What is information ethics

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What is Information Ethics? Microsoft Research
Laboratory - PhD students summer school 2006
luciano.floridi_at_philosophy.oxford.ac.ukwww.wolfso
n.ox.ac.uk/floridi/
Cambridge 6 July, 2006
Luciano Floridi Dipartimento di Scienze
Filosofiche Università degli Studi di
Bari Faculty of Philosophy IEG Computing
LaboratoryUniversity of Oxford
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Summary
First part The roots of Computer Ethics (CE) CE
problems, interpretation and approaches Informati
on Ethics as the Foundation of CE Second
part Standard vs. Non-standard Moral
Theories The Role of Information in
Ethics Modelling moral action informationally Ex
tending the class of moral agents Extending the
class of moral patients Four basic principles of
Information Ethics Applications of Information
Ethics

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Half a century of issues from Wiener to IE
The evolution of the information (or rather)
data-based society causes ethical
problems. Norbert Wiener (father of cybernetics),
in the late 1940s and early 1950s, was the first
to predict and work on such problems. Computer
ethics coined by Walter Maner in the mid 1970s,
to refer to the field of research that studies
ethical problems aggravated, transformed or
created by computer technology. Later, it became
clear that what matters is not the specific
technology (computers, mobiles, ICTs in general)
but the raw material manipulated by it,
data/information. So in the late 1990s several
researchers, especially our group in Oxford,
started working on information ethics (IE).

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What sort of ethical problems?
1940s/50s (mainframes) (speculative) Robots and
humans (Benthams Panopticon and Orwells Big
Brother, are not digital/computational).
1970s/80s (PCs) PAPA (privacy, accuracy,
intellectual property and access), viruses
(vandalism). 1990s (Internet) the triple A
availability, accessibility and accuracy piracy
digital divide infoglut safety, reliability and
trustworthiness of complex systems hacking
(vandalism) freedom of expression and
censorship pornography, monitoring and
surveillance. 2000 (Infosphere) security and
secrecy propaganda identity theft. Add
military, health-related, social, political and
religious interpretations (and anthropological,
and psychological...).

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What kind of interpretation? The Policy Vacuum
Policy Vacuum technological changes have
outpaced ethical developments, bringing about
unanticipated problems that have caused a policy
vacuum filled by CE (Moor, 1985), which has
initially surfaced from practical concerns
arising in the information society. Rational
decisions have to be taken, technical,
educational and ethical problems must be solved,
legislation needs to be adopted, codes of ethics
are to be formulated and enforced. A combination
of empirical evidence and logical arguments seems
to provide the most obvious and promising means
to achieve such pressing goals. How innovative
should the approach be?

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Which approach? (aka the Uniqueness Debate)
The no resolution Approach. CE problems
represent unsolvable dilemma and CE is itself a
pointless exercise, having no conceptual
foundation. (Parker 1981). The Professional
Approach. CE is just a professional ethics.
Social responsibility of computer professionals.
Development of a professional-ethics approach
(Gotterbarn 1991, 1992). The Radical Approach.
CE is a Unique Discipline that deals with
absolutely unique issues, in need of a completely
new approach (Mason 1986, Maner 1996, 1999). The
Conservative Approach. CE is only an Applied
Ethics. Classic macroethics (e.g.
Consequentialism, Deontologism, Virtue Ethics,
Contractualism) might need to be adapted,
enriched and extended, but they have all the
conceptual resources required to deal with CE
questions successfully and satisfactorily. ICT
merely transform old ethical problems. (Johnson
1999). The Innovative Approach. Information
Ethics as the Foundation of CE (Floridi 1999,
2004). According to IE, standard macroethics are
insufficient. ICT, by transforming in a profound
way the context in which moral issues arise, not
only adds interesting new dimensions to old
problems, but leads us to rethink,
methodologically, the very grounds on which our
ethical positions are based.
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An Innovative Approach Information Ethics

• Information Ethics is the theoretical foundation
  of applied Computer Ethics.
• IE is an expansion of environmental ethics
  towards
• 1) a less anthropocentric concept of agent, which
  now includes also non-human (artificial) and
  non-individual (distributed) entities and
• a less biologically biased concept of patient as
  a centre of ethical worth, which now includes
  not only human life or simply life, but any form
  of existence.
• a conception of environment that includes both
  natural and artificial (synthetic, man-made)
  eco-systems.
• IE is therefore
• non-standard
• patient-oriented, not agent-oriented
• environmental, non-anthropocentric but
  ontocentric, and based on the concepts of
  informational object/infosphere/entropy rather
  than life/ecosystem/pain.

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Standard vs. non-standard Theories of As and Ps
Moral situations involve agents and patients.
Let us define 1) the class A of moral agents
as the class of all entities that can in
principle qualify as sources of moral action, and
2) the class P of moral patients as the class of
all entities that can in principle qualify as
receivers of moral action. Ethical theories can
interpret the relation between those two classes
in 5 ways
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A Step Back the Role of Information in Ethics
Towards a minimal common denominator among agents
and patients. Suppose that 1) A is interested in
pursuing whatever she considers her best course
of action, given her predicament 2) As
evaluations and actions have some (to be left
unspecified) moral value then 3) A uses some
information (information as a resource) to
generate some other information (information as
a product) and in so doing affect her
informational environment (information as
target). Where is the agent?

