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Computers and society is an academic discipline focused on understanding the impacts that digital technologies are having on society from a social, policy, legal, and ethical framework. Computer ethics is a subfield focused specifically on ethical issues. The discipline of computers and society provides a framework for individuals, groups, organizations, and governments to thoughtfully consider issues, take positions, make decisions, and act with respect to societal challenges such as digital inclusion, technology addiction, privacy, security, safety, autonomous vehicles and weapons, intellectual property, automation, artificial intelligence, and digital risks and threats.

History

Digital technologies are the intellectual descendants of calculators, which for many years were tasks carried out by human beings., Technology also supported and also of technologies for supporting other human activities, such as writing, printing, drawing, communication, and coordination.

As early as the 16th century BC in ancient Egypt, automata capable of independent movement were constructed for entertainment, such as clocks and toys, and consultation. Prominent examples include clocks and toys. Some were even consulted for advice.  They became objects of fascination and even subterfuge, likeas for example the 1769 chess-playing machine called the Turk, that was in fact controlled by an human operator. Humanoid automata are known as robots. Leonardo da Vinci sketched plans for one in 1495; the term ‘robot’ was coined by the Czech writer Karel Čapek in the 1920 playa play called R.U.R. in 1920.

Advances in electronics made it possible to construct digital technologies, bringing forth known as digital computers in the 1940s. (See the early history of the field). Dystopias are portrayals of communities or societies that have become unpleasant, frightening, or even dangerous. The nNew computer technology exacerbated concerns about surveillance and oppression., as is portrayed in Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. As computers became pervasive, literary and film dystopias focused increasingly on computers, raising issues such as the safety of robots, control by evil actors supported by technology and autonomous and dangerous robots no longer under human control. Good early examples are Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, and Minority Report by Philip K. Dick.

Computers and society began to emerge as a scholarly discipline with writings such as The Human Use of Human Beings (1950) by Norbert Wiener, Privacy and Freedom (1967) by Alan Westin, Social Issues in Computing (1973) by Calvin C. Gotlieb and Allan Borodin, the first textbook in the field; and Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation (1976) by Joseph Weizenbaum. 

Disruptive technologies

Digital technologies have transformed the world over the past 75 years. The social, politicalcy, legal, and ethical issues that result are in great part due to opportunities afforded and disruptions caused by inventionsnew technologies such as personal computers, the internet, and the web. The next several decades will be driven by advances in artificial intelligence, the internet of things, financial technologies, and artificial reality.

Artificial intelligence (AI)

AI is enabling profound positive changes, but also raises troubling issues. Artificial intelligence is the science of creating software and robots capable of making decisions and performing tasks viewed by humans as requiring intelligence. The dominant approach through about 2010 was GOFAI (Good Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence), also known as symbolic artificial Intelligence, in which machines were trained on given knowledge databases thatwhich were then used by logic algorithms to make decisions and control actions. Since then, in part enabled by faster processors and larger memories, the dominant approach has been machine learning. Algorithms are typically trained to recognize patterns and make decisions by practicing  on as many as  millions of examples in which they are shown the correct answers. Opportunities and ethical choices arise from AI in many domains, including autonomous vehicles such as self-driving cars, lethal autonomous weapons; automated medical diagnosis, an advanced goal far beyond that of computer-aided diagnosis; as well as applications of AI in the justice system, and to senior care and education.

The internet of things

The Internet of things (IoT) is an umbrella term describing computers, processors, sensors, and effectors communicating over the internet or a local area network. A very visible manifestation of this concept is the widespread adoption of virtual assistants which carry out tasks or provide services to humans upon command, Many of these can be commanded by voice like the , as for example Amazon Alexa. More generally, many “smart homes” are now instrumented by communicating digital technologies for purposes such as climate control or security.;; The same idea is being applied in urban areas to buildyielding what are being known as smart cities. Individuals, families, and communities increasingly have to decide if the efficiency benefits of such technologies  when they are working properly justify their security, privacy, and safety concerns.

