Exploring the philosophical dimensions of ethical decision-making, autonomy, and notions of intelligence in the context of autonomous and/or intelligent systems (A/IS).
STS Ethics makes visible the relations between conceptual, material, and political dimensions of A/IS design, implementation, and (mis)use.
Lead by: Luke Robert Moffat
Key Projects
London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, DecarboN8
Lead by: Malé Luján Escalante, Monika Büscher
This is collaboration between Lancsater University and LCC Service Design, that includes
SoRA is a reflexive assessment that helps you to reflect on how socially responsive your green mobility innovation is against societal readiness indicators and supports the improvement potential of your innovation.
SoRA Framework
SoRA is a reflexive assessment framework created for innovators, researchers, local authorities, and community action workers to recognise their innovation’s societal readiness and their responsiveness to strengthen the same.
When is SoRA useful?
Steps to use SoRa
Steps to use SoRA
Considering how ready your innovation is for society from an early stage makes for a more innovative, resilient and robust initiative, helping to develop ideas and ground the enthusiasm of the development group and ensure that the results optimise benefits and minimise negative impacts.
SoRA Capacity Mapping Tool
Realising Realizing data together with people living with dementia and their caregivers
A partnership with Lancaster NeuroDropin Center, and Lancashire NHS Data Controller.
Client: H2020 SCALABLE OBLIVIOUS DATA ANALYTICS (SODA) that is researching and developing data sharing technologies using Multi-Party Computing Technics (MPC).
Leads: Malé Luján Escalante and Monika Buscher
Mutli-party computing (MPC) has the potential to offer ‘real time’ use of data and ‘live’ data comparison without sharing data, instead making data available for encrypted processing. To support MPC innovation, it is critical to understand perceptions and practices of data generation, sharing and processing and to support people in understanding its potential and risks.
Data transactions, far from neutral, are subjected to gender, class, race, personal history and contextual politics. Data subjects may or may not understand when and how they are providing data, what data sharing implies or even what data is. At the same time, data subjects have ideas, feelings and imaginaries, as well as diverse interests and concerns about data. At these intersections, a range of frictions arise.
SODA Project uses Ethics through Design to explore the spaces and knowledges emerging from using and designing medical data together with people living with dementia, caregivers, medical professionals and stakeholders, in the wider ecology of the social and material worlds of practicing wellbeing.
The project focuses on perceptions of what data is and practices of making (sense of) data, fears and perceived benefits of data sharing technologies, specifically MPC systems.
You can read all about SODA Project and Ethics through Design in this paper Ethics through Design
National Highways (UK), Department of Sociology, Lancaster University (UK), Department of Computer Science, Cranfield University (UK)
Lead by: Luke Robert Moffat
This work was done as part of the Security Node of UKRI funded project Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS-S), leading a research strand on the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of Autonomous and/or Intelligent Systems. It positions ethics as a speculative, contextual, and reiterative process requiring collaboration and an embrace of uncertainty. It aims to facilitate a transition from ethical values to ethical conduct. In collaboration with Computer Scientists, Engineers, Sociologists, and Psychologists, we designed creative methods for engagement with ethics beyond academia across 3 types: creative workshops, external stakeholder consultations, and public engagement.
TAS-S partnered with National Highways, the biggest road authority in the UK, facilitating the co-creation of an ethical impact assessment toolkit, which provides resources and guidance for anticipatory ethics, responsive to the rapidly changing landscape of UK road infrastructures.
For more on TAS
For more on TAS Security
Moffat, L., Guo, W., Tang, Y., May-Chahal, C., and Deville, J., ‘Encoding Social & Ethical Values in Autonomous Navigation: Philosophies Behind an Interactive Online Demonstration’ ACM Proceedings of TAS24 available here
Moffat, L. ‘Relational Approaches to Autonomous Systems Ethics’, Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Trustworthy Autonomous Systems pp. 22-28 available here
Abeywickrama, D.B., Bennaceur, A., Chance, G., Demiris, Y., Kordoni, A., Levine, M., Moffat, L., Moreau, L., Mousavi, M.R., Nuseibeh, B. and Ramamoorthy, S. ‘On Specifying for Trustworthiness’. arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.11421. available here
Lead: Malé Luján Escalante
We were commissioned by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), to deliver participatory EDI impact assessment, mentoring and capacity building to support early career researchers with their applications for NERC grant applications.
