Minding morality: ethical artificial societies for public policy modeling

Diallo, Saikou Y.; Shults, F. LeRon; Wildman, Wesley J.

doi:10.1007/s00146-020-01028-5

Cited by 27 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…There is no space here to unpack Deleuze’s Stoic-inspired ethics (see Shults, 2014, for details). The main point for our current purposes is that CMS approaches can construct and explore wholly immanent socio-material “state spaces” within which we can discover topological facts about the ethical and political capacities and tendencies of networked agents with heterogeneous norms under a diversity of parameterized conditions (Diallo et al, 2020; Shults and Wildman, 2020a). Such tools could make it possible for human geographers to design and execute simulation experiments that tease out the propensities and probabilities of various ethical and political behaviors and interactions in the complex systems whose immanent dynamics they study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Progress in simulating human geography: Assemblage theory and the practice of multi-agent artificial intelligence modeling

Shults

2021

Progress in Human Geography

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Over the last few years, there has been an explosion of interest in assemblage theory among human geographers. During this same period, a growing number of scholars in the field have utilized computational methodologies to simulate the complex adaptive systems they study. However, very little attention has been paid to the connections between these two developments. This article outlines those connections and argues that more explicitly integrating assemblage theory and computer modeling can encourage a more robust philosophical understanding of both and facilitate progress in scientific research on the ways in which complex socio-material systems form and transform.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Progress in simulating human geography: Assemblage theory and the practice of multi-agent artificial intelligence modeling

Shults

2021

Progress in Human Geography

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“…This problem is typical of political systems (Soros 1998 ). As a result, “estimations of policy effectiveness fail to account for dynamics that are fundamental in human life and central to many public policy challenges” (Diallo et al 2021 ).…”

Section: The Main Assumptions In Investigated Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Artificial intelligence, public control, and supply of a vital commodity like COVID-19 vaccine

Tsyganov

2021

AI & Soc

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The article examines the problem of ensuring the political stability of a democratic social system with a shortage of a vital commodity (like vaccine against COVID-19). In such a system, members of society citizens assess the authorities. Thus, actions by the authorities to increase the supply of this commodity can contribute to citizens' approval and hence political stability. However, this supply is influenced by random factors, the actions of competitors, etc. Therefore, citizens do not have sufficient information about all the possibilities of supplying, and it is difficult for them to make the right decisions. Such citizen unawareness can be exploited by unscrupulous politicians to achieve personal targets. Therefore, it is necessary to organize public control to motivate politicians to use all available opportunities in supplying. The goal of the paper is to build such a digital mechanism of public control of the politicians by citizens, which would best assess and stimulate the activities of the authorities to improve the supply of a vital commodity. In the age of artificial intelligence, such digital public control in the face of uncertainty can be based on digital machine learning. In addition, it is necessary to take into account and model the activities of politicians associated with the presence of their own targets that do not coincide with public ones. Such politicians can use the learning of citizens for their own targets. The objective of the article is to build an optimal digital mechanism of public control in a two-level model of a democratic social system—a digital society. At its top level, there is the Citizen, who gives an assessment for the Politico located at the lower level. In turn, the Politico can influence the supplying of a vital commodity. Political stability is guaranteed if the Citizen regularly approves of the Politico’s actions to increase this supply. However, the Politico may not use the opportunities available to him to offer a commodity to achieve a personal target. To avoid this, the Politico’s control mechanism is proposed. It includes the procedure for digital learning of the Citizen, as well as a procedure for assessing the Politico activity. Sufficient conditions have been found for the synthesis of such the Politico’s control mechanism, at which stochastic possibilities of increasing the supply of a vital commodity are used. The example of such the Politico’s control mechanism is considered on the case of supply of the COVID-19 vaccine in England.

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“…We have argued elsewhere that it is worthwhile tackling these ethical concerns head on, surfacing the normative assumptions at work in the construction of model architectures as well as in the purposes for which simulation experiments are designed. Moreover, in the case of CMS technologies, we have the opportunity to scientifically test our hypotheses about the social effects of changing norms in human populations under varying conditions (Shults et al, 2018d;Shults and Wildman, 2020b;Diallo et al, 2021). This has the potential to alter the way in which public moral debates occur, as well as to increase the diversity of individuals who are able to participate in them.…”

Section: Philosophical Reflections On Simulating Secularitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulating Secularities: Challenges and Opportunities in the Computational Science of (Non)Religion

Shults

2021

Secularism and Nonreligion

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This article provides scholars of nonreligion and secularism with an introduction to some of the major opportunities and challenges associated with the growing application of computational methods to the phenomena they study. It also illustrates these opportunities and challenges by describing several overlapping research projects and some of the models of (non)religion they have produced. Finally, the article addresses some of the significant philosophical issues surrounding the use of computer modeling and simulation, focusing on the ethical and epistemological concerns that these tools often raise. I invite scholars of nonreligion to consider adding these techniques to their methodological toolkits, and to join in on the fascinating and important conversations about simulating secularities that these models engender.

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Minding morality: ethical artificial societies for public policy modeling

Cited by 27 publications

References 43 publications

Progress in simulating human geography: Assemblage theory and the practice of multi-agent artificial intelligence modeling

Progress in simulating human geography: Assemblage theory and the practice of multi-agent artificial intelligence modeling

Artificial intelligence, public control, and supply of a vital commodity like COVID-19 vaccine

Simulating Secularities: Challenges and Opportunities in the Computational Science of (Non)Religion

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