Financial technologies

A blockchain is a list of records (a block) that are chronologically and securely linked using cryptography. Blockchains, first developed by an unknown person or persons known as Satoshi Nakamoto, are typically managed by a peer-to-peer network that is stored in a suite of distributed ledger technologies (DLT). The DLT is (a “shared ledger” or DLT) programmed to record andor track historical changes, . tracking changes non-destructively over time. Unlike financial ledgers, blockchain iswas created to be decentralized by design, distributed and accessible across large networks. There are reduced risks of data tampering, as a computer must first solve a cryptographic puzzle to create a block. Then the solution for the puzzle (proof-of-work) is shared among the entire network. Finally, the network verifies the proof-of-work, and the block is added to the chain. The combination of cryptographic puzzles and network verification ensures that blockchain data is secure and can be trusted. In recent years, other methods of creating blocks, such as proof-of-stake, have become popular due to their lower environmental footprint.

Cryptocurrency (crypto or coin) is a digital currency designed to act as a decentralized medium of exchange without a central authority, such as a government or a bank,. A cryptocurrency is an encrypted, tradable, digital asset built on a blockchain and existing entirely online, making it secure and trustworthy. Cryptocurrencies should not be confused with traditional currencies and are viewed as a separate asset class in the financial system. Unlike cash, cryptocurrencies do not exist in a tangible form and are created through mining, the process of generating new coins by authenticating data.

Bitcoin was the first decentralized cryptocurrency and was first released as an open-source software in 2009. As of March 2022, there are more than 9,000 other cryptocurrencies in the digital marketplace with a market capitalization exceeding $1 billion. The value of cryptocurrencies has fluctuated widely with consequent severe risks as investments.

Artificial reality

Artificial reality, a term which sounds like a contradiction in terms, was pioneering work on interactive immersive environments done by the technology artist Myron Krueger starting in the 1960s, and first described in his 1983 book entitled Artificial Reality. Artificial reality can be understood in terms of three aspects: virtual reality, augmented reality, and virtual environments. Virtual reality immerses a user in a synthesized world which s/he perceives using a head-mounted display, audio via headphones, and possibly vibrations of the real world in which the viewer is located. Augmented reality overlays computer-generated video, audio, and haptic information on a viewer's real-world perceptions. Virtual environments are computer-based interactive immersive environments that facilitate connections and communication; a notable early example of which was Second Life. These technologies have already demonstrated value in specific educational and medical applications. The question of wide scale impact rests upon whether Mark Zuckerberg of Meta Platforms is correct that what he terms the metaverse will be the next big thing that everyone will use for both work and play.

Human welfare and health

Since the early days of digital computing in the 1950s and 1960s, visionary medical scientists such as Dr. Lawrence Weed, developer of the concept of the problem-oriented medical record and the SOAP note (subjective, objective, assessment, and plan), have worked to apply digital technologies to improve the practice of medicine and profit provide benefits to health. As the use of the internet, the web, computers, and mobile phones became universal in the 2000s, it has produced the dual problems of insufficient access leading to exclusion and overuse leading to addiction.

Digital inclusion

Digital inclusion has become essential  because computers, mobile phones, and telecommunications are now necessary for commerce, communication, and learning. Yet digital technologies, communications bandwidth, and expertise are not sufficiently available to all people and usable by them all over the world. This issue was originally known as the digital divide. Four major areas of concern are gender disparities in computing; computer accessibility for people with sensory, motor, cognitive, and linguistic challenges; technology suitability for seniors; and technology access for racialized minorities including indigenous peoples.

Technology addiction

A converse problem to the lack of digital inclusion consists of addictive behaviors in which use becomes excessive and unhealthy: computer addiction, problematic smartphone use, internet addiction disorder, and video game addiction. Mental health effects on children such as lower self-worth and increased depression have been studied thoroughly by Jean Twenge and documented in the book iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — And Completely Unprepared for Adulthood — and What This Means for the Rest of Us. For adults, the availability of work technology and the inability to get away is one cause of becoming and remaining a workaholic.

