Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies offer new ways of conducting decision-making tasks that influence the daily lives of citizens, such as coordinating traffic, energy distributions, and crowd flows. They can sort, rank, and prioritize the distribution of fines or public funds and resources. Many of the changes that AI technologies promise to bring to such tasks pertain to decisions that are collectively binding. When these technologies become part of critical infrastructures, such as energy networks, citizens are affected by these decisions whether they like it or not, and they usually do not have much say in them. The democratic challenge for those working on AI technologies with collectively binding effects is both to develop and deploy technologies in such a way that the democratic legitimacy of the relevant decisions is safeguarded. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework to help policymakers, project managers, innovators, and technologists to assess and develop approaches to democratize AI. This framework embraces a broad sociotechnical perspective that highlights the interactions between technology and the complexities and contingencies of the context in which these technologies are embedded. We start from the problem-based and practice-oriented approach to democracy theory as developed by political theorist Mark Warren. We build on this approach to describe practices that can enhance or challenge democracy in political systems and extend it to integrate a sociotechnical perspective and make the role of technology explicit. We then examine how AI technologies can play a role in these practices to improve or inhibit the democratic nature of political systems. We focus in particular on AI-supported political systems in the energy domain.

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Broad Morals and Broad Reason: Reconciling inclusive ethics with psychological realism Many of today’s problems revolve around distance and proximity. Progressives argue that a universalist, inclusive ethics requires us to bridge distances in identity, space, and time. Conservatives object that such bridging is psychologically unrealistic: people of flesh and blood can only care about whom/what is close-by. Evolutionary and psychological research seems to corroborate this sobering view. Many researchers confirm that our intuitions (‘System 1’) are groupish and short-sighted, and largely deaf to the appeal of rational universalism (‘System 2’). But not all agree. We distinguish four ‘evo-progressive’ attempts to reconcile evolution and psychology with a universalist, inclusive ethics. Singer and Pinker (1), Buchanan and Powell (2), and Sunstein (3) contend that a reason-based, inclusive ethics is psychologically feasible, but that such an ethics has to be thin, solely focusing on rights and no-harm. By contrast, Haidt (4) argues that an inclusive ethics should be ‘broad’, also encompassing moral domains like sacrality, loyalty and authority. This implies for him that it cannot be reason-based. We argue that a broad form of inclusive ethics can and should be reason-based, but that this requires a rethinking of ‘reason’. We show that the evo-progressives’ conviction that a rational ethics is by definition thin, results from their theoreticistic conception of reason. But reason can also have more mimetic-embodied or mythical-narrative forms. These do allow for a broad, rational, inclusive ethics that can motivate real people to include stakeholders that are distant in identity, place, and time.

The life sciences community is now increasingly leaning on the processing powers of machines to carry out advanced scientific research. So in order to adequately exploit the capabilities of machines in science, the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles for scientific data management and stewardship have been proposed. These principles are to assist scientists in tweaking their established research routines so as to unlock the true potential of machines and contribute to better science. However, through interviews with key scientist groups implicated by FAIR we have learned that doing what FAIR demands also presents certain epistemic concerns that discourage scientists to trust FAIR. One such concern is the loss of valuable knowledge in the translation of versatile human readable research output to a restricted, machine friendly language to enable machine action (semantic freedom). A second concern is evident in the displacement of human expertise by this increasing reliance on machines and the ensuing loss of knowledge contributed by these displaced experts (expert intuition). Thus, through this article, we highlight how incorporating FAIR also presents an epistemic loss to the scientific community. But the lack of attention given to these concerns by the proponents of FAIR offers scientists who have to abide by FAIR sufficient reason to resist it. We thus propose that while the implementation of FAIR has so far been paternalistic and top-down, such concerns have also made the scientist sceptical. So by initiating a more balanced, open and honest discussion of not just the benefits and promises of FAIR but also such epistemic costs, FAIR could lay to rest reasons for such scepticism and foster trust within the stakeholders of FAIR.

