Is there an ethics of algorithms?

We argue that some algorithms are value-laden, and that two or more persons who accept different value-judgments may have a rational reason to design such algorithms differently. We exemplify our claim by discussing a set of algorithms used in medical image analysis: In these algorithms it is often necessary to set certain thresholds for whether e.g. a cell should count as diseased or not, and the chosen threshold will partly depend on the software designer’s preference between avoiding false positives and false negatives. This preference ultimately depends on a number of value-judgments. In the last section of the paper we discuss some general principles for dealing with ethical issues in algorithm-design.     

Ethics in e-trust and e-trustworthiness: the case of direct computer-patient interfaces

In this paper, I examine the ethics of e-trust and e-trustworthiness in the context of health care, looking at direct computer-patient interfaces (DCPIs), information systems that provide medical information, diagnosis, advice, consenting and/or treatment directly to patients without clinicians as intermediaries. Designers, manufacturers and deployers of such systems have an ethical obligation to provide evidence of their trustworthiness to users. My argument for this claim is based on evidentialism about trust and trustworthiness: the idea that trust should be based on sound evidence of trustworthiness. Evidence of trustworthiness is a broader notion than one might suppose, including not just information about the risks and performance of the system, but also interactional and context-based information. I suggest some sources of evidence in this broader sense that make it plausible that designers, manufacturers and deployers of DCPIs can provide evidence to users that is cognitively simple, easy to communicate, yet rationally connected with actual trustworthiness.     

Bibliometric mapping of computer and information ethics

This paper presents the first bibliometric mapping analysis of the field of computer and information ethics (C&IE). It provides a map of the relations between 400 key terms in the field. This term map can be used to get an overview of concepts and topics in the field and to identify relations between information and communication technology concepts on the one hand and ethical concepts on the other hand. To produce the term map, a data set of over thousand articles published in leading journals and conference proceedings in the C&IE field was constructed. With the help of various computer algorithms, key terms were identified in the titles and abstracts of the articles and co-occurrence frequencies of these key terms were calculated. Based on the co-occurrence frequencies, the term map was constructed. This was done using a computer program called VOSviewer. The term map provides a visual representation of the C&IE field and, more specifically, of the organization of the field around three main concepts, namely privacy, ethics, and the Internet.     

Contextual gaps: privacy issues on Facebook

Social networking sites like Facebook are rapidly gaining in popularity. At the same time, they seem to present significant privacy issues for their users. We analyze two of Facebooks’s more recent features, Applications and News Feed, from the perspective enabled by Helen Nissenbaum’s treatment of privacy as “contextual integrity.” Offline, privacy is mediated by highly granular social contexts. Online contexts, including social networking sites, lack much of this granularity. These contextual gaps are at the root of many of the sites’ privacy issues. Applications, which nearly invisibly shares not just a users’, but a user’s friends’ information with third parties, clearly violates standard norms of information flow. News Feed is a more complex case, because it involves not just questions of privacy, but also of program interface and of the meaning of “friendship” online. In both cases, many of the privacy issues on Facebook are primarily design issues, which could be ameliorated by an interface that made the flows of information more transparent to users.     

e-Trust and reputation

Trust online can be a hazardous affair; many are trustworthy, but some people use the anonymity of the web to behave very badly indeed. So how can we improve the quality of evidence for trustworthiness provided online? I focus on one of the devices we use to secure others’ trustworthiness: tracking past conduct through online reputation systems. Yet existing reputation systems face problems. I analyse these, and in the light of this develop some principles for system design, towards overcoming these challenges. In providing better evidence for trustworthiness online, so we can also encourage people actually to be trustworthy more often, which is an ethically welcome outcome.     

Antecedents of perceived coach autonomy supportive and controlling behaviors: coach psychological need satisfaction and well-being

Within the self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) framework, research has considered the consequences of coaches' autonomy supportive and controlling behaviors on various athlete outcomes (e.g., motivation and performance). The antecedents of such behaviors, however, have received little attention. Coaches (N = 443) from a variety of sports and competitive levels completed a self-report questionnaire to assess their psychological need satisfaction, well-being and perceived interpersonal behaviors toward their athletes. Structural equation modeling demonstrated that coaches' competence and autonomy need satisfaction positively predicted their levels of psychological well-being, as indexed by positive affect and subjective vitality. In turn, coaches' psychological well-being positively predicted their perceived autonomy support toward their athletes, and negatively predicted their perceived controlling behaviors. Overall, the results highlight the importance of coaching contexts that facilitate coaches' psychological need satisfaction and well-being, thereby increasing the likelihood of adaptive coach interpersonal behavior toward athletes.