Machine-learning systems are increasingly worming their way through our everyday lives, challenging our moral and social values and the rules that govern them. These days, virtual assistants threaten the privacy of the home; news recommenders shape the way we understand the world; risk-prediction systems tip social workers on which children to protect from abuse; while data-driven hiring tools also rank your chances of landing a job. However, the ethics of machine learning remains blurry for many.
Searching for articles on the subject for the young engineers attending the Ethics and Information and Communications Technology course at UCLouvain, Belgium, I was particularly struck by the case of Joshua Barbeau, a 33-year-old man who used a website called Project December to create a conversational robot – a chatbot – that would simulate conversation with his deceased fiancée, Jessica.
