The Joint International Conference on Logic Programming, sponsored by the Association for Logic Programming, is a major forum for presentations of research, applications, and implementations in this important area of computer science. Logic programming is one of the most promising steps toward declarative programming and forms the theoretical basis of the programming language Prolog and its various extensions. Logic programming is also fundamental to work in artificial intelligence, where it has been used for nonmonotonic and commonsense reasoning, expert systems implementation, (...) deductive databases, and applications such as computer-aided manufacturing. Krzysztof R. Apt is project leader at the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam and part-time Professor in Computer Science at the University of Amsterdam. Topics covered: Theory Foundations. Programming Languages. Implementation. Programming Methodologies and Tools. Applications. Deductive Databases. Artificial Intelligence. Parallelism. (shrink)

This groundbreaking proceedings volume explores the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) across key domains—healthcare, finance, education, robotics, industrial and other engineering applications —unveiling its transformative potential and practical implications. With a multidisciplinary lens, it transcends technical aspects, fostering a comprehensive understanding while bridging theory and practice. Approaching the subject matter with depth, the book combines theoretical foundations with real-world case studies, empowering researchers, professionals, and enthusiasts with the knowledge and tools to effectively harness AI. Encompassing diverse AI topics—machine learning, (...) natural language processing, computer vision, data analytics and supervisory control — the volume showcases state-of-the-art techniques propelling AI advancements. Structured into four parts: Part 1: Artificial Intelligence (AI), explores evolving deep neural networks, reinforcement learning, and explainable AI, providing a deep dive into the technical foundations of AI advancements. Part 2: Robotics and Control Systems, delves into the integration of AI in robotics and automatic control, addressing supervisory control, automated robotic movement coordination, anomaly detection, dynamic programming, and fault tolerance, offering insights into the evolving landscape of intelligent automation. Part 3: AI and Society, examines the societal impact of AI through chapters on ethical considerations, economic growth, environmental engagements, and hazard management, providing a holistic perspective on AI's role in shaping society. Part 4: PhD Symposium, presents the future of AI through cutting-edge research, covering legal and ethical dimensions, privacy considerations, and computationally efficient solutions, offering a glimpse into the next generation of AI advancements. Catering to a diverse audience—from industry leaders to students—the volume consolidates the expertise of renowned professionals, serving as a comprehensive resource for navigating the ever-evolving AI landscape. An essential reference for those staying at the forefront of AI developments. (shrink)

Bio-ontologies are essential tools for accessing and analyzing the rapidly growing pool of plant genomic and phenomic data. Ontologies provide structured vocabularies to support consistent aggregation of data and a semantic framework for automated analyses and reasoning. They are a key component of the Semantic Web. This paper provides background on what bio-ontologies are, why they are relevant to botany, and the principles of ontology development. It includes an overview of ontologies and related resources that are relevant to plant (...) science, with a detailed description of the Plant Ontology (PO). We discuss the challenges of building an ontology that covers all green plants (Viridiplantae). Key results: Ontologies can advance plant science in four keys areas: 1. comparative genetics, genomics, phenomics, and development, 2. taxonomy and systematics, 3. semantic applications and 4. education. Conclusions: Bio-ontologies offer a flexible framework for comparative plant biology, based on common botanical understanding. As genomic and phenomic data become available for more species, we anticipate that the annotation of data with ontology terms will become less centralized, while at the same time, the need for cross-species queries will become more common, causing more researchers in plant science to turn to ontologies. (shrink)

Philosophers have usually offered a number of ways of describing hypotheses generation, but all aim at demonstrating that the activity of generating hypotheses is paradoxical, illusory or obscure, and then not analysable. Those descriptions are often so far from Peircian pragmatic prescription and so abstract to result completely unknowable and obscure. The “computational turn” gives us a new way to understand creative processes in a strictly pragmatic sense. In fact, by exploiting artificial intelligence and cognitive science tools, computational philosophy (...) allows us to test concepts and ideas previously conceived only in abstract terms. It is in the perspective of these actual computational models that I find the central role of abduction in the explanation of creative reasoning in science. Creativity and discovery are no more seen as a mysterious irrational process, but, thanks to constructive accounts, as a complex relationship among different inferential steps that can be clearly analysed and identified. I maintain that the computational philosophy analysis of model-based and manipulative abduction and of external and epistemic mediators is important not only to delineate the actual practice of abduction, but also to further enhance the development of programs computationally adequate in rediscovering, or discovering for the first time, for example, scientific hypotheses or mathematical theorems. (shrink)

This book gathers the latest advances in the field of history of science and technology, as presented by leading international researchers at the 8th International Symposium on History of Machines and Mechanisms (HMM), held in Ankara, Turkey on April 18-20, 2024. The Symposium, which was promoted by the permanent commission for the History of Machine and Mechanism Science (MMS) of IFToMM, provided an international forum to present and discuss historical developments in the field of MMS. The contents cover (...) all aspects of the development of MMS from antiquity until the present era and its historiography: modern reviews of past works, engineers in history and their works, the development of theories, history of the design of machines and mechanisms, historical developments of mechanical design and automation, historical developments of teaching, the history of schools of engineering, the education of engineers. The contributions, which were selected by means of a rigorous international peer-review process, highlight numerous exciting ideas that will spur novel research directions and foster multidisciplinary collaborations. (shrink)

The Sleeping Beauty transposon system is a nonviral DNA transfer tool capable of efficiently mediating transposition‐based, stable integration of DNA sequences of choice into eukaryotic genomes. Continuous refinements of the system, including the emergence of hyperactive transposase mutants and novel approaches in vectorology, greatly improve upon transposition efficiency rivaling viral‐vector‐based methods for stable gene insertion. Current developments, such as reversible transgenesis and proof‐of‐concept RNA‐guided transposition, further expand on possible applications in the future. In addition, innate advantages such as lack of (...) preferential integration into genes reduce insertional mutagenesis‐related safety concerns while comparably low manufacturing costs enable widespread implementation. Accordingly, the system is recognized as a powerful and versatile tool for genetic engineering and is playing a central role in an ever‐expanding number of gene and cell therapy clinical trials with the potential to become a key technology to meet the growing demand for advanced therapy medicinal products. (shrink)

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. This concise and engaging Advanced Introduction provides the conceptual tools necessary to make ethical decisions in today's business world. John Hooker provides an objective and closely-reasoned analysis of ethical issues (...) based on a unified conceptual framework that distils the best of ethical thought into three clearly articulated principles: the generalization, utilitarian, and autonomy principles. Key features include: examples and case studies that illustrate ethical reasoning in complex business dilemmas exploration of business ethics in relation to environmental, social, and financial sustainability factors coverage of cross-cultural business ethics, technological unemployment, and the ethics of artificial intelligence and machine learning. This Advanced Introduction will be a valuable resource for academics and advanced students of business ethics and trust, business leadership, and corporate social responsibility. It will also be beneficial for business managers who wish to build an ethical organization, as well as technical personnel who incorporate ethics into automated systems. (shrink)

