[AISWorld] cfp: Symposium on a Framework for Responsible Research and Innovation in Artificial Intelligence

Fri Nov 18 05:00:02 EST 2011

[apologies for multiple postings]

Symposium on a Framework for Responsible Research and Innovation in
Artificial Intelligence
Call for Papers

In recognition of the Turing Centenary, the society for the study of
Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) will be
holding a joint meeting with the International Association of Computing and
Philosophy (IACAP): 2-6 July 2012 in Birmingham, UK. 
http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb12/
  organized by

*** Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of
Behaviour (AISB) http://www.aisb.org.uk/ 
*** International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP)
http://www.ia-cap.org/ 

As part of this event, the UK EPSRC funded project on a Framework for
Responsible Research and Innovation in ICT will host a symposium targeted at
issues of responsibility specific to AI. This symposium is foreseen to take
place on Wednesday 04 and Thursday 05 July 2012. For an updated version of
the call for papers please check:
www.responsible-innovation.org.uk 

Background
Despite the plethora of ethical issues related to or arising from artificial
intelligence, there is little guidance on what it would mean to undertake
research in the area in a responsible way. Ethical issues that are currently
being discussed include whether and under what conditions artificial agents
are capable of being moral subjects, which rights or obligations they have
or should have or how moral codes and ethical theories will have to change
in the light of potentially autonomous artificial intelligence, to name but
a few. In the light of these highly interesting and very complex questions,
researchers interested in ethics and AI have tended to pay much less
attention to the types of responsibility issues research on AI may raise and
how they can be addressed. 
Important questions that need to be answered are: how ethical issues can be
identified in the first place, who is responsible for addressing them, to
whom they are responsible, what the consequences are of such responsibility
and which roles the different stakeholders play in the ensuing network of
responsibility. In addition, it is unclear to what degree recent attempts to
promote responsible research and innovation in other disciplines (Kjolberg &
Strand, 2011; Owen & Goldberg, 2010) are pertinent to ICT and AI. Similarly,
it remains unclear whether generic attempts to provide guidance on ethics in
ICT (Harris, Jennings, Pullinger, Rogerson, & Duquenoy, 2011; Wright, 2011)
are appropriate for the types of problems to be discussed in AI. The
principles of robotics published by the EPSRC[1] include guidance for
designers, builders and users of robots. It is currently not clear how these
principles have been applied in practice and in what way they can facilitate
a responsible approach to AI.
The proposed symposium will draw on work undertaken in two important
research projects. The first is the European FP7 research project ETICA
(Ethical Issues of Emerging ICT Applications, www.etica-project.eu), which
has identified particular ethical issues that can be expected to arise from
AI in the medium-term future. The second is the UK EPSRC project on a
“Framework of Responsible Research and Innovation in ICT” which aims to
provide a community-owned account of responsibility within the ICT area. AI
presents core research questions for both of these projects which motivates
the proposal for this workshop specifically on responsible innovation in AI.

A key incentive of this symposium is to foster discourse between
philosophers & social scientists who are interested in computer ethics and
AI researchers & practitioners who are fluent in the processes and practices
of AI. Providing governance arrangements that give suitable attention to the
ethics of AI will require an equal and overarching understanding of both of
these aspects.
The symposium will therefore aim to specifically attract case studies and
comparable accounts of ethical issues of AI. It will solicit contributions
on the identification of such issues, their resolution, their context and
the way in which such experiences are of broader interest. It is envisaged
that the symposium will be highly interactive to allow space for the
discovery of so far underdeveloped areas in need of research aimed at
understanding ethical issues in AI.
A further outcome of the symposium will be the development of case studies
to be shared among the community. The EPSRC project has set itself the task
of developing an Observatory for Responsible Research and Innovation in ICT
which will be a community-owned resource fostering increased understanding
and discussion of pertinent issues. The project has a significant budget to
be allocated to AI researchers interested in carrying out case studies that
focus on ethical issues encountered in the design and development of such
systems. The proposed symposium will contribute to identifying interested AI
researchers who may want to participate in carrying out case studies. 

Keynote Speakers
Plenary speakers are likely to include: (a final and confirmed list will be
available on http://events.cs.bham.ac.uk/turing12/invited.php): 
• Monday:     Colin Allen
• Tuesday:    Stephen Wolfram
• Wednesday:  Luciano Floridi
• Thursday:   (to be determined)
• Friday:     Aaron Sloman

Possible topics
Submissions will be invited on topics such as:
• Responsibilities of the individual researcher / developer in AI
• Collective responsibility in AI; how is it defined and enforced?
• Unforeseen consequences and side effects in AI: how can they be addressed?
• Limitations of responsibility in AI
• Responsibility, liability and accountability: is the legal framework for
AI sufficient?
• Responsibility and relativism: how can responsibilities be defined in a
context of cultural and disciplinary pluralism?

Submissions / Timeline 
Submission of extended abstracts (up to 1500 words) will be invited. 
Submissions should be sent by email to bstahl at dmu.ac.uk
• submissions should be in by 1 February 2012
• acceptance/rejection decisions will be made by 1 March 2012
• final versions of abstracts, papers, etc. (as appropriate for your
symposium), for inclusion in proceedings, delivered by authors to the
symposium chairs by 30 March 2012.

Symposium chairs
• Marina Jirotka, University of Oxford, e-Research Centre
• Bernd Carsten Stahl, De Montfort University, Centre for Computing and
Social Responsibility 
• Grace Eden, University of Oxford, e-Research Centre
Programme Committee (to be confirmed)
• Philippe Goujon, University of Namur
• Don Gotterbarn, East Tennessee State University
• Terry Bynum, Southern Connecticut State University
• Veikko Ikonen, VTT, Finland
• Michael Nagenborg, University of Tübingen, Germany 
• Mathias Gutmann, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany

Related Activities
Authors interested in the ethics of doing AI research are encouraged to
check the conference website for two other symposia as possible venues for
submitting their research: (1) Moral Cognition and Theory of Mind, and (2)
The Machine Question: AI, Ethics, and Moral Responsibility.  
Additional Information 
The Congress serves both as the year's AISB Convention and the year's IACAP
conference.  The Congress has been inspired by a desire to honour Alan
Turing, and by the broad and deep significance of Turing's work to AI, to
the philosophical ramifications of computing, and to philosophy and
computing more generally. The Congress is one of the events forming the Alan
Turing Year (http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/turing2012/).
The intent of the Congress is to stimulate a particularly rich interchange
between AI and Philosophy on any areas of mutual interest, whether directly
addressing Turing's own research output or not.
The Congress will consist mainly of a number of collocated Symposia on
specific research areas, interspersed with Congress-wide refreshment breaks,
social events and invited Plenary Talks. All papers other than the invited
Plenaries will be given within Symposia.

References
Harris, I., Jennings, R. C., Pullinger, D., Rogerson, S., & Duquenoy, P.
(2011). Ethical assessment of new technologies: a meta-methodology. Journal
of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 9(1), 49-64.
doi:10.1108/14779961111123223
Kjolberg, K. L., & Strand, R. (2011). Conversations About Responsible
Nanoresearch. NanoEthics, 1–15.
Owen, R., & Goldberg, N. (2010). Responsible Innovation: A Pilot Study with
the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Risk Analysis:
An International Journal, 30(11), 1699-1707.
doi:10.1111/j.1539-6924.2010.01517.x
Wright, D. (2011). A framework for the ethical impact assessmentof
information technology. Ethics and Information Technology, 14(online first).
Retrieved from
http://www.springerlink.com/content/1388-1957/preprint/?sort=p_OnlineDate&so
rtorder=desc&o=10

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