Journal of responsible technology最新文献

{"title":"A robot with human values: assessing value-sensitive design in an agri-food context","authors":"Else Giesbers ,&nbsp;Kelly Rijswijk ,&nbsp;Mark Ryan ,&nbsp;Mashiat Hossain ,&nbsp;Aneesh Chauhan","doi":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100120","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100120","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Value Sensitive Design (VSD) aims to take societal values on board in the design of innovative technologies. While a lot has been written on VSD and the added value of using it for technology development, limited literature is available on its application to the agri-food sector. This article describes a VSD case study on an agri-food robotic system and reflects on the insights into the added value of using VSD. This paper concludes that while VSD contributes to broadening the perspective of technical researchers about non-technical requirements, its application in this case is constrained by five factors related to the nature of the VSD approach: i) lack of clarity on dealing with conflicting values; ii) the ideal timing of VSD is unclear; iii) VSD lacks effectiveness when technology is outsourced; iv) VSD does not account for time and context specificness of values; and v) the operationalisation of values in VSD.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":73937,"journal":{"name":"Journal of responsible technology","volume":"22 ","pages":"Article 100120"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143898947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Piloting a maturity model for responsible artificial intelligence: A portuguese case study","authors":"Rui Miguel Frazão Dias Ferreira ,&nbsp;António GRILO ,&nbsp;Maria MAIA","doi":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100117","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100117","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recently, frameworks and guidelines aiming to assist trustworthiness in organizations and assess ethical issues related to the development and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been translated into self-assessment checklists and other instruments. However, such tools can be very time consuming to apply. Aiming to develop a more practical tool, an Industry-Wide Maturity Model for Responsible AI was piloted in 3 companies and 2 research centres, in Portugal. Results show that organizations are aware of requirements (44 %) to deploy a responsible AI approach and have a reactive response to its implementation, as they are willing to integrate other requirements (33 %) into their business processes. The proposed Model was welcomed and showed openness from companies to consistently use it, since it helped to identify gaps and needs when it comes to foster a more trustworthy approach to the development and deployment of AI.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":73937,"journal":{"name":"Journal of responsible technology","volume":"22 ","pages":"Article 100117"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143865054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The ethics of bioinspired animal-robot interaction: A relational meta-ethical approach","authors":"Marco Tamborini","doi":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100116","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100116","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this article, I focus on a specific aspect of biorobotics: biohybrid interaction between bioinspired robots and animals. My goal is to analyze the ethical and epistemic implications of this practice, starting with a central question<em>:</em> Is it ethically permissible to have a bioinspired robot that mimics and reproduces the behaviors and/or morphology of an animal interact with a particular population, even if the animals do not know that the object they are interacting with is a robot and not a conspecific? My answer to the ethical question is that the interaction between animals and bioinspired robots is ethically acceptable if the animal actively participates in the language game (sense Coeckelbergh) established with the robot. I proceed as follows: First, I define the field of biorobotics and describe its four macro-categories. Second, I present concrete examples of interactive biorobotics, showing two emblematic cases in which the relationship between bioinspired robots and animals plays a central role. Third, I address one key issue—among many—in applied ethics regarding my ethical question. Fourth, I explore the ethical question on a metaethical level, making use of the theories of David Gunkel and Mark Coeckelbergh, as well as the linguistic approach and ethics of the late Ludwig Wittgenstein. Last, I argue that from a meta-ethical approach the original ethical question turns out to be misplaced. The ethical boundary lies not in the distinction between a real or fake relationship between the robot and the organism, but in the degree of mutual participation and understanding between the entities involved.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":73937,"journal":{"name":"Journal of responsible technology","volume":"22 ","pages":"Article 100116"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143704339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A capability approach to ethical development and internal auditing of AI technology","authors":"Mark Graves ,&nbsp;Emanuele Ratti","doi":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100121","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100121","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Responsible artificial intelligence (AI) requires integrating ethical awareness into the full process of designing and developing AI, including ethics-based auditing of AI technology. We claim the Capability Approach (CA) of Sen and Nussbaum grounds AI ethics in essential human freedoms and can increase awareness of the moral dimension in the technical decision making of developers and data scientists constructing data-centric AI systems. Our use of CA focuses awareness on the ethical impact that day-to-day technical decisions have on the freedom of data subjects to make choices and live meaningful lives according to their own values. For internal auditing of AI technology development, we design