The article focuses on exploring the directions for implementing innovative analytical-statistical technologies as a tool for monitoring and detecting corruption in the state. To achieve this goal, the author clarifies the content of key concepts, defines the essence of innovative analytical-statistical technologies, and analyzes the applications of these technologies as elements of the state’s anti-corruption policy. It is determined that modern analytical-statistical technologies are integral to information technologies, which have emerged as a separate branch of production known as the information (...) industry. Information technologies, including analytical-statistical ones, are realized through information systems, which combine technical tools (computers, communication devices and channels, peripherals, input/output devices, etc.) with software applications that facilitate the functioning of the technical components and analytical aspects, including the mathematical component (statistics). The use of analytical-statistical technologies as a tool to counter corruption at the state level is driven by the specificity of the corruption identification process. The application of relevant technologies is possible when perceiving corruption as a form of fraud. Therefore, the search for corruption in modern society requires a comprehensive approach, utilizing mathematical, analytical, and psychophysical research methods. This approach enables not only the identification but also the prediction of probable instances of abuse. Five directions for implementing innovative analytical-statistical technologies in anti-corruption activities are identified: 1) automation of data collection and processing; 2) automation of communication and office processes; 3) automation of direct management processes; 4) automation of decision-making processes and development; 5) development of expert systems. It is noted that analytical-statistical technologies find the most implementation in four of the identified directions: data collection/processing, direct management, decision support, and expert support. (shrink)

Constraint programming is the fruit of several decades of research carried out in mathematical logic, automated deduction, operations research and arti?cial intelligence. The tools and programming languages arising from this research?eldhaveenjoyedrealsuccessintheindustrialworldastheycontributetosolving hard combinatorial problems in diverse domains such as production planning, communication networks, robotics and bioinformatics. This volume contains the extended and reviewed versions of a selection of papers presented at the Joint ERCIM/CoLogNET International Workshop on Constraint Solving and Constraint Logic Programming, which was held from June 30 to (...) July 2, 2003. The venue chosen for the seventh edition of this annual workshop was the Computer and Automation Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, Hungary. This institute is one of the 20 members of the Working Group on Constraints of the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics. For many participants this workshop provided the?rst opportunity to visit their ERCIM partner in Budapest. CoLogNET is the European-funded network of excellence dedicated to s- porting and enhancing cooperation and research on all areas of computational logic, and continues the work done previously by the Compulog Net. In part- ular, the aim of the logic and constraint logic programming area of CoLogNET is to foster and support all research activities related to logic programming and constraint logic programming. The editors would like to take the opportunity and thank all the authors who submitted papers to this volume, as well as the reviewers for their helpful work. (shrink)

This paper views the impact of automation and new globalization phenomenon, outsourcing on sustainable economic growth. Its main scope is to analyze the impacts of advanced automation and offshore outsourcing in manufacturing on a human capital and an acceleration of structural unemployment. Simultaneously, in the paper are compared two concepts by which a company can tend to attain a position of manufacturing excellence. Further is given a special emphasis to the automation driven shrinking of (...) the middle class in countries that are passing to the phase of deindustrialization. Finally some laws of automation in manufacturing are formulated and few ideas and recommendations for the future are outlined. (shrink)

The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other digital technologies is touted as ushering in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR). 4IR, also known as ‘Industry 4.0,’ pertains to the burning internet connectivity, sophisticated analytics and production, and automation’s transformative impacts on the world. The surge of change in the production arena started in the second half of 2010 and has continued to increase astronomically, with a remarkable probability of shaping the future of manufacturing and humanity. The 4IR is (...) thus heralding areas such as digitalisation, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, robotics, and 3D technologies amidst many other innovative digital technologies following the first, second and third industrial revolutions. The problem this paper addresses is the role of Arts and humanities (A&H) in the era of AI. Should A&H imbibe the empirical science methodology to stay relevant? How does A&H contribute to 4IR? Leveraging on philosophical tools of arguments and reconstruction of ideas, this paper argues for the significance of Kant’s thoughts in The Contest of the Faculties and that Arts and humanities are instrumental to humanising science and technology, helping to shape interdisciplinary collaboration and fostering understanding of the ethical, social and cultural dimensions of AI. (shrink)

Automatic facial expression recognition has now advanced to the point that we are able to apply it to spontaneous expressions. The automated tools enable new research activity in cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, education, human–machine communication, and human social dynamics. Moreover, automated facial expression analysis enables investigations into facial expression dynamics that were previously intractable by human coding because of the time required to code intensity changes. This article provides an overview on the state of the art in computer vision (...) approaches to facial expression recognition, including methods for characterizing expression dynamics. It then discusses behavioral studies that have employed automatic facial expression recognition to learn new information about the relationships of facial expression to internal state, and reviews the first generation of applications in learning and education that take advantage of the real-time expression signal. (shrink)

This paper describes the Eunomos software, an advanced legal document and knowledge management system, based on legislative XML and ontologies. We describe the challenges of legal research in an increasingly complex, multi-level and multi-lingual world and how the Eunomos software helps users cut through the information overload to get the legal information they need in an organized and structured way and keep track of the state of the relevant law on any given topic. Using NLP tools to semi-automate (...) the lower-skill tasks makes this ambitious project a realistic commercial prospect as it helps keep costs down while at the same time allowing greater coverage. We describe the core system from workflow and technical perspectives, and discuss applications of the system for various user groups. (shrink)

PAMVEC is a novel vehicle modeling tool designed to complement the capabilities of dynamic vehicle simulators and be better-suited to the purposes of vehicle technology assessment. This paper presents a validation of PAMVEC against published data for a range of production and pre-production prototype vehicles whose powertrain technologies span the range currently being exhibited by automotive manufacturers. For each vehicle, the PAMVEC model was used to predict the fuel/energy consumption and required peak powertrain output due to acceleration performance. Errors typically.

The automobile is a tool like no other. There is much excitement and enthusiasm for new and emerging transportation tools such as vehicle automation and driver assistance systems. Although there are high hopes for these technologies, there are many unknowns including the extent to which these new transportation tools can realistically and reliably improve driver safety and affect the subjective driving experience. This paper explores these questions in the context of evaluating collision warning systems on the behavior (...) and perceptions of drivers with different amounts of experience and places the results in the greater context of tool use and skilled learning focusing on the adoption and utilization of mental models. (shrink)

Andrew Simester and Andreas von Hirsch’s Crimes, Harms, and Wrongs: On the Principles of Criminalisation (Simester and von Hirsch 2011) is an important contribution to the philosophical debate over the nature and ethical limits of criminalisation. As they note in their reply in this symposium, one of the novel aspects of their account is that they do not advance one “unified, grand theory”. Rather, they analyse each ground of criminal prohibition—wrongfulness, harm-based, offense, and paternalistic prohibitions aimed at preventing self-harm—so (...) as to develop guiding principles for their use (or, in the case of paternalism, the absence of an independent principle that would underwrite its use).The result is a rich set of arguments that advance a number of debates across the field of criminalisation.However, that is not all: the participants share the view that, as Tatjana Hörnle puts it, “any theory of criminalization presupposes assumptions about the functions of the criminal law. The q. (shrink)

