Moral, social, legal ethical issues Flashcards
what is automated decision making
computers making decisions and taking actions based on sets of pre defined rules and parameters without any human involvement - eg the modern stock market, real time prices of hotel rooms, vineyards temperature
what is artificial intelligence
the computer science discipline of writing software and algorithms which appear to behave as if they were intelligent
early examples of AI
- chess on computers
implications of AI
- what will happen if a computer intelligence was so strong that it exhibited a consciousness
- should that consciousness be granted rights?
- would it be right to terminate a program which had this consciousness
- who would be responsible for the actions of a fully aware program
issues with computer use
computer waste - as of 2015, its estimated that over 350,000 computing devices are disposed of in US and Europe alone every day, only 15-20% recycled, the rest go to landfill which is bad for environment
- large amounts of waste are often shipped to countries which have low environmental standards, which may leak chemicals into the soil and groundwater, bad as children in these countries often search waste sites in order to extract metal which can be recycled and sold on
what is censorship
any act which results in the deliberate suppression of material, either in the form of what can be published or what can be accessed
how do teachers/employers restrict ppl from going onto sites they shouldnt be
by using filtering software
schools and censorship
schools have a moral and legal obligation to block access to inappropriate material, in order to safeguard students as part of their duty of care
Why is it controversial for schools to block YouTube?
Because, although they are blocking YouTube of the grounds of being educationally distracting, there is a huge amount of educational material that both students and teachers can take advantage of
technology to track and monitor behaviour (3 categories)
1) deliberately chosen by user - eg sports watches that monitor heart rate (least controversial as its users choice)
2) passive monitoring - like CCTV cams, some argue CCTV is worth it, especially as it has reduced crime, but some may argue that it has gone to far, where does surveillance in order to protect turn into invasion of privacy
3) forced tracking - ranges from tagging devices on criminals to internal monitoring systems being used by organisations to log online activity of their employees
- many ppl would agree that an employer has to right to inspect and monitor the work rate and productivity of their workers, but is it right to monitor their employees posts during their lunch breaks?
examples of the data collected on individuals
- social media interactions
- online chats
- gaming patterns
- travel plans
- internet shopping histories
- shopping habits
what happens to data which is collected
- it is stored, shared and is accessible by businesses
what is data mining
- a process businesses use to look for trends and patterns in user activity (simple def)
- a fully automated process which looks at large sets of data and try’s to identify patterns in order to predict something
what is personal data
data which relates to a living individual who can be identified from that data
measures to implement which would comply with the Data protection act
- password protect files
- force strong passwords
- run anti spyware software
- backup regularly
- do not allow unencrypted to be stored on portable media
- ensure data can be restored from backups
- staff training to make them data aware
- only allow authorised software to be used on the system
