Abstract
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a promising technology for addressing the challenges of urbanisation, however ethical ramifications of introducing such pervasive technology have not been duly considered. It is assumed that smart devices are exempt from moral, religious or legal responsibilities with regard to their surroundings. Such a perspective on device functioning may lead to situations where essential human values are put at risk. We suggest that social parameters be also included within the realm of machine functioning. In this work, we propose a neuro fuzzy system (NFS) that is able to implement ethics relevant to the context of a device and also fine tune them. Initially ethical requirements are specified in terms of fuzzy ethics rules and appropriate ethical response is learned subsequently. The method enables us to address the vital question of ethical compliance of smart things so that ethical rights of people are not infringed upon. By such incorporation, we ensure that machines respect core human values paving way for human friendly technology ecosystems like ethical smart city.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abraham A (2005) Adaptation of fuzzy inference system using neural learning. Fuzzy Syst Eng 83:53–83. https://doi.org/10.1007/b102051
Allen C, Smit I, Wallach W (2005) Artificial morality: top-down, bottom-up, and hybrid approaches. Ethics Inf Technol 7(3):149–155. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-006-0004-4
Altrock CV (2001) Fuzzy logic and NeuroFuzzy technologies in appliances. Ingenieria Udea. https://ingenieria.udea.edu.co/investigacion/fuzzycon/FuzzyLogic/FuzzyLogicinAppliances.pdf. Accessed 23 Oct 2018
Anderson M, Anderson SL (2011) Machine ethics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Anderson M, Anderson SL, Armen C (2004) Towards machine ethics. In: Proceedings of the AAAI 2005 fall symposium on machine ethics
Anderson M, Anderson SL, Armen C (2006) MedEthEx : a prototype medical ethics advisor. In: Proceedings of the 18th conference on innovative applications of artificial intelligence, vol 2, 1759–1765
Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030: Stanford University (2016) https://ai100.stanford.edu/. Accessed 23 Oct 2018
Asilomar AI Principles (2017) Future of Life Institute. https://futureoflife.org/ai-principles/. Accessed 23 Oct 2018
Asimov I (1950) I, Robot. Gnome Press, New York
Baldini G, Botterman M, Neisse R, Tallacchini M (2016) Ethical design in the internet of things. Sci Eng Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-016-9754-5
BBC (2017) German parents told to destroy Cayla dolls over hacking fears. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39002142. Accessed 23 Oct 2018
Bostrom N, Yudkowsky E (2014) The ethics of artificial intelligence. The cambridge handbook of artificial intelligence. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Bringsjord S, Arkoudas K, Bello P (2006) Toward a general logicist methodology for engineering ethically correct robots. IEEE Intell Syst 21(4):38–44. https://doi.org/10.1109/MIS.2006.82
Brown I, Crump J, Boos D, Dutton W, Kinder K, Kortuem G, Rice S, Spiekermann S, Marshall R (2013) The societal impact of the internet of things. Bcs, 14. https://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/societal-impact-report-feb13.pdf. Accessed 23 Oct 2018
Cervantes JA, Rodríguez LF, López S, Ramos F (2013) A biologically inspired computational model of moral decision making for autonomous agents. In: Proceedings of the 12th IEEE international conference on cognitive informatics and cognitive computing, ICCI*CC 2013, pp 111–117. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCI-CC.2013.6622232
Chai Y, Jia L, Zhang Z (2009) Mamdani model based adaptive neural fuzzy inference system and its application. Int J Comput Intell 5(1):22–29. https://doi.org/10.1109/FSKD.2009.76
Chatila R, Firth-Butterfield K, Karachalios JCHK (2017) IEEE global initiative aims to advance ethical design of AI and autonomous systems. In: IEEE Spectrum. https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/ieee-global-initiative-ethical-design-ai-and-autonomous-systems. Accessed 23 Oct 2018
Clarke R (1994) Asimov’s laws of robotics: implications for information technology. Computer 27(1):57–66. https://doi.org/10.1109/2.248881
Danielson P (1992) Artificial morality: virtuous robots for virtual games. Routledge, London
Dehghani M, Forbus K, Tomai E, Klenk M (2008). An integrated reasoning approach to moral decision making. In: AAAI conference on artificial intelligence
Dennis LA, Slavkovik M (2018) Machines that know right and cannot do wrong: the theory and practice of machine ethics. IEEE Intell Inform Bull 19(1):8–11
Dignum V (2018) Ethics in artificial intelligence: introduction to the special issue. Ethics Inf Technol 20(1):1–3
Dougherty M (2012) Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue part 1: Alan turing, hypercomputation, Adam Smith and next generation intelligent systems. J Intell Syst. https://doi.org/10.1515/jisys-2012-0017