Data access committees (DAC) gatekeep access to secured genomic and related health datasets yet are challenged to keep pace with the rising volume and complexity of data generation. Automated decision support (ADS) systems have been shown to support consistency, compliance, and coordination of data access review decisions. However, we lack understanding of how DAC members perceive the value add of ADS, if any, on the quality and effectiveness of their reviews. In this qualitative study, we report findings from 13 semi-structured (...) interviews with DAC members from around the world to identify relevant barriers and facilitators to implementing ADS for genomic data access management. Participants generally supported pilot studies that test ADS performance, for example in cataloging data types, verifying user credentials and tagging datasets for use terms. Concerns related to over-automation, lack of human oversight, low prioritization, and misalignment with institutional missions tempered enthusiasm for ADS among the DAC members we engaged. Tensions for change in institutional settings within which DACs operated was a powerful motivator for why DAC members considered the implementation of ADS into their access workflows, as well as perceptions of the relative advantage of ADS over the status quo. Future research is needed to build the evidence base around the comparative effectiveness and decisional outcomes of institutions that do/not use ADS into their workflows. (shrink)

Few accounts have survived detailing the techniques employed for the production of optical glass for astronomical and microscopical instruments during the seventeenth century in Italy; the period during which the art was being developed in the shops of Eustachio Divini and Giuseppe Campani, and other optical instrument-makers. Indeed, few of the tools of the lens-makers have been described in any detail, and few if any have survived. Consequently, the discovery of a hitherto apparently unknown Italian treatise, or (...) what appears to have been notes for a shop manual of the period, is a contribution to present knowledge of lens-making technology even though the identity and region of the author remain unknown. (shrink)

The information age can be dated to the work of Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. Their work on cybernetics and information theory, and many subsequent developments, had a profound influence on reshaping the field of psychology from what it was prior to the 1950s. Contemporaneously, advances also occurred in experimental design and inferential statistical testing stemming from the work of Ronald Fisher, Jerzy Neyman, and Egon Pearson. These interdisciplinary advances from outside of psychology provided the conceptual and (...) methodological tools for what is often called the cognitive revolution but is more accurately described as the information-processing revolution. Cybernetics set the stage with the idea that everything ranging from neurophysiological mechanisms to societal activities can be modeled as structured control systems with feedforward and feedback loops. Information theory offered a way to quantify entropy and information, and promoted theorizing in terms of information flow. Statistical theory provided means for making scientific inferences from the results of controlled experiments and for conceptualizing human decision making. With those three pillars, a cognitive psychology adapted to the information age evolved. The growth of technology in the information age has resulted in human lives being increasingly interweaved with the cyber environment, making cognitive psychology an essential part of interdisciplinary research on such interweaving. Continued engagement in interdisciplinary research at the forefront of technology development provides a chance for psychologists not only to refine their theories but also to play a major role in the advent of a new age of science. (shrink)

The literature of the past century produced an historical reconstruction of statics theory applied to mechanical structures coinciding–starting with Le Mecaniche (1634) and Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche sopra a due nuove scienze (1638) by Galileo Galilei (1564–1642). Based on previous research (RP) and our historical and historiographical line of research [37], in this paper we briefly analyse Buonaiuto Lorini (1540–1611) Le Fortificationi ([1596] 1609) as a bridge between the science of weights and early mechanical science, including the graphical scale and (...) machines. This is a fundamental and advanced military fortification–engineering treatise with an evident important relationship between theory & practice, including designs–projects of both fortresses and machines, understood as tools, to manufacture them. Lorini also presents an excursus on how fortifications developed according to the advent of new artillery/weapons, comprising the crucial passage from the use of square to circular towers up to the description of modern fortresses in all their details, e.g., bulwarks and cavaliers, curtains, orillons, star–shaped plans. Basing on Archimedes’ (fl. 287–212 BCE) techniques (law of the lever) and Guidobaldo del Monte's (1545–1607; Le Mecaniche (1577–1581) he successfully engaged in advanced mechanical considerations. His position (at the end of the first chapter) on the distinction between the mathematician (scientist) and the mechanician (architect–engineer or even machine expert) is historiographically very interesting within the difference between abstract Euclidean geometry and the application of its contents to imperfect and heterogeneous reality. The translations are ours. (shrink)

This volume contains invited and contributed papers delivered at a symposium on the occasion of Professor Glauber's 60th birthday. The papers, many of which are authored by world leaders in their fields, contain recent research work in quantum optics, statistical mechanics and high energy physics related to the pioneering work of Professor Roy Glauber; most contain original research material that is previously unpublished. The concepts of coherence, cooperativity and fluctuations in systems with many degrees of freedom are a common (...) base for all of Professor Glauber's research initiatives and, in fact, for much of contemporary physics. His role in shaping these cconcepts is reflected and honoured in the papers contained in this book. (shrink)

Over the last 40 years or so, economics has become a modelling science: a science in which models have become one of the main epistemological tools both for theoretical and applied work. But providing an account of how models work and what they do for the economist is not easy. For the philosopher of economics like me, struggling with this question, John Sutton's views on the nature and design of economic models and how they work is indeed thought provoking. (...) Because of my own interests, my review of Sutton's book: Marshall's Tendencies: What Can Economists Know? will focus on three related issues that I found especially intriguing in his treatment of the role of models in modern economics. The first is the way that Sutton's account fits with my own reading of the history of twentieth-century economics, namely that the focus of economic explanation has moved during the last century from and to and . The second is to understand the epistemological connotations of Sutton's view. The third is to explore what Sutton means when he says a model . These three questions roughly coincide with the material presented in Chapters 1, 3 and 2 respectively of the book. As we shall see, Sutton gives us a practitioner account of applied economics which can fit within the standard terms used by philosophers of economics on theory-testing, but which reveals a number of novel elements for philosophical analysis. (shrink)

Background: While advanced driver assistance technologies have the potential to increase safety, there is concern that driver inattention resulting from overreliance on these features may result in crashes. Driver monitoring technologies to assess a driver’s state may be one solution. The purpose of this study was to replicate and extend the research on physiological responses to common driving hazards and examine how these may differ based on driving experience.Methods: Learner and Licensed drivers viewed a Driving Hazard Perception Task while (...) electrodermal activity was measured. The task presented 30 Event and 30 Non-Event videos. A skin conductance response score was calculated for each participant based on the percentage of videos that elicited an SCR.Results: Analysis of the SCR score during Event videos revealed a medium effect of group differences, whereby Licensed drivers were more likely to have an SCR than Learner drivers. Interaction effects revealed Licensed drivers were more likely to have an SCR earlier in the Event videos compared to the end, and the Learner drivers were more likely to have an SCR earlier in the Non-Event videos compared to the end.Conclusion: Our results support the viability of using SCR during driving videos as a marker of hazard anticipation differing based on experience. The interaction effects may illustrate situational awareness in licensed drivers and deficiencies in sustained vigilance among learner drivers. The findings demand further examination if physiological measures are to be validated as a tool to inform driver potential performance in an increasingly automated driving environment. (shrink)

