmers, software developers, and other computer professionals should be defended against such vague, counterproductive, and impossible ideals because these imply the mandatory satisfaction of social needs and the equation of ethics with a kind of altruism. The concept of social needs is debatable with no one possessing the authority to impose their version of them. Similarly, the notion of "positive responsibility" is difficult to apply, does not effectively change computing practice, and confuses good (i.e., efficient) computer engineering with good (i.e. moral) computer engineering.

Ethical education in software engineering: responsibility in the production of complex systems.

Among the various contemporary schools of moral thinking, consequence-based ethics, as opposed to rule-based, seems to have a good acceptance among professionals such as software engineers. But naïve consequentialism is intellectually too weak to serve as a practical guide in the profession. Besides, the complexity of software systems makes it very hard to know in advance the consequences that will derive from professional activities in the production of software. Therefore, following the spirit of well-known codes of ethics such as the ACM/IEEE's, we advocate for a more solid position in the ethical education of software engineers, which we call 'moderate deontologism', that takes into account both rules and consequences to assess the goodness of actions, and at the same time pays an adequate consideration to the absolute values of human dignity. In order to educate responsible professionals, however, this position should be complemented with a pedagogical approach to virtue ethics.