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A Step Forward the Role of Information in Ethics
Infosphere (from biosphere) denotes the whole
informational environment constituted by all
informational entities (thus including
informational agents as well), their properties,
interactions, processes and mutual relations.
The agent is informationally embodied and
informationally embedded in the infosphere. Where
is the patient?
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The informational Model of Moral Action
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A Model of Moral Action based on OOA
Moral action information process
?a ?p M (a, p)
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Informational Entities
Moral action information process ?a ?p M (a, p)
Informational objects (in the object-oriented
analysis paradigm (OOA) sense)
Operations Functions Procedure
Stimuli Actions
interaction
methods
messages
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Information Ethics Agents and Patients

• Information Ethics is an expansion of
  environmental ethics towards
• a less anthropocentric concept of agent, which
  now includes also non-human (artificial) and
  non-individual (distributed) entities and
• a less biologically biased concept of patient as
  a centre of ethical worth, which now includes
  not only human life or simply life, but any form
  of existence.

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What is an agent? An Effective Characterization
a) A is an agent if and only if A is a.1)
Interactive A and its environment (can) act upon
each other. a.2) Autonomous A is able to change
state without direct response to interaction, but
can perform internal transitions to change its
state. This provides A with a certain degree of
complexity and decoupled-ness from its
environment. a.3) Adaptable A's interactions
(can) change the transition rules by which it
changes state. This property ensures that A might
learn its own mode of operation in a way which
depends critically on its experience. b) An agent
is said to be a moral agent if and only if it is
capable of morally qualifiable action. c) An
action is said to be morally qualifiable if and
only if it can cause moral good or
evil. Conclusion Artificial Agents can satisfy
all these conditions therefore they can be moral
agents.
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Information Ethics Agents and Patients

• Information Ethics is an expansion of
  environmental ethics towards
• a less anthropocentric concept of agent, which
  now includes also non-human (artificial) and
  non-individual (distributed) entities and
• a less biologically biased concept of patient as
  a centre of ethical worth, which now includes
  not only human life or simply life, but any form
  of existence.

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IE and the moral value of informational objects
History a tale of progressive moral inclusions,
from the Athenian citizens, to animals to the
Infosphere. Question what is the lowest possible
common set of attributes which characterises
something as intrinsically valuable and an object
of respect, and without which something would
rightly be considered intrinsically worthless or
even positively unworthy and therefore rightly
disrespectable in itself? Answer the minimal
condition of possibility of an objects least
intrinsic worthiness is its abstract nature as an
informational entity. Conclusion all entities,
interpreted as clusters of information, have a
minimal moral worth qua informational objects,
that deserves to be respected.
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Information Ethics as Environmental Ethics
IE develops a patient-oriented ethics. The
patient may be not only a human being or any
form of life, but any form of being, that is, any
informational object. Information as such,
rather than just life in general, is raised to
the role of the universal patient of any action.
The ethical question asked by IE is What is
good for an informational entity and the
infosphere in general? Answer a minimalist
theory of desert all informational objects are
in principle worth of ethical consideration. The
duty of a moral agent is evaluated also in terms
of contribution to the growth and welfare of the
infosphere. Any process, action or event that
negatively affects the whole infosphere - not
just an information entity impoverishes it and
hence it is an instance of evil.
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Four Principles of Information Ethics
IE determines what is morally right or wrong,
what ought to be done, what the duties, the
oughts and the ought nots of a moral agent
are, by means of four basic principles 0.entropy
ought not to be caused in the infosphere (null
law) 1.entropy ought to be prevented in the
infosphere 2.entropy ought to be removed from the
infosphere 3.the welfare of the infosphere ought
to be promoted by extending it, improving it and
enriching it. The principles are listed in order
of increasing moral value. They clarify, in very
broad terms, what it means to live as a
responsible and caring agent in the infosphere.
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Conclusion the Roots and the Leaves
Is Information Ethics applicable? Conceptual
problems are the roots, applied problems are the
leaves of the same tree. None of the two can do
without the other. IE has been applied in game
design (Sicart) distributed system control and
e-science (Turilli) digital divide
(Floridi) tragedy of the digital commons and P2P
systems (Greco, Floridi) Privacy (Turilli,
Floridi) Still a lot of exciting work to be done.

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What is Information Ethics? Microsoft Research
Laboratory - PhD students summer school 2006
luciano.floridi_at_philosophy.oxford.ac.ukwww.wolfso
n.ox.ac.uk/floridi/
Cambridge 6 July, 2006
Luciano Floridi Dipartimento di Scienze
Filosofiche Università degli Studi di
Bari Faculty of Philosophy IEG Computing
LaboratoryUniversity of Oxford

• Acknowledgements many thanks to
• Fabien Petitcolas
• Sarah Cater
• Microsoft Research Laboratory