In this paper, I build on Wittgenstein’s metaphor of a toolbox to introduce the metaphor of ‘tool confusion’ – how differing conceptual constructs may be applied, or misapplied, to one another and the effect that such applications have on the advancement of management theory. Moving beyond metaphor, I investigate a theory of management through two specific philosophical lenses (Popper and Lyotard). This analysis tests both the theory and the philosophies with regard to how each philosophy may be applied as a (...) tool to advance theory towards more effective application. Preliminary conclusions confirm that the application of partial philosophies is not as useful as the application of complete philosophies. Deeper contemplation, however, suggests that there is no upper limit to the completeness of philosophies. Thus, the problem of completeness is inescapable. In place of completeness, I explore the use of perceptual tools that are more specific, foundational and concise. Engaging in a second investigation, I use structures of logic (circular, linear, branching and co-causal) to investigate the subject theory. This investigation suggests at least two important insights relating to the structure of theory and the fuzziness of theory. Combined, these investigations and related conversations suggest rigorous methods for advancing theories and a more normative role for the philosophy of management that will support the accelerated advancement of management theory and practice. (shrink)

What skills are required for working with computer-controlled machines in the manufacturing area? Taking the developments in the machine building sector in Germany as an example, it becomes apparent that a human-centred approach (skill-based manufacturing) offers the companies many advantages over Tayloristic forms of work organisation and automation. Closer observations reveal that skills and qualifications based on empirical knowledge and individual capabilities, such as a feeling for machines and materials, continue to play an important part in the (...) work with computer-controlled machines. So far, however, skills of this kind have received neither practical nor systematic consideration and are regarded as tacit skills in most cases. Therefore it is particularly the use of computer technology which is likely — in most cases unintentionally — to restrict and undermine the essential preconditions necessary for the development and application of such skills. (shrink)

The escalating number of pending cases is a growing concern worldwide. Recent advancements in digitization have opened up possibilities for leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the processing of legal documents. Adopting a structured representation for legal documents, as opposed to a mere bag-of-words flat text representation, can significantly enhance processing capabilities. With the aim of achieving this objective, we put forward a set of diverse attributes for criminal case proceedings. To enhance the effectiveness of automatically extracting these attributes (...) from legal documents within a sequence labeling framework, we propose the utilization of a few-shot learning approach based on Large Language Models (LLMs). Moreover, we demonstrate the efficacy of the extracted attributes in downstream tasks, such aslegal judgment prediction and legal statute prediction. (shrink)

Michelle Madden Dempsey’s Prosecuting Domestic Violence: A Philosophical Analysis (2009) is an important book for many reasons. Amongst these are the prevalence of domestic violence and the extraordinary, largely unaccountable discretionary powers wielded by prosecutors in the United States. Against this background, Dempsey asks in particular what prosecutors should do when the victims of domestic violence withdraw their support from the proposed prosecution. In Prosecuting Domestic Violence, Dempsey provides a general account of prosecutorial practical reasoning that can be applied to (...) answer this question. Given that she argues that “particularly aggressive prosecution” is in at least some cases justified, the later chapters of the book address issues surrounding the victims of domestic violence: their rights and duties when it comes to prosecution and the measures that might be directed against victims who are unwilling to co-operate.What Dempsey calls her “central analytic tool” in .. (shrink)

