L Venter, MS Olivier and JJ Britz, "Interactive to Proactive: Computer Ethics in the Past and the Future," in G Cöllste, SO Hansson, S Rogerson, and TW Bynum (eds), ETHICOMP 2005: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference — Looking back to the future, Linköping, Sweden, September 2005 (Published electronically)
The integration of mobile technology, wireless networks, ubiquitous computing and artificial intelligence with thousands of embedded devices such as sensors and actuators may result in networks that can proactively monitor and respond to human behaviour without human interaction and with little supervision. Decisions that can influence or alter the environment will be made at faster-than-human speeds. Ethics as applied to current interactive computer systems will not be adequate. The paper proposes that the principles of clinical ethics can be applied to proactive computing, and argues that removal of the autonomy of the users of proactive systems may make such systems inherently unethical. We note that clinical ethics is accepted in the medical profession but that no such institutionalization and internalization exist in the computer industry. We conclude that although possible principles exist, significant change in the community is needed to apply them in practice.
Ethics, proactive computing, autonomy
@INPROCEEDINGS(proactive,
AUTHOR={Leoni Venter and Martin S Olivier and Johannes J Britz},
TITLE={Interactive to Proactive: Computer Ethics in the Past and the Future},
BOOKTITLE={ETHICOMP 2005: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference --- Looking back to the future},
EDITOR={G\"oran Collste and Sven Ove Hansson and Simon Rogerson and Terrell Ward Bynum},
MONTH={September},
YEAR={2005},
ADDRESS={Link\"oping, Sweden},
NOTE={Published electronically} )
The full text may be downloaded from http://mo.co.za/open/proactive.pdf (PDF, 50K).
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