Health and medicine

Digital technologies have transformed the practice of medicine and helped society achieve greater achievement inof health. Electronic health records support a more systematic practice of medicine but suffer from a continued lack of interoperability and can pose a threat to the privacy of personal data. Patients become more knowledgeable by accessing health information on the internet and by sharing information via online health communities, despite risks due to misinformation.

Increasingly, much of what is online is medical disinformation that is dangerous to health and well-being. In 2020, common topics of disinformation spread about vaccines and COVID-19. Misinformation concerning vaccines spurred the “anti-vax” movement creates risks for a resurgence of previously controlled diseases. Misinformation concerning COVID-19 has also caused an increase of xenophobia and racism against the AAPI population (See Chinese virus). The availability of both regulated and unregulated medical research online can also lead to the popularization of flawed research such as that linking vaccines to autism and unscientific claims on behalf of alternative medicine,

Recent advances in machine learning have led to good accuracy in medical image computing and pattern recognition applied to certain domains of automatic medical image classification, yet clinical decision support systems are not yet able to do automatic medical diagnosis. A recent development is the use of artificial intelligence in precision medicine, which allows the tailoring of medical treatments to the individual characteristics of patients. One application of precision medicine has been termed designer babies, in which such techniques are applied to embryos, with the benefits of screening for impending disease, but with the ethical concerns raised by eugenics.

Learning, work, commerce and play

Digital technologies have transformed how we work, play, learn, and do business.

Knowledge and learning

Knowledge communities are virtual communities in which people or groups informally exchange information with a purpose such as achieving a shared goal, generating knowledge, or gaining knowledge. Members typically are in the same field or share similar passions, challenges, or goals. Virtual communities date back to the 1980s, one of the first being the WELL, created in 1985. They have often played a key role in local communities, such as Blacksburg Electronic Village’s support of life in Blacksburg, Virginia, and the Usenet message board’s support of knowledge exchange among UNIX software developers. Knowledge communities have evolved significantly in this millennium because of the development of social media, where the value of shared knowledge has been challenged by the rise of misinformation (discussed below).

Computer-based education

Computer-based education making use of educational technology was first developed in the early 1960s when PLATO was created at the University of Illinois.;  Patrick Suppes and Richard Atklnson experimented with software for teaching at Stanford University; and Seymour Papert and Wallace Feurzeig developed the LOGO programming language at M.I.T. for use by children. Teachers today widely employ computer-based education tools to enhance their lessons.

For example, electronic whiteboards and Microsoft Powerpoint are popular in modern classrooms. Classrooms with these and other technological tools are called “smart classrooms.” During the Covid-19 pandemic, many nations transformed their education systems to primarily rely on computer-based education. Zoom became a popular medium for teachers to connect with their students at home and deliver their lessons through video and screen sharing. While skillfully designed computer-based education enriches learning, there are challenges, such as students from low-income families being disadvantaged due to poor access to computers, communications bandwidth, and a quiet place to learn, and supporting students with special needs.

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) were first developed in the 2000s and seek to provide worldwide education through online lectures by talented professors. MOOCs also offer readings, problem sets, interactive activities, evaluations, and the ability to complete certificates or degrees. Leading vendors are Coursera, EdX, XuetangX, and FutureLearn. During the mid-2010smid 2010s millions of students were enrolled in MOOCs. That said, very few students registered for a MOOC course complete it. The “openness” of MOOCs is its provision of more accessible educational opportunities. Critiques of MOOCs include the requirement of digital literacy, the lack of structure, language barriers, and the lack of support for struggling students.

Digital media and intellectual property

Computer scientists working in the 1950s and 1960s at research laboratories such as MIT Lincoln Laboratory and Bell Laboratories, including notably  Ken Knowlton, Max Matthews, and Ivan Sutherland, discovered ways to represent text,  music, images, and motion pictures as digital media, and began to explore technologies for creating and performing these media. These early efforts led to booming fields today such as computer music, computer graphics, computer animation, and special effects.

Digitization and distribution of existing media content over the internet in the 1990s led to challenges to copyright resulting in the birth and death of companies, new laws and regulations, and new technologies for encrypting content, for locking it, and for breaking the locks. Although new technical and pricing models for distributing or streaming content have lessened the problem, media creators still struggle today to ensure that they receive fair compensation for their work. The open source and open access movements have developed as alternatives to copyright and as ways of sharing digital media and computer programs content and encouraging collaboration in their creation.