This guide accompanies the following article(s): ‘Full Disclosure of the “Raw Data” of Research on Humans: Citizens’ Rights, Product Manufacturer’s Obligations and the Quality of the Scientific Database.’Philosophy Compass 6/2 (2011): 90–99. doi: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2010.00376.x Author’s Introduction Securing consent (and informed consent) from patients and research study participants is a key concern in patient care and research on humans. Yet, the legal doctrines of consent and informed consent differ in their applications. In patient care, the judicial doctrines of consent and informed (...) consent are disclosure doctrines based on the obligation of physicians to inform their patients of the following types of information: the nature of the procedure the physician is recommending in the patent’s care (P), the alternatives to the physician‐recommendation (A), and the risks of procedure and its alternatives (R). In addition, the physician must provide truthful answers to the patient’s questions (Q) to the best of the physician’s abilities. In research on humans, the onus of disclosure by study sponsors and principal investigators is much greater than in patient care precisely because the purpose of research is not patient care. The purpose of research is the identification and development of new generalizable knowledge. Thus, participation in a research study or trial may not benefit the study volunteer at all. In addition, the participant may carry a heavy risk burden in relationship to any testing of a newly designed drug or device as part of their experiences in the research study. Presently, despite the risks borne by the research study participant, the raw data collected from volunteers in research trials are treated by courts as if they were the private property of the study sponsor rather than generally owed to the public as would be expected by an effort like research participation aimed at contributing to the development of generalizable knowledge. This paper reviews the obligations that study sponsors owe to their study participants based on the very definition of research as a systematic activity whose purpose is to develop generalizable knowledge to help all humans. Author Recommends Court cases Canterbury v. Spence, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit 464 F.2d 772 (1972). (Federal appellate decision heard in the District of Columbia, USA) Reibl v. Hughes, 2 S.C.R. 880 (1980). (Supreme Court of Canada) Rogers v. Whitaker, 175 C.L. R. 479 (1992). (High Court of Australia) Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985) (House of Lords) Canterbury v. Spence is the landmark Federal informed consent case in the United States heard in the District of Columbia. In this case, Judge Spottswood Robinson articulated the reasonable person standard of informed consent. This standard was subsequently adopted by the Supreme Court of Canada (Reibl v. Hughes, 2 S.C.R. 880 (1980)) and the High Court of Australia (Rogers v. Whitaker, 175 C.L. R. 479 (1992)). The House of Lords rejected the reasonable person standard in England in Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985). Book Mazur, Dennis J. The Science and Ethics of Research on Humans. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. This book is a detailed guide for the review of scientific and ethical aspects of research on humans contained in the research study protocols and research informed consent forms which need to be submitted by study sponsors and principal investigators to institutional review boards (IRBs) for IRB review before a research study can receive approval to be conducted within a human study population in those institutions over which the IRB has authority. It also presents basic definitions in the area of research on humans and basic approaches to help conduct a deep review of the underlying scientific and ethical issues that are present within a research study protocol and its accompanying research informed consent form. Report National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The Belmont Report: Ethical Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research. Washington, DC: DHEW Publications, 1978 (78‐0012). This U.S. National Commission in the Belmont Report argued for the necessity of a reasonable volunteer standard in research on humans in the United States. Arguing that the professional standard and the reasonable person standard of consent and informed consent were insufficient to base a disclosure standard in research on humans, this National Commission developed the reasonable volunteer standard where a study participant is to be approached in research informed consent with that information that a reasonable volunteer would want to know. Online Materials Belmont Report: Syllabus Topics for Lecture and Discussion Week I: Introduction and Overview Readings: Rogers v. Whitaker, 175 C.L.R. 479 (1992). (High Court of Australia) Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985) (House of Lords) Week II: The Different Standards of Consent and Informed Consent Readings: Canterbury v. Spence, 464 F.2d 772 (1972). (Federal appellate opinion heard in the District of Columbia) Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985) (House of Lords) Week III: Definition of Research Reading: Mazur, Dennis J. The Science and Ethics of Research on Humans. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. (Especially Chapters 2 and 3) Week IV: How to Review a Research Study Protocol and Research Informed Consent Form Reading: Mazur, Dennis J. The Science and Ethics of Research on Humans. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. (Especially Chapters 4–6, 10, and 12–14) Week V: Obligations in Research of Humans Versus Patient Care Reading: National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The Belmont Report: Ethical Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research. Washington, DC: DHEW Publications, 1978 (78‐0012). Focus Questions • How do the judicial doctrines of consent in England and Australia compare to the judicial doctrines of informed consent in the United States and Canada? • How does a professional standard of disclosure differ from a reasonable person standard of disclosure? • What is the definition of research? • How is a research study (study proposal and research informed consent form) reviewed from scientific and ethical bases for considerations of approval by an IRB? • How do the obligations of a study sponsor, a principal investigator, and a research team conducting a research trial on human study participants differ from the obligations of a physician caring for a patient? • Should all raw data of research derived from humans be made available to the public for use in developing generalizable knowledge to help others, or should raw data be considered the private property of the study sponsors (for example, prescription drug manufacturers), who fund the research trials? Seminar/project Idea Draw a timeline of the development of the basic concepts of consent and informed consent in patient care and in patient research. On this timeline, first place the dates of the key court cases in England, the United States, Canada, and Australia on consent and informed consent. Then place the date of the development of the Belmont Report. Why do differences exist between these four countries in terms of the legal requirements of informedness of a patient (in medical care) and a study participant (in medical research)? What roles if any do the concepts of self‐determination and self‐decision have in consent and informed consent in patient care and in informed consent in research on humans among the four countries of interest? What are the realities of research on human participants that require a new standard of informed consent, the reasonable volunteer standard, to be developed beyond the two standards in patient care, the professional standard, and the reasonable person standard? Counterpoint Arguments The following are counterpoint arguments that need to be appreciated to more fully understand the concepts that impact the thesis that ‘raw data’ should be open to the public to allow the opportunity of checking of the results of its associated scientific paper and for further analysis. De‐Identified (Anonymized) Raw Data A current approach to identifying (anonymizinig) raw data is based on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 (P.L.104‐191). HIPAA was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1996 to keep a person’s medical information private. In a research study, a person’s private medical information can become research data. HIPAA’s Privacy Rule allows a covered entity to de‐identify data by removing all 18 elements that could be used to identify the individual or the individual’s relatives, employers, or household members; these elements are enumerated in the Privacy Rule. The covered entity must also have no actual knowledge that the remaining information could be used alone or in combination with other information to identify the individual who is the subject of the information. Under this method, the identifiers that must be removed are the following: 1 Names. 2 All geographic subdivisions smaller than a state, including street address, city, county, precinct, ZIP Code, and their equivalent geographical codes, except for the initial three digits of a ZIP Code if, according to the current publicly available data from the Bureau of the Census: 2a. The geographic unit formed by combining all ZIP Codes with the same three initial digits contains more than 20,000 people. 2b. The initial three digits of a ZIP Code for all such geographic units containing 20,000 or fewer people are changed to 000. 3 All elements of dates (except year) for dates directly related to an individual, including birth date, admission date, discharge date, and date of death, and all ages over 89 and all elements of dates (including year) indicative of such age, except that such ages and elements may be aggregated into a single category of age 90 or older. 4 Telephone numbers. 5 Facsimile numbers. 6 Electronic mail addresses. 7 Social security numbers. 8 Medical record numbers. 9 Health plan beneficiary numbers. 10 Account numbers. 11 Certificate/license numbers. 12 Vehicle identifiers and serial numbers, including license plate numbers. 13 Device identifiers and serial numbers. 14 Web universal resource locators (URLs). 15 Internet protocol (IP) address numbers. 16 Biometric identifiers, including fingerprints and voiceprints. 17 Full‐face photographic images and any comparable images. 18 Any other unique identifying number, characteristic, or code, unless otherwise permitted by the Privacy Rule for re‐identification. Even though ‘raw data’ can be de‐identified (anonymized) so that there is no way to trace back the data to the study participant from which it was drawn, there are still questions whether the ‘de‐identified raw data’ can be given to other researchers or made public without the original study participant’s approval. It may be the case that this approval could be done at the start of any research study where the individual considering study participation would be counseled on what the process of de‐identification consists of and would be asked whether the participant would allow use of the data by other researchers or made available to the public in a de‐identified state. However, there may be questions of the study participants as to whether the data are truly de‐identified and untraceable back to the study participant since the participant would not be able to see the process actually being carried out in detail in all relevant circumstances. Using Raw Data in Context Simply being in possession of raw data is never enough to build on that data from a research perspective. Researchers need to understand the context of the scientific research study in which the data were collected. This research context includes (but is not limited to): (i) the scientific hypothesis of the research study, (ii) the inclusion and exclusion criteria selected by the research designers of the study to determine which study participants were included and which were excluded from the study, (iii) the methods used to collect the data and possibilities of errors in the data collection processes, and (iv) answers to questions regarding whether any data were excluded from the study data and why these data were excluded. Ownership Rights Over Data There are ownership rights over data. Ownership rights include court decision making related to the question which parties are to be considered as the owners of the data. Possible owners here include (but are not limited to) (i) the study sponsor whose only role was to fund that study, (ii) the principal investigator(s) who developed the scientific hypothesis, and (iii) individual study participants through special contracts made by individual participants who negotiate such contracts with study sponsors and principal investigators to share in the ownership of data. Examples of such data are participant sources of unique gene lines or unique cell lines to be used in future research. Objections to Data Sharing Finally, individual researchers may simply object to sharing data. A researcher’s arguments here may be simply stating that he or she has a right to fully analyze the data since the collection of the data was the researchers’ idea in the first place. These researchers may argue that they have the right to mine the data as fully as they can before deciding to make the data open to the public for others to analyze. Works Cited 1 Kaiser, J. ‘Making Clinical Data Widely Available.’Science 322.5899 (10 Oct. 2008): 217–8. 2 de Lusignan, S., J.F. Metsemakers, P. Houwink, V. Gunnarsdottir, and J. van der Lei. ‘Routinely Collected General Practice Data: Goldmines for Research? A Report of the European Federation for Medical Informatics Primary Care Informatics Working Group (EFMI PCIWG) from MIE2006, Maastricht, The Netherlands.’Informatics in Primary Care 14.3 (2006): 203–9. 3 Sim, I. ‘Human Studies Database Project’, CTSA Data Repositories Symposium (17 Oct. 2008). 23 Nov. 2010. 4 Sim, I., C.G. Chute, H. Lehmann, R. Nagarajan, M. Nahm, and R.H. Scheuermann. ‘Keeping Raw Data in Context.’Science 323.5915 (6 Feb. 2009): 713. 5 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, HIPAA Privacy Rule, Information for Researchers. 13 Nov. 2010. 6 Wilczynski, N.L., R.B. Haynes, and Hedges Team. ‘EMBASE Search Strategies for Identifying Methodologically Sound Diagnostic Studies for Use by Clinicians and Researchers.’BMC Medicine 29.3 (March 2005): 7. (shrink)

This symposium contains a selection of the papers that were presented at a conference we organized on Rational Choice and Philosophy that was held at Vanderbilt University on 16 and 17 May 2014. The aim of the conference was to provide an inter-disciplinary forum for philosophical work that uses ideas and tools from rational choice theory, understood broadly to include decision theory, game theory and social choice theory.

