The Algorithmic Code of Ethics: Ethics at the Bedside of the Digital Revolution

The technical progress illustrated by the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT), online platforms, NBICs, autonomous expert systems, and the Blockchain let appear the possibility of a new world and the emergence of a fourth industrial revolution centered around digital data. Therefore, the advent of digital and its omnipresence in our modern society create a growing need to lay ethical benchmarks against this new religion of data, the "dataisme".

Table of Contents:
Foreword vii Lina WILLIATTE Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi Chapter 1. Ethics at the Service of Digital Technology 1 1.1. Towards a new paradigm of the digital society 2 1.2. Questions regarding the algorithmic universe 8 1.3. Ethics as a digital compass 19 1.4. Ethical challenges and risks regarding algorithmic processing 27 1.5. The environmental parameters of digital technology 37 1.6. What is the place of mankind in this digital society? 43 Chapter 2. The Code is Ethics and Ethics is the Code 55 2.1. Nature, the creator of codes, programming and algorithms 56 2.2. Algorithmic Darwinism 62 2.3. The evolutionary digital world 64 2.4. Environmental ethics 67 2.5. Algorithmic ethics 72 2.5.1. The symbiotic bridge between algorithms and ethics 75 2.5.2. Trust at the heart of a new ethics 79 2.5.3. The “blockchainization” of ethics 87 2.6. The codification of ethics via a process of networks of neurons 90 2.7. The complexity around an ethical AI 98 2.8. The Neo-Platonist ethical systemic platform (Ψ, G, Φ) 104 2.9. The systemic analysis approach centered on the individual in a digital ecosystem 112 2.10. Toward quantum ethics? 118 Chapter 3. The Framework for Algorithmic Processing 121 3.1. Characteristics of NICT essential for their use 122 3.1.1. Adaptability 125 3.1.2. Availability 125 3.1.3. Robustness 125 3.1.4. Auditability 127 3.1.5. IT integration 128 3.1.6. Consolidation 128 3.1.7. Diffusion 129 3.1.8. Co-ordination 129 3.1.9. Interoperability 129 3.2. Scenarios for the digital economy. 131 3.2.1. Scenario 1: the generalization and commercialization of algorithms combined with Platform as a Service (PaaS) tools 134 3.2.2. Scenario 2: organization into silos independent of data producers and algorithmic processing specialists 134 3.2.3. Scenario 3: domination of AI leaders via proprietary algorithms with unparalleled performances 135 3.3. An algorithm’s ethical rules 137 3.4. Ethical evaluation of algorithmic processing 142 3.4.1. Evaluation of data and practices 144 3.4.2. Evaluating the algorithm and its practices 146 3.5. The framework surrounding algorithmic systems 149 3.5.1. Digital governance 150 3.5.2. Digital regulation 155 3.5.3. Digital confidence 160 3.5.4. Algorithmic responsibility 164 3.6. Ethical management and direction framing algorithmic systems 169 Conclusion 179 Appendix 185 List of Abbreviations 191 References 197 Index 207