Ethics in Autonomous Systems  

 University of Sheffield - 25th November 2015

Ensuring ethics can be embedded in autonomous systems rather than solely be applied at the operational level phase by humans was identified as one of the grand challenges for systems engineering in a past Systems-NET Research Grand Challenges Workshop that took place in June 2015. Now a new mini-workshop has been organised to refine the issues that this Grand Challenge presents.

The workshop proposed is about exploring the increasing number of challenges in large complex interconnected cyber physical systems with demand for greater autonomy plus self-reconfiguration. The reliance on autonomous systems to provide services, connect to devices, manage personal data, and many others requires a high level of human ethics that autonomous systems cannot create by themselves. Embedding ethics into cyber physical systems presents many challenges and these will be discussed in the workshop. 

This is a 1 day workshop divided in three sessions for discussion and short presentations. We will gather the participant's round-table views on cyber ethics, which together with the presentations and posters will form the bases for the discussion of this challenge. 

Participation

We are looking for contributors to the workshop discussions as well as presenters of research work. If you are interested to participate and would like to contribute please register by filling in the form below.

Presentations

Presentations are invited on the topics that fall within the scope of the workshop. Due to time constraints all the presentations will be limited to 10 minutes with an extra 5 minutes for a Q&A session. We recommend the preparation of a Quad Chart.  

Posters

A display of posters will be in exhibition to provide maximum opportunities for networking and discussion. If you would like to contribute with a poster please let us know in the registration form.

Quad Chart

A Quad Chart consists of a single PowerPoint page divided into four quadrants that summarise a Grand Challenge in a manner that is visual and informative; a template is available if required. The first page/quadrant must contain a grand challenge/problem statement and antecedents. The second page/quadrant should describe the approaches, plans, milestones or progress associated with the grand challenge; the third page/quadrant can be used to give examples, evidence, results or findings and the last page/quadrant should refer to the relationship of the challenge(s) discussed with other disciplines, areas of work or other grand challenges.