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We are used to amazing sights, like the one in the picture with thousands of starlings performing complex choreographies and we are temped to ask ourselves who is in charge for that? Is there a “master” starling directing the choreography?
Similarly if we look at a swarm of bees. The swarm points in a specific direction but if we look at the bees at the front of the swarm they keep changing. Is there a master bee somewhere communicating the direction to the others? And what about a “simpler” things like a school of fish creating rotating cylinders in the sea or sponge made up by thousands of independent autonomous animals? Who is steering the shape in those amazing forms?
All studies carried out indicates that there is no “master” anywhere, that the result we are seeing emerges from autonomous systems that are conditioning one another, usually applying very simple rules (I follow you, don’t bang on you).
Looking at these ensembles one does not worry about something like accountability. Those are animals. But what about the interaction of autonomous systems where humans are one of the components?
At the FDC the Symbiotic Autonomous Systems Initiative, meeting today in Newark to revise their first Whitepaper, is looking into these kinds of issues. Technology evolution is now creating hybrids, it is augmenting humans and the results may go beyond a “human”.
Let’s take a simple and actual case. We, me and you, are already augmented through the use of the smartphone, because through its use we can “know” much more about … anything… that if we were to rely on our brain only. We can say that we are in a symbiotic relation with it. Now it is clear that we, as persons, are autonomous systems but you might claim that a smartphone it is not. It is just a tool. Well, yes and no. What if you have installed on your smartphone an app (or more than one) that automatically browse the web and brings information in your phone. What if you have installed an app that when you browse the web filters the result customising them to what it feels shall be relevant to you? In a way the smartphone is taking (small) steps towards becoming an autonomous system. And what if this resulting symbiotic autonomous systems take wrong decisions that might even cause damage because of misleading information?
Well, one might say that the responsibility and accountability lies on the human component, but that human might very well claim that her behaviour was the consequence of the information acquired by the smartphone. Last Sunday in Turin, where I live, the Municipality requested all diesel cars to stop because of the pollution in the air. On Saturday evening a strong wind dispersed the pollution and when checking on my smartphone on Sunday morning I got the info that the circulation ban on diesel was removed. I got the information through an app and I drove my car. What would have happened if the information was incorrect and police stopped me? By showing them the info from the app would I have been considered in good faith and not accountable or would have I got fined?
Clearly it is a trivial case but it has all the elements of issues deriving when two autonomous systems are interacting with one another.
And what about social media where information and misinformation propagate making it ever more difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff? Who is accountable: the end user believing in what he is told, the one who generated a misleading/false information, those who allowed that information to percolate?
Fast forward for a real sysmbioses: in the next decade DBS, Deep Brain Stimulation, will become more common for a variety of ailments, including depression, OCD, Parkinson, epilepsy … and it will also become much more sophisticated with chips that will evaluate bran waves and generate electrical stimulation to “change” the behaviour of the brain. Suppose something goes awry, and that person because of the DBS makes something bad, like injuring another person or destroying properties. Who has to be accountable? The person, the chip, the surgeon that implanted the electrodes …
You see, as technology progresses the boundaries become fuzzy and the area of symbiotic autonomous systems is possibly the one where our long standing rules, and also belief, are most likely to need a revisitation.
