Recommender Systems and their Ethical Challenges

Abstract

This article presents the first, systematic analysis of the ethical challenges posed by recommender systems. Through a literature review, the article identifies six areas of concern, and maps them onto a proposed taxonomy of different kinds of ethical impact. The analysis uncovers a gap in the literature: currently user-centred approaches do not consider the interests of a variety of other stakeholders-as opposed to just the receivers of a recommendation-in assessing the ethical impacts of a recommender system.

Ethics of Food Recommender Applications

“…In the literature [11,13,26], Recommender systems (RS) are defined as systems that generally collect, organise and evaluate large quantities of (usually personal) data, and impact the users' interaction with (individually) tailored experience of their digital realm. Milano et al [34] after reviewing the literature on RS articulated a taxonomy that enabled them to identify the key ethical issues usually emerging in RS literature. On the one hand, their taxonomy distinguishes between utility and rights-based concerns.…”

“…The lack of personalised tailoring clearly shifts the focal ethical issues related to RS in the case of F-RS(P-), hence, F-RS(P-) cannot be regarded just as a domain-restricted RS. If we take a step back and look at the major concerns identified by Milano et al on a more abstract level for RS [34] we can see how the lack of personalisation changes the relevance of those concerns, and also alter what those concerns mean in the specific context of F-RS(P-) empirically.…”

“…Based on recent debates regarding the ethics of recommender systems [25,26,34], the guidelines proposed by private and international committees [4,24], and on the latest research on food recommender systems [44], this article investigates the relevant ethical framework for such systems, proposes the ethical desiderata, argue for multi-stakeholder approach to food recommender systems, and point out future research directions.…”

Ethical aspects of multi-stakeholder recommendation systems

“…They inform how web search results are generated and displayed, curate news feeds, allocate advertisement slots, and power job and dating platforms, among other things. RSs raise important issues with respect to basic ethical categories such as personal identity, fairness, accountability, and privacy (Milano, Taddeo, & Floridi, 2019). Moreover, they can shape the construction of preferences, as well as orchestrating social interactions, by virtue of controlling the presentation of options and the information exchanges that take place within the system (Taddeo & Floridi, 2018).…”

AI and Its New Winter: from Myths to Realities

“…They should be ashamed and apologize. Not only for their untenable comments, but also for the great irresponsibility and alarmism, which have misled public opinion both about a potentially useful technology-that could provide helpful solutions, from medicine to security and monitoring systems (Taddeo and Floridi 2018)-and about the real risks-which we know are concrete but so much less fancy, from everyday manipulation of choices (Milano et al 2019) to increased pressure on individual and group privacy (Floridi 2014), from cyberconflicts to the use of AI by organized crime for money laundering and identity theft (King et al 2020).…”