Commerce

E-commerce refers to the online marketplace, where anyone can buy or sellis buying or selling goods and services on the internet. For example, individuals can purchase products including books, electronics, and movies from Amazon notably stands at the forefront of e-commerce by offering a wide array of products with short delivery times, bringing customization and convenience to consumers. SavingE-commerce allows customers to save time by improving transaction efficiency and business overheades to save space by reducing or eliminating the need for physical retail spaces has created a revolution in the way consumers navigate the digital economy.for customers to shop and for inventory and by sending products directly from manufacturers. E-commerce firms tend to collect demographic data from websites and social media for marketing and purposes. E-commerce has created new jobs related to information services, but has also produced  job losses for retail workers and people with limited technical skills. Moreover, data collection and surveillance capitalism to nudge consumer shopping preferences raises concerns over personal privacy and security online. There are also environmental concerns due to increases in container cardboard.

Platform economies or 2-sided businesses are online or technological platforms facilitating economic and social activity between two users. The result is often known as the “gig economy”. Examples include eBay, Uber, Airbnb, GoFundMe, and TaskRabbit. Proponents of platform economies argue that they promote productivity, reduce costs and inefficiencies, and create new markets. In contrast, opponents argue that they increase technological unemployment and that there is less labor protection. Gig workers have substantial autonomy, as they typically work at a time and place of their choosing, but the work is unpredictable and provides few of the protections that salaried employees are accustomed to.

Jobs, automation, and unemployment

The effects of technology on work are widespread and diverse. Algorithms can sort through and select suitable job applicants from pools of applicants. Online platforms, including LinkedIn, can assist in the job matching process. Technology also can monitor job performance by software, email, location, keypad, and phone monitoring as well as by video surveillance. Many workers experience negative emotional and physical effects of this “Big Brother” monitoring, and it can conflict with individual privacy. A final result is technological unemployment, a form of structural unemployment characterized by the job loss caused by the transition to automation.

Automation refers to the use of  technology to  reduce the need for human labor. Advantages of automation include increased productivity, quality, and predictability. A major disadvantage is the loss of jobs for humans. For instance, many weavers lost their careers in the early 19th century after the mechanized loom was created. Today, self-checkouts at stores have resulted in the unemployment of retail cashiers. The manufacturing sector in the United States has experienced substantial automation and transformation in the past decades, resulting in higher overall productivity and lower wages for manufacturing workers.

Many predict that certain industries will be made obsolete by automation in the future. The idea of unemployment caused by technology was popularized by the English economist John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s. There are opposing viewpoints on whether technological unemployment is long-term. Those who argue that technological unemployment is short-term point to the compensation effects ofby the new job category creation of new job categories. Economic inequality also results from automation, because there is greater demand and higher wages for skilled workers whose skills complement technology.

Play

Video games can be fantastical or based on real-world conventional games such as those involving dice and cards. The first commercial video game was Pong, which was introduced in 1972 and mimicked table tennis. Since then, video games have become more complex and realistic. They require human input, which can be with a joystick, keyboard, mouse, or other controller. Games can include opposing another human, as in the game of chess. Online games require internet connection to allow players to play with one another at a distance.

Simulation games mimic processes or systems in the real-world environment, and sometimes involve role playing. Dungeons and Dragons and The Sims  have been popular simulation games. Business games are often used for assessing employee performance, improving the business, and team building. Massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are characterized by hundreds or thousands of users working together or competing in a persistent world. A good example is World of Warcraft. A persistent world is a virtual world that is perpetually developing. The various types of MMOGs include role-playing, first-person shooter, real-time strategy, turn-based strategy, and simulations. Like simulation games, MMOGs became popular during the 1980s and 1990s.

Speech, dialogue, and politics

The internet is a vehicle for communication and dialogue. Democratic societies have struggled with issues of what can be said or not said on the net, and more generally with the role of digital technologies in politics.

