Posts in 2017
Of, For, and By the People: The Legal Lacuna of Synthetic Persons

Joanna J. Bryson, Mihailis E. Diamantis, and Thomas D. Grant, Artificial Intelligence and Law, 25(3):273–291, Sep 2017.

Two professors of law and I argue that it would be a terrible, terrible idea to make something strictly AI (in contrast to an organisation also containing humans) a legal person. In fact, the only good thing about this is that it gives us a chance to think about where legal personhood has already been overextended (we give examples). “Gold” open access, not because I think it’s right to make universities or academics pay to do their work, but because Bath has some deal with Springer / has already been coerced into paying. Notice you can read below all my papers going back to 1993 (when I started academia); I don't think “green” open access is part of the war on science.

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2017ScienceSitesEthics and Policy, Regulation and Digital Governance, AI Ethics
Semantics Derived Automatically From Language Corpora Contain Human Biases

Aylin Caliskan, Joanna J. Bryson, & Arvind Narayanan, Science, 356 (6334):183-186, 14 Apr 2017.

Be sure to also look at the supplement, which gives the stimuli and shows similar results for a different corpus and word-embedding model. Meaning really is no more or less than how a word is used, so AI absorbs true meaning, including prejudice. We demonstrate this empirically. This is an extension of my research programme into semantics originally deriving from my interest in the origins of human cognition, but now with help from the awesome researchers at Princeton I’ve merged this with my AI ethics work, and also managed to pitch for cognitive systems approaches to AI. Open access version: authors’ final copy of both the main article and the supplement (pdf).

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2017ScienceSitesEvolving Human-Like Culture, Ethics and Policy, Origins and Nature of Cognition
Standardizing Ethical Design for Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems

Joanna J. Bryson and Alan F.T. Winfield, IEEE Computer, 50(5):116-119, 2017.

What do you do when technology like AI changes faster than the law can keep up? One thing is have law enforce standards maintained by professional organisations, which are hopefully more agile and informed. Invited commentary. Open access version, authors’ final copy (pdf).

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2017ScienceSitesEthics and Policy, Regulation and Digital Governance
Improving Robot Transparency: Real-Time Visualisation of Robot AI Substantially Improves Understanding in Naive Observers

Robert H Wortham, Andreas Theodorou, Joanna J Bryson, in The 26th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, RO-MAN 2017.

What’s visualised is the system’s priorities (the upper part of a POSH plan hierarchy), and which priorities are active in real time. Extends the IJCAI ethics workshop results to direct interaction with robots, and for an archival conference.

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2017ScienceSitesSystems Engineering, Ethics and Policy
The Meaning of the EPSRC Principles of Robotics

Joanna J. Bryson, Connection Science, 29(2):130-136, 2017.

In honour of the EPSRC Principles of Robotics’ fifth anniversary in 2016, Tony Prescott and Michael Szollosy ran an AISB symposium which was followed up by a special issue of the journal Connection Science the following year. I explain the principles' utility as policy, and their intent: to clarify that we are responsible for the AI we build and use. Open access version.

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2017ScienceSitesEthics and Policy, AI Ethics
Designing and Implementing Transparency for Real Time Inspection of Autonomous Robots

Andreas Theodorou, Rob Wortham, and Joanna J. Bryson, Connection Science, 29(3):230-241, 2017.

In honour of the EPSRC Principles of Robotics' fifth anniversary in 2016, Tony Prescott and Michael Szollosy ran an AISB symposium which was followed up by a special issue of the journal Connection Science the following year. Open access version.

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2017ScienceSitesSystems Engineering, Ethics and Policy
Principles of Robotics: Regulating Robots in the Real World

2016

In honour of the EPSRC Principles of Robotics' fifth anniversary in 2016, Tony Prescott and Michael Szollosy ran an AISB symposium which was followed up by a special issue of the journal Connection Science the following year. Here are the original EPSRC Principles of Robotics as they appear on the web pages of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's (EPSRC – the UK council for funding AI research). Tony got Alan Winfield to submit an article version of the Principles with the same authors, including me.

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2017ScienceSitesEthics and Policy