A humane approach to new technologies – researchers delve into the ethical challenges of AI

– When developing these systems, and developing business around them, it is vital to understand how humans experience and act in, around and with the technology. Whether you are a software developer or a business developer, this book affords insight that spans across the boundaries of areas in human life, says Rebekah Rousi, Associate Professor in Communication studies at the University of Vaasa, Finland.

Rousi is one of the editors of “Humane autonomous technology” together with Catharina von Koskull, Associate Professor of Marketing from the University of Vaasa and Virpi Roto, Senior Lecturer and Professor of Practice of Design from Aalto University.

AI introduces new ethical challenges

One of the central themes of the book is the ethical implications of AI and autonomous systems. The editors and contributors explore challenging questions related to intellectual property rights, human roles, biases, and the potential for these technologies to adopt deviant human traits. The book emphasises the need for ethical design and implementation practices that prioritise human well-being and creativity.

– The big challenges concerning AI very much relate to ethics, moral conduct, as well as sustainability. In addition to the previously foreseen ‘Robots will steal our jobs’ types of concerns. we have a myriad of new challenges arising. For instance, several big tech companies have pulled out of their promises for carbon neutrality. Also, ethics, ethical content delivery and consumption has proven challenging with the rise of a new form of sweatshops – data cleaning centres – located in the Global South to filter inappropriate content from large language models. There is truly a lot to address both as researchers and developers, Rousi says.

Rousi thinks that more critical thinking, discussion and learning is needed in designing and implementing technology in an ethical way.

– This unfortunately, is something I feel is decreasing in potency as the same technology we should be critiquing is also the technology to which we are turning for up-to-date information.

Impact on various sectors

“Humane autonomous technology” offers a truly multidisciplinary approach to autonomous technology, whereby the contributors represent disciplines including human-computer interaction, interaction design, art, service and consumer studies, as well as cognitive science.

The book is divided into four themes: Labour, co-work and industry; Cognition and emotion; Humanness and values; and Art, design and visual culture. For instance, the book talks about the collaboration between expert employees and chatbots, the design of automation for work enrichment, and how AI can be integrated responsibly to enhance worker-centred practices.

According to Rousi, one of the key learnings from the book is that intention needs to be placed on the role of artificial intelligence in the workplace and services.

– Do we want the technology to remain as a tool, should it be our slave, or even co-worker? For what reasons do we attribute these specific roles to the technology? Once more, reflecting on the information-rich nature of the technology, AI is rapidly changing our relationship to tools, work, and life in general. It also forces us to re-think our own roles and identity, Rousi says.

In the book, Rousi examines ethical development of autonomous maritime technology, addressing two main challenges: how it is designed for the future and what will the future look like, and how the tacit embodied knowledge that domain experts have can be transferred into large autonomous artefact-systems.

–  As human beings we are fixated with our ideas. That is, we have fairly firm ideas about what the future will and should look like, and these are usually based of quite old ideas. With this said, the old ideas we possess are dependent on our expert knowledge. I wanted to question whether or not the whole idea of people-less ships and sea-vessels was an ideal scenario, or simply a result of centuries of popular culture.

Further information

Rousi, R., von Koskull, C., & Roto, V. (Eds.). (2024). Humane autonomous technology: Re-thinking experience with and in intelligent systems. Palgrave Macmillan Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-66528-8