Free speech

Freedom of speech is supported by the constitutions of many nations. While the definition varies among nations, it includes speaking, not speaking, and symbolic speech. Free speech is generally protected from censorship by governments with a few exceptions, such as libel, slander, incitement, and obscenity. Totalitarian governments often censor free speech on social media and in society generally. Freedom of speech is not protected in the private sphere, so social media companies such as Twitter and Meta are legally permitted to remove posts they deem unsuitable from their platforms. Efforts to moderate content on platforms face issues of cross-jursidictional reach and navigating the balance between free speech and censorship.  

Community mobilization

Social media platforms can act as a communication channel for social movements, for people to share their ideas, unite, and mobilize to advocate for change. Community mobilization is “the process of bringing together as  many stakeholders as possible to” achieve a certain goal. Community mobilization promotes representation and accountability which are important aspects of a democratic government. Digital technology has changed how political organizations engage and interact with their constituents. For example, the strength of the Arab Spring and the Black Lives Matter movement can be attributed to social media.

Social media and misinformation

Internet social media support social connections despite people being geographically distant, and also spread news and entertainmentother information. Social media’s value is now imperiled because of misinformation, the unintentional spread of false information, and disinformation, the intentional spread of false information. In the United States, false information regarding presidential elections (e.g., “Stop the Steal” and attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election) has been rampant. Effects of disinformation can also be seen in other nations (e.g., Indian WhatsApp lynchings, 2021-2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis). False information concerning COVID-19 has also been a relevant issue across the globe (discussed above).

The structure of social media aids in creating echo chambers that reinforce the beliefs of a community through constant exposure of the views of like-minded people and  limited exposure to different opinions. Exposure to diverse opinions is also aided by filter bubbles that result when social media algorithms curate content for individuals based on their interests and interactions. Such clusters of users and content based on interests can encourage social polarization, strengthening beliefs that a community is correct in their beliefs  (see also confirmation bias, motivated reasoning). Another source of confusion is fake news, disinformation where misleading information containing sensationalist or clickbait headlines pretends to be legitimate news. The term was frequently and incorrectly used by former U.S. president Donald Trump to discredit and question the legitimacy of credible sources.

Hate speech and content moderation

Hate speech is when a form of communication is used to incite prejudice or violence towards a group based on criteria such as gender or race or ethnicity.. Social media have exhibited increasing amounts of  hate speech online. For example, here is strong evidence that  hate speech by the Myanmar people on Facebook played a role in the genocide of the Rohingya people. As with other kinds of misinformation, social media firms have been working on manual and algorithmic identification and removal, yet such techniques have sometimes been found to discriminate in favor of certain groups. Their effectiveness has also been damaged by Facebook’s practice of prioritizing engagement over stopping hate speech ( see more at 2021 Facebook leak).

Because of hate speech and misinformation, social media sites such as Meta Platforms and Twitter try to identify and flag or remove misinformation, using methods such as human or algorithmic fact-checking of posts about topics such as health, elections, ethnic groups, and elections. This is known as content moderation but creates tensions with . it is sometimes viewed  as censorship and results in significant controversy.  For example, even though he had been warned for months about spreading disinformation. former President Trump’s ban from Twitter after the attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021 resulted in some dissent, viewing it as a limitation on  free speech. Similarly the creation of the Facebook Oversight Board was met with mixed reviews as it was seen as both an abdication of Meta’s responsibility to moderate its content and internatinalization of moderation decisions.

Elections and election hacking

Election security is the protection of elections and voting systems from cyberattacks. Election hacking is a type of electoral fraud that manipulates or discredits votes by electronic versions of techniques such as ballot stuffing and voter impersonation. Threats can come from internal and external sources. Internal sources can be hackers within an election’s  jurisdiction or someone of power within the election administration. An external cause is typically a foreign electoral intervention, motivated by theforeign power’s interests. Russia has been a major player in foreign electoral intervention (see Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election and in other elections.)

Internet shutdowns and censorship

Totalitarian regimes and governments in crisis, such as those facing community mobilization, will censor some websites and apps or shut down the internet totally to hinder mobilization and stop the spread of information they view as dangerous to the stability of their rule. Examples include constant censorship in China and Iran, occasional censorship in India, and attempts at censorship in the Arab Spring.