We oversaw a series of 6 projects over 3 rounds of applications. We used the IsITethical? Framework and the Radical Emancipatory Values to support proactive and circumspect reflection of participants that were creating and scoping project proposals. Workshops and mentorship supported participants to undertake applicable and actionable measures to propose projects that were more inclusive of researchers, participants, and ways of knowing.
Projects included were from broad and multidisciplinary perspectives and with outcomes directed to different audiences.
Procuring Innovation to enable a pan-European broadband mobile system for PPDR
Lead by: Monika Buscher, Male Lujan Escalante, Luke Robert Moffat
Public Safety Communications Europe (Brussels, Belgium), Leonardo (Italy), Vodafone (Portugal), Lancaster University. For a full list of stakeholders see here
BroadWay comprised a consortium of tech developers, academics, and emergency response practitioners, to lead a formative practitioner evaluation of a new 5G broadband network for emergency response across Europe.
IsITethical?Exchange designed processes and spaces to connect developers with emergency responders (fire brigade, police force, ambulance responders, coast guards, public health practitioners and so on) who may use their 5G technology. Together we developed smart criteria and KPIs, that will be used by Broadway to test all the tenders. We also worked closely with the practitioner evaluation team of the other consortia
The work focused on facilitating circumspect reflection and knowledge exchange processes in which practitioners articulate features that are really essential for them, and developers could articulate their design in terms of the human and policy related constraints of usability.
This work started during the constraints of covid, and it is the first time we designed this kind of work remotely, so part of the challenge was how to develop collaborative tools and activities for this setting. We sent materials by post, and designed 3 playful activities that allowed participants rehearse dialogues.
See more about BroadWay here
Publications
Luján Escalante, M. A., Moffat, L., & Büscher, M. (2022). Ethics through design DRS2022 available here
Exploring ELSI of IT through a tabletop game
Lead by: Malé Luján Escalante
This board game explores Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) of Information Technologies (IT) for the Disaster and Risk Management (DRM) domain. The game aims to support circumspect discussions of issues emerging at cross-border, cross-sector, interoperation and data management such as privacy, trust, accountability, non-discrimination, and security.
IsITethical? board game is both a tool and a process of collaboratively building worlds in which ELSI guidance can be discussed, developed further and applied in preferable near futures.
The original idea emerged from the research deliverables of the ELSI work package of SecInCoRe (2014–17), a large-scale EU funded research project concerned with IT for DRM Common Information Spaces (CIS). SecInCoRe’s first prototype of the game was further developed and tested in the context of IsITethical?Exchange (2017–2019), a UK Research Innovation funded service co-design project, that explores the idea of ethical impact assessment as a creative collaborative process.
This project began as a way to make ELSI guidance accessible, but ultimately opened the way for a much bigger journey, including an online community of practitioners, a living knowledge base, a travelling tool kit for ethical impact assessment service, a methodology to do ethics, and the developing of Ethics through Design framework, that both reformulates ideas of Ethics and ideas of Design Research using play.
Publications
Escalante, M. A. L., Büscher, M., Petersen, K., Kerasidou, X., Gradinar, A., & Alter, H. (2019, September). IsITethical? board game: Playing with speculative ethics of IT innovation in disaster and risk management. In Proceedings of the IX Latin American Conference on Human Computer Interaction (pp. 1-8) available here
Responsible Research Innovation for AI assistants teaching English as a foreign language for teenagers
Lead By: Malé Luján Escalante and
University of Tübingen: Hector Institüt for Educational Research (Tübingen, Germany)
isITethical? partnered with AISLA in Spring 2022 for an ethical consultancy. We held focus groups with teenaged A level students in the UK, which fed into the design and delivery of a series of creative workshops. Over two days in Tubingen, AISLA and isITethical? team members explored, mapped out and reflected on some of the wider social and ethical issues associated with AI in education contexts. The team co-created an ELSI manifesto, developed through creative participatory methods, to incorporate an increased ethical awareness and preparedness when designing AI tools.
