IEEE Technology and Society Magazine is a rare place where social and technological concerns come together in a way that respects both the technological details as well as the critical, social areas that influence technological invention and adoption.
Category: Editorial & Opinion
Human Centricity in the Relationship Between Explainability and Trust in AI
By Peter Lewis on March 20th, 2024 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
The term “explainability” is a multifaceted concept within the realm of computer science. In essence, it encompasses various aspects and capacities of a system to effectively convey its internal processes, decision-making, capabilities, and constraints to its users. Providing explanations can notably enhance initial trust, especially when trust is measured as a multidimensional concept that includes aspects such as competence, benevolence, integrity, intention to return, and perceived transparency.
Gender Equality in Engineering: An Institutional Reflection
By Jeremy Pitt on February 28th, 2024 in Articles, Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
We identified five key issues to prioritize when addressing gender equality: Reaching critical mass; Improving lived and living experience (maintaining critical mass); Selection and resource-allocation criteria; The misconception of merit in academia; Beyond gender equality.
Potential Impact of Data-Centric AI on Society
By Sumit Datta on December 18th, 2023 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
DCAI has the potential to revolutionize many industries and fields by enabling more efficient and effective decision-making based on insights extracted from data. Monitoring and evaluating the algorithm’s performance can help identify and mitigate biases over time, ensuring reliable and ethical results.
ChatSh*t and Other Conversations (That We Should Be Having, But Mostly Are Not)
By Jeremy Pitt on November 3rd, 2023 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming people’s access to and attitudes toward knowledge. It is an extremely powerful technology, but this transformation presents numerous social, environmental, political, and educational considerations.
Securitization for Sustainability of People and Place
By Katina Michael on August 4th, 2023 in Articles, Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
The purpose of this special issue is to explore and address complex securitization-related challenges, from a broader perspective and across various dimensions and sectors, that transcend disciplinary boundaries, focusing on the role of technology relevant to the securitization of people and place, while also considering the transdisciplinarity and the socio-historical originals of securitization.
Futural Appropriation
By Jeremy Pitt on July 24th, 2023 in Articles, Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
Generation Z and Millennials face different types of insider threat, in three different dimensions of space: to resources, to citizenship, and to boundaries.
Toxic Technology
By Jeremy Pitt on March 16th, 2023 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Communication Technology, Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Health & Medical, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
Technology has always been about more than simply a route to increased productivity and economic growth; technology also provides the opportunity to enhance, enrich, and empower—basically, to improve shared qualitative values or people’s quality of life (however that is measured). On the flip side, technology also provides the opportunity to develop and project organizational control, which itself can be weaponized to quantitatively determine human value as an asset to that organization, or to reinforce asymmetric power relationships.
Learning From Indigenous Cultures
By Marc Steen on February 10th, 2023 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
We would act wisely if we turn to alternative ways of thinking, other wisdom traditions, and learn from them. Ubuntu philosophy can help to draw attention to social issues, for example, the horrors of colonialism, exclusion, and oppression, and to find ways to promote social justice. Aboriginal wisdom can help to apply diverse ways of knowing, for example, knowledge that is related to place, to kinship, to stories, to patterns—not only knowledge in books. The Indigenous cultures and wisdom of the Americas can teach us how to organize economic and political systems more sustainably and to develop more caring relationships with nature. And Confucian culture and wisdom can help to design and apply technologies in ways that support us as relational and developmental beings.
Contributive Justice and Self-Actualizing Systems
By Jeremy Pitt on January 9th, 2023 in Articles, Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
How can local (grassroots) contributive justice be used as a driving force for the common good?
Technological Stewardship and Responsible Innovation
By Heather Love on November 7th, 2022 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
The call for responsible innovation is a call to address and account for technology’s short- and long-term impacts within social, political, environmental, and cultural domains. Technological stewardship stands as a commitment to anticipate and mitigate technology’s potential for disruption and especially harm and to guide innovation toward beneficial ends. Dialogue and collaboration across diverse perspectives is essential for developing actionable technological solutions that attend in responsible ways to the evolving needs of society.
The Unbelievable Pointlessness of Impact
By Jeremy Pitt on October 23rd, 2022 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
All the deep philosophical questions, starts the joke, were asked by the classical Greeks, and everything since then has been footnotes and comments in the margins, finishes the punchline.
Against Modern Indentured Servitude (“I’m Spartacus”)
By Jeremy Pitt on July 12th, 2022 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
The term “modern indentured servitude” did not originate with this workshop, but we hope that this special issue has highlighted many of the different shapes and processes it can take, some more insidious than others. We would like to think that, if each paper could talk, they would get up one after the other and say, “No, I’m Spartacus.” In these dark times, each of us needs the courage to be Spartacus.
The Digital Transformation and Modern Indentured Servitude
By Jeremy Pitt on June 22nd, 2022 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Privacy & Security, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
It would be good if whenever a client connected to an http server, or indeed any app connected with a central server, the server responded with a corresponding acknowledgment of data, along the lines of “Before we begin our session this morning, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owner of the data which is being transferred, and respect rights to privacy, identity, location, attention and personhood.”
The New York Times Test: An Intersubjective Reconsideration
By Mahdi Kafaee on April 28th, 2022 in Articles, Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
When faced with an ethical problem such as a conflict of interest in which codes of ethics or available ethical problem-solving methods cannot help us decide upon the moral course of action to take. A method claimed to be helpful in such situations is The New York Times Test.
Preparing to Design Robots for Social Contexts
By Clint Andrews on April 22nd, 2022 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Robotics, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
Emerging social contexts add new requirements to the knowledge that successful roboticists need. Much of this additional knowledge comes from the social sciences and humanities.
The Currency of the Attentional Economy: The Uses and Abuses of Attention in Our World
By Jordan Schoenherr on March 31st, 2022 in Articles, Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
By failing to attend to the source, disinformation can be stored along with information, making it difficult to distinguish the good penny from the bad penny.
The Principles of Cyber–Anarcho–Socialism
By Jeremy Pitt on March 14th, 2022 in Articles, Editorial & Opinion, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
Functional democratic governance has five fundamental preconditions: civic dignity, confluent values, epistemic diversity, accessible education, and legitimate consent.
Ideas on Optimizing the Future Soft Law Governance of AI
By Gary Marchant on February 5th, 2022 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
This special issue published in cooperation with IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society (December 2021) is dedicated to examining the governance of artificial intelligence (AI) through soft law. These programs are characterized by the creation of substantive expectations that are not directly enforced by government.
Knowing the Unknowable: Soft Laws and Hard Decisions
By Jeremy Pitt on January 16th, 2022 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Case Studies, Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact
If it were possible to formulate laws involving vague predicates and adjudicate them, what would be the implications of such minimalist formulations for soft laws and even for “hard” laws? The possible implications are threefold: 1) does possibility imply desirability; 2) does possibility imply infallibility; and 3) does possibility imply accountability? The answer advanced here, to all three questions, is “no.”