Current research of gene regulatory mechanisms is increasingly dependent on the availability of high-quality information from manually curated databases. Biocurators undertake the task of extracting knowledge claims from scholarly publications, organizing these claims in a meaningful format and making them computable. In doing so, they enhance the value of existing scientific knowledge by making it accessible to the users of their databases. In this capacity, biocurators are well positioned to identify and weed out information that is of insufficient quality. The criteria that define information quality are typically outlined in curation guidelines developed by biocurators. These guidelines have been prudently developed to reflect the needs of the user community the database caters to. The guidelines depict the standard evidence that this community recognizes as sufficient justification for trustworthy data. Additionally, these guidelines determine the process by which data should be organized and maintained to be valuable to users. Following these guidelines, biocurators assess the quality, reliability, and validity of the information they encounter. In this article we explore to what extent different use cases agree with the inclusion criteria that define positive and negative data, implemented by the database. What are the drawbacks to users who have queries that would be well served by results that fall just short of the criteria used by a database? Finally, how can databases (and biocurators) accommodate the needs of such more explorative use cases?

Massive open online courses (MOOCs), in theory, allow people to study wherever and whenever they want. They promise to broaden access and availability of education, allowing people to ‘up-skill’ themselves. As an important innovation, they provoke reflection on the meaning and purpose of the university. A number of humanities scholars have voiced scepticism as to whether MOOCs can deliver the sort of intellectual training and personal cultivation (Bildung) that is provided within the walls of the university, where staff and students interact face-to-face, in relatively intimate settings, to discuss issues they deem important rather than being driven by external definitions of relevance. In this chapter, after introducing MOOCs, we explore the most common arguments about why MOOCs would be incompatible with the values of the humanities. We then question the extent to which MOOCs really do threaten these values. We do this by eliciting advantages and disadvantages from people’s experiences with MOOCs so far. Far from confirming the sceptics’ perceived incompatibility between a technology-intensive environment and the Bildung ideal, experiences with MOOCs to date may actually serve to promote several of the values of the humanities. Drawing on theories of technological mediation, we propose that instead of shunning MOOCs, the humanities should be thinking about how to facilitate Bildung within MOOCs. In this way, they can have a lasting and desirable impact on the future of higher education.

This chapter describes some of the problems we encountered during a field philosophical project that aimed to bring together technology developers and stakeholders in an attempt to design democratic digital technologies for the governance of cities. We reflect on our failures and develop some rules of thumb for avoiding these.

This paper argues for the involvement of the performing and applied arts in technological development in the field of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). It discusses the challenges and the benefits for the arts, and presents existing methods in the field of RRI. It then describes two practical case studies called gameformances carried out by the authors.

The notion of 'responsible innovation' has become fashionable amongst policy-makers and knowledge institutes. In the new Horizon 2020, calls of the EU 'responsible research and innovation' (RRI) figures prominently as a condition and an aim in itself. The rise of RRI shows considerable overlap with the aims, philosophies and practices of Technology Assessment (TA). The overlap, though, is not perfect and this raises questions about how RRI relates to TA. While it is plausible to interpret the relationship as RRI being a sequel of TA ambitions, we explore an alternative interpretation: RRI as a critique of TA.

In this review I argue that Puech draws on two important currents in modern thought: the criticism of the ontological and social priority of conflict, and the rehabilitation of praxis vis-à-vis theoria. Still, his plea for a non-confrontational art of living leaves important questions unanswered. What is the problem exactly? What does exactly count as (non)confrontational? What is non-confrontation exactly meant to solve? What is the antiposition here? And: how does this new (or rather: old) art of living relate to the political and ethical varieties of Technology Assessment?

In her article, Grubbs (2016) presents a rhetorical dismantlement of a neuroscientific and a cognitive psychology study on literariness. Following Rose and Abi-Rached's (2013) plea for a more const...

In this paper I argue that we can no longer afford to ignore technology’s so-called ‘soft’ impacts, as this type of impact is becoming increasingly prominent in affluent societies where people have sufficient resources to pursue self-realization and where technologies are becoming more and more ‘intimate’ as they pervade our life world. These soft impacts come with their own type of normative challenges. The first challenge is to acknowledge the mutual shaping of technology and morality that causes soft impacts to be fundamentally morally ambiguous. The second challenge is to anticipate soft impacts, which requires a rich and thick description of our morally laden current practices in the light of plausible technomoral change provoked by emerging technologies. The third and last challenge is to avoid both relativism and foundationalism, by opting for an open and learning attitude vis à vis the ways new and emerging technologies put our current morals into question.