It used to be that the touchstone of objectivity was the elimination of subjective features, like our values, biases, assumptions, and so on. Part of what motivates this narrow conception of objectivity is the thought that objective reality is the way that it is regardless of our relationship to it, and that our ability to accurately describe or depict this reality is distorted by this relationship. But what if that understanding is wrong, and removing these features takes us farther away (...) from truth and knowledge, rather than closer to them? This is the claim I advance. In this article, I trace this narrow conception to its political origins, and advance a broader understanding of objectivity that reimagines a new use for, rather than ignoring entirely, features that are thought to be subjective. (shrink)

Machine learning (ML) is increasingly used to enhance production systems and meet the requirements of a rapidly evolving manufacturing environment. Compared to larger companies, however, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lack in terms of resources, available data and skills, which impedes the potential adoption of analytics solutions. This paper proposes a preliminary yet general approach to identify low-cost analytics solutions for manufacturing SMEs, with particular emphasis on ML. The initial studies seem to suggest that, contrarily to what is (...) usually thought at first glance, SMEs seldom need digital solutions that use advanced ML algorithms which require extensive data preparation, laborious parameter tuning and a comprehensive understanding of the underlying problem. If an analytics solution does require learning capabilities, a ‘simple solution’, which we will characterise in this paper, should be sufficient. (shrink)

Participatory processes are often intended to encourage inclusion of multiple perspectives in defining management means and goals. However, ideas about the legitimacy of certain uses and users of the resources can often lead to exclusion from participation. In this way, participation can be transformed from a process of inclusion of various resource users to one of exclusion. Using a case study from a marine protected area in Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico, and drawing on work in deliberative democracy, I present (...) a typology of how individuals and groups can be excluded from participation. External exclusion includes non-invitation and other means for keeping participation from occurring. Internal exclusion refers to exclusionary events during participatory meetings. This analysis suggests that participation needs to be recognized as a valuable but easily manipulated tool in the design of projects like natural resource management. (shrink)

Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World is an account of modeling in contemporary science. Modeling is a form of surrogate reasoning where target systems in the natural world are studied using models, which are similar to these targets. My book develops an account of the nature of models, the practice of modeling, and the similarity relation that holds between models and their targets. I also analyze the conceptual tools that allow theorists to identify the trustworthy aspects (...) of models. Taken as a whole, I try to account for the ways that modeling is actually practiced by theorists, while abstracting sufficiently to understand the similarities and differences among examples of concrete, mathematical, and computational modeling.I am grateful to Wendy Parker, Jay Odenbaugh, and Bill Wimsatt for their careful and interesting reading of my book, as well as their constructive criticisms. Although I naturally disagree with some of their critiques, I have learned much .. (shrink)

To someone holding a hammer, the cliché goes, everything looks like a nail. A similar myopia often afflicts legal minds as they approach deep-seated problems in global health, as every crisis is approached by first asking how it might be litigated away. In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the limits of litigation as a tool for advancing equitable access to health — indeed of its potential, under some circumstances, to have a positively regressive impact. This very (...) timely symposium offers us a chance to reflect more deeply on the matter. (shrink)

Fiction is an important tool in an artist/designer/developer’s vocabulary, but its usage is polyvalent. Speculative research in this article introduces the ‘rudiment’ to embrace the undeveloped and the improvisory phases of research practice. Fiction is used to reflect on the ways practicing designers and developers might already engage in misanthropic thinking – involving automated technologies. Tracing the misanthropic agencies in relation to automated technologies contributes to expanding the ways designers and developers reflect on the technical potential of their designs, with (...) whom they are designing (and for) and the way they understand their reflexive self. Bringing together Colson Whitehead’s novel The Intuitionist (1999) and its account of an elevator crash, their design and maintenance, with a narrative account of software agents enables an investigation into the promises made through a design-for-the-prevention-of-failure imperative. These examples highlight the relation between physical and non-physical failures such as failures to connect or to create intimacy. Those who contribute to designing in this article get caught up in configuring misanthropic agencies involving themselves, the designed artefact and the spaces they both inhabit be that an elevator in a housing block, or a sexbot in an online chat room. I will argue that the misanthropic agencies of automated technologies can have a confining impact on our emergent modes of design. Automated software operating in virtual spaces are confining in as much as they attempt to connect things to exploit the de-personalized aspects of automated, misanthropic agency. (shrink)

Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been proposed as a potential way in which welfare states could be made more responsive to the ever-shifting evolutionary challenges of institutional adaptation in a dynamic environment. It has been proposed as a tool of “real freedom” (Van Parijs) and as a tool of making the welfare state more efficient. (Friedman) From the point of view of complexity theory and evolutionary economics, I argue that only a welfare state model that is “polycentrically” (Polanyi, Hayek) organized (...) as an evolving network of distributed decision-making can respond to the challenges of complexity in an adaptively efficient manner. UBI has the theoretical possibility to facilitate flexible, bottom-up innovation, since a) it embodies the “rule of law” principles of generality, nondiscrimination, simplicity, and transparency, and b) it grants people widespread freedom to experiment, innovate, and deviate from established practices and norms; but whether it can be made to work as intended depends on a number of variables in its design. I situate my research in the contemporary UBI debate around automation and technological development, which I interpret creatively through the lens of contemporary evolutionary political economy. I advance a syncretic model of institutional design based upon the shared insights of the Santa Fe, Neo-Hayekian, and Neo-Schumpeterian schools of evolutionary economics that, following Adam Thierer and Michael Munger, I call the framework of Permissionless Innovation (PI). Under the PI framework, which is a development of the tradition of evolutionary liberalism (Hume, Smith, Mandeville, Mill, Hayek, Polanyi, Schumpeter, Hodgson), individuals are granted the default right to innovate without having to ask for permission, and the right to basic income, which they can use to support their right to innovate, mutate, and experiment. This framework is a liberal framework to the extent it relies on widespread human freedom as a means of fostering innovation and social learning. And it is an evolutionary framework to the extent that it seeks to facilitate evolutionary socioeconomic processes for the sake of social progress and welfare advancement. I proceed to show, through an analysis of how innovation operates in both the economy and the cultural domain, that UBI can be used as an important cornerstone of an evolutionary liberal model of “ecostructural” governance that treats the socioeconomic order as an ecological garden of spontaneous growths, adaptations, and innovations. I call this the Permissionless Innovation Universal Basic Income (PIUBI) framework. In it, the right to innovate, deviate, and mutate is upheld as the “gold standard” of institutional design whereby individuals are granted widespread freedoms combined with the provision of UBI and other innovation-fostering (carefully bound) services and regulations. In the coming decades, UBI may even enable poor people to take better advantage of Human Enhancement Technologies (HETs) and other experimental innovations. Such a framework is compatible with a fast pace of evolutionary development, but the regulatory model accompanying such a framework must be capable of responding to evolutionary lock-ins, maladaptive innovations, self-destructive behaviour on the part of UBI recipients, and the management of catastrophic and existential risks. In the end, I will have shown that the PIUBI framework can be justified as a plausible default institutional mechanism for responding to radical uncertainty, but it needs to be experimentally adapted to changing circumstances with the help of various situation-specific, polycentric, multi-level, approaches. (shrink)

This chapter examines the role of shopfloor knowledge in the operation of advanced manufacturing systems. Design trends towards full automation are contrasted with those toward hybrid, human-centred systems with particular emphasis on job design and the development and reproduction of knowledge. The chapter concludes with a short discussion of the problems inherent in hybrid design.