Dougherty M (2013) Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue part 2: from Frankenstein to Battlefield drones; A perspective on machine ethics. J Intell Syst. https://doi.org/10.1515/jisys-2013-001
Forster K (2016) More than 30 men “rape teenage girl in Rio” and post video on Twitter. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/rio-olympics-rape-girl-video-twitter-twitter-video-uploaded-a7052106.html. Accessed 23 Oct 2018
Granjal J, Monteiro E, Sa Silva J (2015) Security for the internet of things: a survey of existing protocols and open research issues. IEEE Commun Surv Tutorials 17(3):1294–1312. https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2015.2388550
Guarini M (2013) Introduction: machine ethics and the ethics of building intelligent machines. Topoi 32(2):213–215. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-013-9183-x
Havens J (2016) Heartificial intelligence: embracing our humanity to maximize machines. TarcherPerigee, New York
Hawking S (2015) Stephen Hawking says we should really be scared of capitalism, not robots. Huffington Post. https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/stephen-hawking-capitalism-robots_us_5616c20ce4b0dbb8000d9f15. Accessed 23 Oct 2018
Honarvar AR, Ghasem-Aghaee N (2010) Towards an ethical sales-agent in E-commerce. In: IC4E 2010–2010 international conference on e-education, e-business, e-management and e-learning, pp 230–233. https://doi.org/10.1109/IC4E.2010.136
Jasanoff S (2016) The ethics of invention: technology and the human future. WW Norton & Company, New York
Kim JY (2016) Speech by World Bank President Jim Yong Kim: the World Bank Group’s mission: to end extreme poverty. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2016/10/03/speech-by-world-bank-president-jim-yong-kim-the-world-bank-groups-mission-to-end-extreme-poverty. Accessed 23 Oct 2018
Lin P, Abney K, Bekey GA (2011) Robot ethics: the ethical and social implications of robotics. MIT Press, Cambridge
Manyika J, Chui M, Bughin J, Dobbs R, Bisson P, Marrs A (2013) Disruptive technologies: advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy. McKinsey Global Insitute, May, 163. https://www.mckinsey.com/insights/business_technology/disruptive_technologies%5Cn, https://www.chrysalixevc.com/pdfs/mckinsey_may2013.pdf. Accessed 23 Oct 2018
McLaren BM (2006) Computational models of ethical reasoning: challenges, initial steps, and future directions. IEEE Intell Syst 21(4):29–37. https://doi.org/10.1109/MIS.2006.67
Meijer A, Bolivar MPR (2015) Governing the smart city: a review of the literature on smart urban governance. Int Rev Adm Sci 82(2):392–408. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852314564308
Michael MG, Michael K, Perakslis C (2014) Uberveillance and the internet of things and people. In: Proceedings of 2014 international conference on contemporary computing and informatics, IC3I 2014, pp 1381–1386. https://doi.org/10.1109/IC3I.2014.7019829
Moor JH (2006) The nature, importance, and difficulty of machine ethics. IEEE Intell Syst 21(4):18–21. https://doi.org/10.1109/MIS.2006.80
Mulligan CEA, Olsson M (2013) Architectural implications of smart city business models: an evolutionary perspective. IEEE Commun Mag 51(6):80–85. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.2013.6525599
O’Neil C (2016) Weapons of math destruction: how big data increases inequality and threatens democracy. Crown Publishing Group, New York
Picard RW (2000) Affective computing. MIT Press, New York
Ridley-siegert T (2015) Data privacy: What the consumer really thinks. J Direct Data Digital Mark Pract 17(1):30–35. https://doi.org/10.1057/dddmp.2015.40
Shelley M (1818) Frankenstein, or the modern prometheus. Lackington, Hughes, Harding Mavor & Jones, Lodon
Sholla S, Mir RN, Chishti MA (2017) Ethics aware object oriented smart city architecture. China Commun 14(5):160–173
Sholla S, Mir RN, Chishti MA (2018) Eventuality of an apartheid state of things: an ethical perspective on the internet of things. Int J Technoethics 9(2):62–76
Siler C (2015) Review of Anderson and Anderson’s machine ethics. Artificial intelligence, vol 229. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 200–201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artint.2015.08.013
Tonkens R (2009) A challenge for machine ethics. Mind Mach. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-009-9159-1
Wallach W, Allen C (2009) Moral machines: teaching robots right from wrong. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Wallach W, Franklin S, Allen C (2010) A conceptual and computational model of moral decision making in human and artificial agents. Top Cognit Sci 2(3):454–485. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-8765.2010.01095.x
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sholla, S., Mir, R.N. & Chishti, M.A. A neuro fuzzy system for incorporating ethics in the internet of things. J Ambient Intell Human Comput 12, 1487–1501 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-020-02217-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-020-02217-2