and develop a light-weight ethical auditing tool (LEAT) that uses simple natural language processing (NLP) techniques to search design and development documents for relevant ethical characterizations. We describe how CA guides our design, demonstrate LEAT on both principle- and capabilities-based use cases, and characterize its limitations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":73937,"journal":{"name":"Journal of responsible technology","volume":"22 ","pages":"Article 100121"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144243259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Data Hazards: An open-source vocabulary of ethical hazards for data-intensive projects","authors":"Natalie Zelenka ,&nbsp;Nina H. Di Cara ,&nbsp;Euan Bennet ,&nbsp;Phil Clatworthy ,&nbsp;Huw Day ,&nbsp;Ismael Kherroubi Garcia ,&nbsp;Susana Roman Garcia ,&nbsp;Vanessa Aisyahsari Hanschke ,&nbsp;Emma Siân Kuwertz","doi":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100110","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100110","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Understanding the potential for downstream harms from data-intensive technologies requires strong collaboration across disciplines and with the public. Having shared vocabularies of concerns reduces the communication barriers inherent in this work. The Data Hazards project (<span><span>datahazards.com</span><svg><path></path></svg></span>) contains an open-source, controlled vocabulary of 11 hazards associated with data science work, presented as ‘labels’. Each label has (i) an icon, (ii) a description, (iii) examples, and, crucially, (iv) suggested safety precautions. A reflective discussion format and resources have also been developed. These have been created over three years with feedback from interdisciplinary contributors, and their use evaluated by participants (N=47). The labels include concerns often out-of-scope for ethics committees, like environmental impact. The resources can be used as a structure for interdisciplinary harms discovery work, for communicating hazards, collecting public input or in educational settings. Future versions of the project will develop through feedback from open-source contributions, methodological research and outreach.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":73937,"journal":{"name":"Journal of responsible technology","volume":"21 ","pages":"Article 100110"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143487335","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Human centred explainable AI decision-making in healthcare","authors":"Catharina M. van Leersum ,&nbsp;Clara Maathuis","doi":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100108","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100108","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Human-centred AI (HCAI<span><span>¹</span></span>) implies building AI systems in a manner that comprehends human aims, needs, and expectations by assisting, interacting, and collaborating with humans. Further focusing on <em>explainable AI</em> (XAI<span><span>²</span></span>) allows to gather insight in the data, reasoning, and decisions made by the AI systems facilitating human understanding, trust, and contributing to identifying issues like errors and bias. While current XAI approaches mainly have a technical focus, to be able to understand the context and human dynamics, a transdisciplinary perspective and a socio-technical approach is necessary. This fact is critical in the healthcare domain as various risks could imply serious consequences on both the safety of human life and medical devices.</div><div>A reflective ethical and socio-technical perspective, where technical advancements and human factors co-evolve, is called <em>human-centred explainable AI</em> (HCXAI<span><span>³</span></span>). This perspective sets humans at the centre of AI design with a holistic understanding of values, interpersonal dynamics, and the socially situated nature of AI systems. In the healthcare domain, to the best of our knowledge, limited knowledge exists on applying HCXAI, the ethical risks are unknown, and it is unclear which explainability elements are needed in decision-making to closely mimic human decision-making. Moreover, different stakeholders have different explanation needs, thus HCXAI could be a solution to focus on humane ethical decision-making instead of pure technical choices.</div><div>To tackle this knowledge gap, this article aims to design an actionable HCXAI ethical framework adopting a transdisciplinary approach that merges academic and practitioner knowledge and expertise from the AI, XAI, HCXAI, design science, and healthcare domains. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed actionable framework in real scenarios and settings while reflecting on human decision-making, two use cases are considered. The first one is on AI-based interpretation of MRI scans and the second one on the application of smart flooring.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":73937,"journal":{"name":"Journal of responsible technology","volume":"21 ","pages":"Article 100108"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143156602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring ethical research issues related to extended reality technologies used with autistic populations","authors":"Nigel Newbutt,&nbsp;Ryan Bradley","doi":"10.1016/j.jrt.2024.100102","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrt.2024.100102","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article provides an exploration of the ethical considerations and challenges surrounding the use of extended reality (XR) technologies with autistic populations. As XR-based research offers promising avenues for supporting autistic individuals, we explore and highlight various ethical concerns are inherent in XR research and application with autistic individuals. Despite its potential, we outline areas of concern related to privacy, security, content regulation, psychological well-being, informed consent, realism, sensory overload, and accessibility. We conclude with the need for tailored ethical frameworks to guide XR research with autistic populations, emphasizing collaboration, accessibility, and safeguarding as key principles and underscore the importance of balancing technological innovation with ethical responsibility to ensure that XR research with autistic populations is conducted with sensitivity, inclusivity, and respect for individual rights and well-being.