IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2016 - 5

president's message

Greg Adamson

Is Ethics an
Emerging Property?

an we program ethics into A r tificial
"
Intelligence?" was
the topic of a keynote panel initiated
by SSIT at the July IEEE Conference
on Norbert Wiener in the 21st Century. Participants included Juerg
von Kaenel from IBM, Judy Wajcman from the London School of
Economics, James Hughes from
the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Thao Phan from
the University of Melbourne, and
Ma rcu s Wi g a n f rom I mp er ia l
College London. The session was
chaired by T&S Magazine editor
Katina Michael.
Discussion was lively. Some serious interdisciplinary understanding
emerged as technologists and social
scientists exchanged views. About
the only point of complete agreement was that the question oversimplified the challenge. In the end the
largest gulf existed between two different sociological perspectives on
the future: whether we are more or
less secure in an automated world.
SSIT has been looking at questions like this for more than four
decades, in an often lonely journey.
Today is different. Many technologists are becoming intrigued by
questions like, "Would I be willing
for my self-driving car to drive me
off a cliff if it meant saving a bus
load of children?" Technology has

c

caught up. The theoretical questions have become real.
In a sense they always were.
Recently VW agreed to pay a record
$15 billion partial settlement for
designing mechanisms that circumvented pollution tests. No doubt
some companies have chosen to
break laws for as long as companies and regulations have existed.
But today the growing centrality of
technology in our lives is propelling
these cases to the fore. Multi-billion
fines will drive different behaviors,
and raise the status of professional
codes of ethics.
SSIT has many members who
are expert researchers and practitioners in this field of ethics. You
can follow the history of ethics in
IEEE in a great resource assembled
by long-time SSIT member Walter
Elden, at http://ethw.org/IEEE _
Ethics_History_Repository_(IEHR).
Today SSIT's ethics expertise is
being sought across IEEE. As an
organization IEEE is seeking to
engage actively in the fields of ethics and policy related to technology. SSIT is now invited to be part

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2016.2594662
Date of publication: 7 September 2016

september 2016

∕

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

of each new initiative of the Future
Directions Committee (e.g., the IoT
Initiative, the Brain Initiative, the
Big Data Initiative,) and we have
been able to find suitably qualified
experts for most of these. Technical Activities, home to IEEE's 46
Technical Societies and Councils,
has established the Ethics, Society,
and Technology initiative in which
we are playing an important part.
We will be assisting an ethics discussion at the Sections Congress
in Sydney in August 2017, the threeyearly meeting of all IEEE Sections.
If you are an ethics researcher
or practitioner, or if you are looking
at your next career transition and
want to retrain yourself in this field,
now is the time to get involved in
SSIT's ethics activities. Write to me
and I will connect you with the relevant SSIT opportunity.
Greg Adamson, 2015-16 IEEE-SSIT
President, is with the Melbourne
School of Engineering, University
of Melbourne, Australia. Email:
g.adamson@ieee.org.

5


http://www.ethw.org/IEEE_

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