Safety, peace, and war

Both Norbet Wiener and Joseph Weizenbaum cautioned us as early as 1950 that it was likely that software would grow in complexity until it was no longer understood and could therefore not be mastered and made safe and correct. For example, there was a widespread fear that many programs would cease operating on January 1, 2000, because most had been designed to represent years with only 2 or 3 digits. Yet a Y2K disaster was averted because of diligent efforts to identify programs that were vulnerable and fix the software. There are many other cases that did result in disasters and loss of life, and developers of digital technologies are working to ensure safe use of their creations.

Online safety

Internet safety includes information security and personal safety. Information security deals with securing sensitive information against cyberattacks (discussed below). Personal safety is endangered by cybercrime as well as cyberbullying, cancel culture, and doxing. Cyberbullying is online harassment of an individual or group. It can be more harmful than  physical bullying because it can happen any time, any place. Examples of cyberbullying include cyberstalking and trolling. Cyberbullying has been growing and has serious psychological impacts on victims, especially on adolescents.

Cancel culture is used to describe how individuals are “called-out” and ostracized for unacceptable actions. For example, the #MeToo movement encouraged people to reveal and call-out abusers. The act of “canceling” or online shaming is not confined to big groups. For example, celebrities have been canceled for reasons such as  cultural appropriation (e.g., Awkwafina), views on gender and sex (e.g., J.K. Rowling), and abuse (e.g., R.Kelly). Doxing is when private personal information is released publicly online without consent, for purposes such as revenge porn,  shaming, extortion, or vigilantism.

Safety of digital machinery and devices

The safety of medical devices impacts the health and welfare of people encountering them. Medical errors can be caused by factors such as complex technology, poor system design, inadequate training, and human error. Notable examples include robotic surgery deaths as in the case of the Therac-25 radiation machine and defective medical implants. Industrial disasters are “disasters caused by industrial companies, either by accident, negligence, or incompetence.” Industrial machinery is used to perform essential functions, automate processes, and increase efficiency. Our safety therefore depends upon the reliable and consistent operation of the machinery. The Hawaii false missile alert illustrates how human error alongside system error can cause unrest and panic. The Northeast blackout of 2003 is an example where a software bug in an alarm system caused a widespread power outage across part of North America  and led to almost 100 deaths. A recent example is  the Boeing 737 Max, where faulty hardware and software design and inadequate training led to two crashes with almost 350 deaths.

Digital security

Data breaches are security violations in which private data is accessed and used by unauthorized individuals. Data breaches can involve various types of data including personal health information, personally identifiable information (information that can be used to uniquely identify a specific person), and intellectual property. Data breach notification laws which require that affected individuals are notified if their data is leaked.

Identity theft is when someone uses a person’s personally identifiable information to commit fraud or other crimes. This information can include someone’s name, date of birth, passwords, social security number, or other private information.  Identity theft may be criminal identity theft (in order to commit a crime), financial identity theft (in order to gain money, goods, or services), identity cloning (in order to pretend to be as another person), medical identity theft (in order to obtain medical care), and child identity theft (identity theft of a minor). Identity theft can be facilitated in ways including data breaches, stealing personal documents or credit cards, and through social engineering (manipulating people to disclose personal information).

Ransomware is a type of malware that threatens victims’ personal data unless a ransom is paid. The attacker typically either threatens to leak the private information, to block access to the information, or to delete the data. There have been many notable ransomware attacks including the ransomware attack on the Atlanta government in 2018 and the ransomware attack on the city of Baltimore in 2019. Individuals can protect themselves against ransomware attacks by following cyber hygiene including backing up their data, installing antivirus, updating their computer, and exercising caution when opening unknown links.