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":73937,"journal":{"name":"Journal of responsible technology","volume":"21 ","pages":"Article 100102"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143156601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Normative conflict resolution through human–autonomous agent interaction","authors":"Beverley Townsend ,&nbsp;Katie J. Parnell ,&nbsp;Sinem Getir Yaman ,&nbsp;Gabriel Nemirovsky ,&nbsp;Radu Calinescu","doi":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100114","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100114","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We have become increasingly reliant on the decision-making capabilities of autonomous agents. These decisions are often executed under non-ideal conditions, offer significant moral risk, and directly affect human well-being. Such decisions may involve the choice to optimise one value over another: promoting safety over human autonomy, or ensuring accuracy over fairness, for example. All too often decision-making of this kind requires a level of normative evaluation involving ethically defensible moral choices and value judgements, compromises, and trade-offs. Guided by normative principles such decisions inform the possible courses of action the agent may take and may even change a set of established actionable courses.</div><div>This paper seeks to map the decision-making processes in normative choice scenarios wherein autonomous agents are intrinsically linked to the decision process. A care-robot is used to illustrate how a normative choice - underpinned by normative principles - arises, where the agent must ‘choose’ an actionable path involving the administration of critical or non-critical medication. Critically, the choice is dependent upon the trade-off involving two normative principles: respect for human autonomy and the prevention of harm. An additional dimension is presented, that of the inclusion of the urgency of the medication to be administered, which further informs and changes the course of action to be followed.</div><div>We offer a means to map decision-making involving a normative choice within a decision ladder using stakeholder input, and, using defeasibility, we show how specification rules with defeaters can be written to operationalise such choice.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":73937,"journal":{"name":"Journal of responsible technology","volume":"21 ","pages":"Article 100114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143578378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring research practices with non-native English speakers: A reflective case study","authors":"Marilys Galindo,&nbsp;Teresa Solorzano,&nbsp;Julie Neisler","doi":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100109","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100109","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Our lived experiences of learning and working are personal and connected to our racial, ethnic, and cultural identities and needs. This is especially important for non-native English-speaking research participants, as English is the dominant language for learning, working, and the design of the technologies that support them in the United States. A reflective approach was used to critique the research practices that the authors were involved in co-designing with English-first and Spanish-first learners and workers. This case study explored designing learning and employment innovations to best support non-native English-speaking learners and workers during transitions along their career pathways. Three themes were generated from the data: the participants reported feeling the willingness to help, the autonomy of expression, and inclusiveness in the co-design process. From this critique, a structure was developed for researchers to guide decision-making and to inform ways of being more equitable and inclusive of non-native English-speaking participants in their practices.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":73937,"journal":{"name":"Journal of responsible technology","volume":"21 ","pages":"Article 100109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143386817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring expert and public perceptions of answerability and trustworthy autonomous systems","authors":"Louise Hatherall,&nbsp;Nayha Sethi","doi":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100106","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrt.2025.100106","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The emerging regulatory landscape addressing autonomous systems (AS) is underpinned by the notion that such systems be trustworthy. What individuals and groups need to determine a system as worthy of trust has consequently attracted research from a range of disciplines, although important questions remain. These include how to ensure trustworthiness in a way that is sensitive to individual histories and contexts, as well as if, and how, emerging regulatory frameworks can adequately secure the trustworthiness of AS. This article reports the socio-legal analysis of four focus groups with publics and professionals exploring whether answerability can help develop trustworthy AS in health, finance, and the public sector. It finds that answerability is beneficial in some contexts, and that to find AS trustworthy, individuals often need answers about future actions and how organisational values are embedded within a system. It also reveals pressing issues demanding attention for meaningful regulation of such systems, including dissonances between what publics and professionals identify as ‘harm’ where AS are deployed, and a significant lack of clarity about the expectations of regulatory bodies in the UK. The article discusses the implications of these findings for the developing but rapidly setting regulatory landscape in the UK and EU.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":73937,"journal":{"name":"Journal of responsible technology","volume":"21 ","pages":"Article 100106"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143157257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}