Background On December 2017 the Italian Parliament approved law n. 219/2017 “Provisions for informed consent and advance directives” regarding challenging legal and bioethical issues related to healthcare decisions and end-of life choices. The law promotes the person’s autonomy as a right and provides for the centrality of the individual in every scenario of health care by mean of three tools: informed consent, shared care planning and advance directives. Few years after the approval of the law, we conducted a survey (...) among physicians working in four health care facilities specific for the care of people suffering from psychiatric disorders, cognitive disorders and dementia located in the North of Italy aiming to investigate their perceived knowledge and training need, attitudes regarding law n. 219/2017 provisions, and practices of implementation of the law. Methods A semi-structured questionnaire was developed on an online platform. The invitation to participate in the survey was sent by email to the potential participants. Information was collected by means of the online platform (Google Forms) which allows to export data in a spreadsheet (Windows Excel) to perform basic statistical analysis (frequency distributions, bar chart representation). Results Twenty-five out of sixty physicians participated in the survey. None of the respondents value their knowledge of the law as very good, 10 good, 13 neither poor nor good, 1 poor and 1 very poor. All the respondents want to learn more about the law (21 yes and 4 absolutely yes). The majority of respondents agrees with the content of the law as a whole (3 absolutely agree, 13 agree), and on each provision. The question on the clarity of the concept of capacity in the law received mixed answers and this impacted on the physicians’ opinion regarding the legitimacy in principle for our groups of patients to realize shared care planning and write advance directives. Thirteen physicians neither introduced the theme of shared care planning nor arranged for shared care planning and the main reason for this was that no patient was in a clinical situation to require it. When shared care planning is realized, a variability in terms of type and number of meetings, mode of tracking and communication is registered. Conclusions Our survey results indicate a need for more clarity regarding the interpretation and implementation of the law in the patient groups under study. There are in particular two related areas that deserve further discussion: (1) the question of whether these patient groups are in principle legitimized by the law to realize shared care planning or write advance directives; (2) the notion of capacity required by the law and how this notion can be declined in real-life situations. (shrink)

The proposal of the new criteria for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease based on biomarker data is making possible a diagnosis of AD at the mild cognitive impairment or predementia/prodromal– stage. Given the present lack of effective treatments for AD, the opportunity for the individuals to personally take relevant decisions and plan for their future before and if cognitive deterioration occurs is one the main advantages of an early diagnosis. Advance directives are largely seen as an effective tool for planning (...) medical care in the event the subject becomes incompetent. Nevertheless, their value has been questioned with regard to people with dementia by scholars who refer to the arguments of personal identity and of patient’s changing interests before and after the onset of dementia. In this paper, I discuss the value of advance directives in Alzheimer’s disease and other kind of dementia. Despite critics, I argue that advance directives are especially advisable in dementia and provide reasons in favor of their promotion at an early stage of the disease as a valuable tool to respect patients’ values and preferences on medical treatment, including participation in research and end of life decisions. I mainly support advance directives that include both decisions regarding health care and the appointment of an attorney in fact. I conclude that patients with AD at a prodromal or early stage should be offered the opportunity to execute an advance directive, and that not to honor a demented individual’s directive would be an unacceptable form of discrimination towards those patients. (shrink)

It is widely thought that causal cognition underpins technical reasoning. Here we suggest that understanding causal cognition as a thinking system that includes theory of mind (i.e., social cognition) can be a productive theoretical tool for the field of evolutionary cognitive archaeology. With this contribution, we expand on an earlier model that distinguishes seven grades of causal cognition, explicitly presenting it together with a new analysis of the theory of mind involved in the different grades. We then suggest how such (...) thinking may manifest in the archaeological or stone tool record and techno-behaviors of the last three million years or so. Our thesis is threefold: (a) theory of mind is an integral element of causal cognition; (b) generally speaking, the more advanced causal cognition is, the more it is dependent on theory of mind; and (c) the evolution of causal cognition depends more and more on mental representations of hidden variables. Ultimately, the final or seventh grade of causal cognition allows us to reason from a network of hidden variables that, amongst other things, enables the learning, manufacture, and use of complex technological systems. It also facilitates the seamless mapping of knowledge between personal (egocentric), physical, and social networks that allows for newly devised and innovative technical and social outcomes. (shrink)

A “post-work world” can mean a couple of things. First, it can mean a world where we attach less importance to work, restructure work so that tasks and authority are distributed more equitably, and otherwise decenter and reform the world of work. Second, it can mean a world where people are no longer working because robots, artificial intelligence, and other forms of automation have replaced humans and there are no longer enough jobs for everyone. This paper is about the (...) second kind of world, and how to support the workers it leaves behind. -/- Automation has always eliminated jobs, but in the past new jobs have appeared to replace them. This may be changing. Thanks to recent advances in automation, machines and software can now do an increasingly large percentage of the tasks that humans do. “Technological unemployment” is what happens when automation can do so many different tasks that new jobs do not appear in sufficient numbers to employ everyone (Keynes 1932). In short, automation may soon leave a very large part of the potential workforce permanently unemployed, leading to a social, political, economic, and humanitarian crisis. For ease of reference, I refer to the technologically unemployed as being displaced from the economy. -/- The displaced need incomes. One obvious source of funds is the money saved through technological unemployment. On the scale of an entire economy, technological unemployment increases the labor savings from automation, for in addition to the usual labor savings from automation, there is less of a need to pay new workers, for there are fewer new jobs. I call this money the displacement gain. This is money that becomes available precisely because technological unemployment has occurred. It is important to understand that the displacement gain is not the same thing as the profit that results from gains in productivity. Automation does not necessarily produce displacement but it does produce gains in productivity, and the profits from gains in productivity occur even when no one is displaced. A productivity gain does not become a displacement gain until technological unemployment occurs. -/- The core of this paper is a set of arguments that the displacement gain is not the private property of businesses or those who have ownership interests in businesses (I refer to both groups as “capitalists”), nor is it the private property of those lucky enough to still have jobs. For these and additional reasons, the displacement gain is collective property in which every person has an equal interest. Moreover, it is a kind of collective property that has been largely overlooked. (Better-known forms of collective property include the natural world and “social capital.” ) As far back as Thomas Paine (1796), many thinkers have argued that, because we all have equal interests in collective property, it should be distributed to everyone, working or not, rich or poor, as equal and unconditional basic incomes. The displacement gain is a new kind of collective property which can fund basic incomes, and those incomes can support the displaced. That’s how to pay for a post-work world. -/- However, I will argue, in order to distribute those funds equally we must pay unequal basic incomes, for those who are technologically unemployed bear a larger share of the burden involved in creating that collective property, and therefore deserve larger basic incomes to offset their larger burdens. My discussion of this leads to a possible solution to a problem that bedevils basic income proposals: how to prevent businesses from, in effect, appropriating basic incomes from their employees by simply paying them less, using basic incomes as a payroll subsidy . (shrink)