Autonomous vehicles

It has been estimated that 1.25 million individuals were killed and many more injured in motor vehicle accidents worldwide in 2013. Digital technology has been used in motor vehicles for several decades. Autonomous vehicles seek to reduce danger on the road and reimagine transporation.Because of the death rate, the profit potential of creating the first autonomous vehicles, and because it is a technically sweet research problem, Mmany major firms, including both traditional car manufacturers and new entrants such as Tesla, are spending billions trying to develop fully autonomous vehicles, typically self-driving cars.  Progress has been fast enough with the result that early models have been deployed in actual traffic, yet these experiments have been reduced after an initial set of accidents and fatalities. Concerns over explainability and safety of the algorithms and technology used in these vehicles, as well as consumer and legislator knowledge, signal the need for updated regulations..

Cyberwarfare

Ransomware is a form of cyberhacking, a digital security attack that consists of interrupting the normal operation of a computer system, and ensuring that it can restart and files cannot be accessed without the paying of a ransom. When directed against a nation or government, such acts may be termed cyberwarfare, and may include acts of espionage, sabotage, propaganda, denial-of-service attacks, and, typically done as surprise attacks. The result is huge economic disruption, as well as the threat of loss of life when directed against hospitals.

There have been many notable ransomware attacks including the ransomware attack on the Atlanta government in 2018 and the ransomware attack on the city of Baltimore in 2019. Individuals can protect themselves against ransomware attacks by following cyber hygiene including backing up their data, installing antivirus, updating their computer, and exercising caution when opening unknown links.

Another major way in which technology is used in warfare is in weapons systems. Major world powers are now engaged in a breakneck race to develop new kinds of semi-autonomous weapons, such as military drones (unmanned aerial vehicles), as well as lethal autonomous weapon systems. This race is sometimes termed an artificial intelligence arms race. Notable computer scientists are among many intellectuals who have called for an international ban on such weapons because they seem unlikely to be sufficiently reliable, and, as has been the case with drone strikes, are likely to cause harm to civilians.

The environment

Predicting the weather and other aspects of the environment has been a significant positive use of high-speed digital computation, yet our scientific understanding is still insufficient to forecast with precision. Yet our safety goes far beyond knowing what to wear or whether to carry an umbrella. Atmospheric modeling gives some warning for natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and cyclones. Robots are proving increasingly useful for assessing the degree of damage and searching for survivors.

Yet the scope of construction and use of digital technologies and the underlying communications infrastructure make increasing use of energy with consequent damage to the environment.  Current attempts to reduce damage to the environment include insisting on a right to repair digital devices,  attempts to reduce the amount of electronic waste, and calls to reduce intensive computations such as those involved in cryptocurrency and machine learning.

Technology and values

The widespread and accelerating use of digital technologies has resulted in improvements in convenience and productivity, but there are numerous areas where developments challenge our values.

Privacy and surveillance

Mass surveillance is the surveillance of an entire or substantial portion of a population by government agencies to facilitate the legitimate purposes of government and to monitor citizens. It is often carried out by intelligence agencies such as the U.S. National Security Agency NSA. Surveillance has often been deemed necessary in order to prevent terrorism and crime and to monitor social unrest. Yet it is often criticized for violating privacy rights and being illegal in some jurisdictions. Mass surveillance practices were especially scrutinized after Edward Snowden’s 2013  global surveillance disclosure on the practices by the NSA, with debates about the right to privacy in the Digital Age. Mass surveillance is a global issue.

Surveillance capitalism is a term introduced by Shoshana Zuboff to describe an economic system centered around the commodification of personal data for the purpose of profit-making. Zuboff writes that "analyzing massive data sets began as a way to reduce uncertainty by discovering the probabilities of future patterns in the behavior of people and systems". Companies like Google and Facebook accumulate consumer data for the core purpose of profit making by selling data to external users. Such surveillance shifts power further from government and nation-states towards large corporations. The data can influence political campaigns as seen in the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal. (See also big data ethics.)

Honesty and deception

As corporations seek greater profitability, they increasingly employ algorithmic agents rather than humans in roles such as online order taking and customer service. The agents are rarely identified as algorithms, and typically call themselves with human names to exploit the human tendency to anthropomorphize. Anthropomorphism is the innate tendency of human psychology to attribute human traits, emotions, and intentions to inanimate objects. Such deception becomes increasingly problematic as algorithms are used in consequential matters such as medicine, education, criminal justice, senior care, and hiring.