AI is increasingly becoming based upon Internet-dependent systems to handle the massive amounts of data it requires to function effectively regardless of the availability of stable Internet connectivity in every affected community. As such, sustainable development (SD) for rural and mountain communities will require more than just equitable access to broadband Internet connection. It must also include a thorough means whereby to ensure that affected communities gain the education and tools necessary to engage inclusively with new technological advances, whether (...) they be focused on machine learning algorithms or community infrastructure, as they will be increasingly dependent upon the automational capabilities of AI. In this essay, an exploration will be conducted into the means whereby student-engaged learning (SEL) can effectively be utilized to provide targeted, inclusive education to rural and mountain communities regarding the implications of AI for SD. (shrink)

Defining the common good -- Assessing the impact of proposed actions on human happiness and well-being -- Protecting and enhancing public goods -- Identifying today's major social problems -- Activists, reformers and social movements -- Key tools for advancing the common good -- What can businesses do to advance the common good? -- What can government do to advance the common good? -- What can nonprofit organizations do to advance the common good?

We introduce here evoText, a new tool for automated analysis of the literature in the biological sciences. evoText contains a database of hundreds of thousands of journal articles and an array of analysis tools for generating quantitative data on the nature and history of life science, especially ecology and evolutionary biology. This article describes the features of evoText, presents a variety of examples of the kinds of analyses that evoText can run, and offers a brief tutorial describing how to (...) use it. (shrink)

In the decision-making and rationality research field, rational decision theory (RDT) has always been the main framework, thanks to the elegance and complexity of its mathematical tools. Unfortunately, the formal refinement of the theory is not accompanied by a satisfying predictive accuracy, thus there is a big gap between what is predicted by the theory and the behaviour of real subjects. Here we propose a new foundation of the RDT, which has to be based on a cognitive architecture for (...) reason-based agents, acting on the basis of their beliefs in order to achieve their goals. The decision process is a cognitive evaluation of conflicting goals, based on different beliefs and values, but also on emotions and desires. We refer to a cognitive analysis of emotions and we integrate them in this more general RDT. (shrink)

Of all possible future agents with greater‐than‐human intelligence, the one that stands out as the most potentially powerful is sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI). An AI might have millions of processors, all of them hundreds of millions of times faster than biological neurons. Historical focus on molecular nanotechnology in the context of explosive AI growth is unfortunate because the use of nanotechnology for mass manufacturing and the creation of rapid infrastructure are so highly speculative. For an AI on a growth (...) tangent, the primary objective would be to bridge from Internet influence to using humans as tools, and eventually to using robots as tools. Robots connected to the Internet could take as much advantage of the full cognitive resources of the core AI as bandwidth and computing budgets permit. This chapter contributes a concrete model of self‐improving AI that provokes further thought. (shrink)

This open access book explains how leading business organizations attempt to achieve the responsible and ethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced information technologies. These technologies can produce tremendous insights and benefits. But they can also invade privacy, perpetuate bias, and otherwise injure people and society. To use these technologies successfully, organizations need to implement them responsibly and ethically. The question is: how to do this? Data ethics management, and this book, provide some answers. -/- The authors (...) interviewed and surveyed data ethics managers at leading companies. They asked why these experts see data ethics as important and how they seek to achieve it. This book conveys the results of that research on a concise, accessible way. -/- Much of the existing writing on data and AI ethics focuses either on macro-level ethical principles, or on micro-level product design and tooling. The interviews showed that companies need a third component: data ethics management. This third element consists of the management structures, processes, training and substantive benchmarks that companies use to operationalize their high-level ethical principles and to guide and hold accountable their developers. Data ethics management is the connective tissue makes ethical principles real. It is the focus of this book. -/- This book should be of use to organizations that wish to improve their own data ethics management efforts, legislators and policymakers who hope to build on existing management practices, scholars who study beyond compliance business behavior, and members of the public who want to understand better the threats that AI poses and how to reduce them. (shrink)

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has profoundly transformed many people's lives, ChatGPT being a clear example, whose capabilities have substantially influenced the automation of tasks such as writing texts and providing information sources for researchers. This review article aims to understand the impact of AI on academic writing and why its use can be considered plagiarism. The Prism method was used to analyze the studies, which initially totaled 824, and after excluding them for duplicity and by title, (...) a total of 137 were left, of which we proceeded to review those that were open access and those that were related to the study, obtaining a total of 54 manuscripts closely related to the research topic; the results were then segmented into three questions, What are the text-matching tools that help to identify the use of AI in article writing?, What strategies are used to regulate the use of AI in writing scientific articles? and What techniques are used to detect AI-generated text?, which were key to comparing the results of the review with the findings of the authors belonging to the literature review. The results showed that, from 2022 onwards, AI became a recurring topic among researchers in China and the United States, allowing the emergence of popular techniques and software such as Turnitin or GPTZero to identify when these linguistic models were used in writing tasks, as well as strategies to regulate their use in controlled environments. In the end, it was concluded that there is a fine line between ethics and abuse of AI capabilities, and further research and study of different techniques is recommended to recognize when these tools are blatantly used. (shrink)

In the context of climate change, the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, growing food insecurity, and rising inflation, the inequities in the dominant food system and subsequent vulnerabilities are being made ever more visible. Policies and programs that can support social and economic security while responding to intensifying environmental challenges are urgently needed. Basic income is receiving increasing attention as one such policy tool in jurisdictions around the world. However, its applications to food systems are underdeveloped. This discussion paper considers (...) basic income as a policy tool for supporting food systems sustainability in Canada drawing on our collaborative research as part of Coalition Canada’s Case for Basic Income Series. We suggest that a basic income may contribute to addressing precarity in livelihoods and food access while offering potential co-benefits for local food production and community well-being. We also underscore that basic income is not a panacea for all problems facing food systems and must be considered alongside other public supports and initiatives. We conclude by identifying areas for further research and policy investigation for food systems scholars and practitioners. (shrink)

The issue of how to identify the liability of subjects after a traffic accident takes place remains a puzzle regarding the SAE classification system. The SAE system is not good at dealing with the problem of responsibility evaluation; therefore, building a new classification system for self-driving cars from the perspective of the subject's liability is a possible way to solve this problem. This new system divides automated driving into three levels: i) assisted driving based on the will of drivers, ii) (...) automated driving based on the will of the manufacturers, and iii) fully automated driving based on social will. The corresponding responsible subjects for level one, level two, and level three are the drivers, the manufacturers, and society, respectively. (shrink)