Deepfakes are synthetic media in which people are depicted using the likeness of others. These could be static images, audio recordings, or videos. Deepfakes have also been used as fake news, revenge porn, and celebrity sex tapes because they are videos showing  individuals doing actions that they did not actually do.

Fairness and injustice

Algorithmic biases are systematic errors in computer systems that privilege certain groups over others, exploiting characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability., These biases are mostly a result of systemic biases in the data used to train machine learning models. Bias in artificial intelligence (AI) systems are found in applications of automated decision-making such as artificial intelligence in hiring, facial recognition technologies, and uses in the judicial system. A notable example of the latter category is the COMPAS recidivism prediction algorithm. There is currently vigorous research on methods to ensure algorthmic fairness.

Responsibility and accountability

Lawyers, doctors, and engineers are held accountable and responsible for their decisions and actions. Increasingly, AI algorithms are being employed in automated decision-making and robot actions in consequential matters such as medicine, education, investments, the justice system, hiring, transportation, senior care, and warfare. People have a tendency to accept such decisions because of automation bias, the human propensity to believe decisions made by computers. Yet errors continue to be made, with few precedents in jurisprudence for regulating algorithms and for determining which humans should be assigned responsibility and held accountable.

Explainability and Inscrutability

Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) is AI with its decisions and actions  explained in such a way that they can be understood by humans. XAI incorporates algorithmic transparency, in which the factors underlying the decisions or actions are clear, and the system can be audited to understand what it is doing and why it did so. XAI was hard to do with symbolic AI, also known as Good Old Fashioned AI (GOFAI), a form of AI dominant in the last century that employed symbolic knowledge representations and decision rules. It is much more difficult to do with the current form of AI, machine learning. There are as of yet no general techniques that accomplish the task, but there is currently vigorous research on methods to achieve explainable AI. The European Union has included a Right to explanation in its General Data Protection Regulation.

Trust

Computational trust is human trust in digital systems. Concerns about our ability to trust computers have been magnified in recent years by phenomena such as cyberterrorism, security lapses,. invasions of privacy, and ethical questions about AI such as algorithmic bias and the creation of lethal autonomous weapons. Many organizations such as the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) are seeking to develop ethical frameworks and technical requirements to ensure trust.

Big tech, monopolies and antitrust

Capitalist societies rely upon competition to stimulate innovation, ensure product quality, and control prices. Yet key digital industries have seen technological centralization and control to the extent that certain firms are viewed by many as monopolies. Notable examples are Amazon in e-commerce, Facebook (now Meta Platforms) in social media, and Google in search. This has led to persistent calls for U.S. antitrust action against these tech giants, and vigorous use of laws and regulations to harness their power in the European Union.

Civil society organizations

Organization Name
Centre for Digital Democracy
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Upcoming learning events

Date	Time	Event	Host Organization	Register
May 5, 2022	3:00pm EST	Future of Law: Danielle Citron - Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law Caddell and Chapman Professor of Law	University of Pittsburgh	Link
June 2-3, 2022		Privacy Law Scholars Conference (PLSC) 2022	Northeastern University School of Law	Link
June 6-10, 2022		RightsCon 2022	AccessNow	Link

References

Gotlieb, Calvin C. and Allan Borodin (1973). Social Issues in Computing. Academic Press.

Krueger, Myron (1991). Artificial Reality 2 (2nd Ed.), Addison-Wesley.

Weizenbaum, Joseph (1976). Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation. W H Freeman

Westin, Alan (1967) Privacy and Freedom (1967). Ig Publishing.

Wiener, Norbert (1950). The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society De Capo Press.

Further reading

Book Title	Author(s)	Publisher	Year of Publication
Digital Dreams Have Become Nightmares	Ron Baecker	Independently published	2021
System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot	Mehran Sahami Jeremy M. Weinstein	Harper Publishing	2021
The Fight Against Platform Capitalism: An Inquiry into the Global Struggles of the Gig Economy	Jamie Woodcock	University of Westminster Press	2021