Giulio Mecacci

Giulio Mecacci
Radboud University | RU · Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour

PhD
Assistant Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of AI and Neurotechnology

About

35
Publications
11,632
Reads
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630
Citations

Publications

Publications (35)
Article
Full-text available
Novel wearable neurotechnology is able to provide insight into its wearer's cognitive processes and offers ways to change or enhance their capacities. Moreover, it offers the promise of hands-free device control. These brain-computer interfaces are likely to become an everyday technology in the near future, due to their increasing accessibility and...
Article
Full-text available
The urban traffic environment is characterized by the presence of a highly differentiated pool of users, including vulnerable ones. This makes vehicle automation particularly difficult to implement, as a safe coordination among those users is hard to achieve in such an open scenario. Different strategies have been proposed to address these coordina...
Article
Full-text available
The paper presents a framework to realise “meaningful human control” over Automated Driving Systems. The framework is based on an original synthesis of the results of the multidisciplinary research project “Meaningful Human Control over Automated Driving Systems” lead by a team of engineers, philosophers, and psychologists at Delft University of th...
Article
Full-text available
The notion of “responsibility gap” with artificial intelligence (AI) was originally introduced in the philosophical debate to indicate the concern that “learning automata” may make more difficult or impossible to attribute moral culpability to persons for untoward events. Building on literature in moral and legal philosophy, and ethics of technolog...
Article
Full-text available
Vehicle cooperation, not vehicle automation, will yield the greatest benefits on road traffic. However, satisfactory human control over platoons of cooperative vehicles still has a large number of uncertainties and issues to be addressed. This paper aims to address these broader issues of control over a cooperative vehicle platoon by focussing on a...
Chapter
Passive BCIs can be used to measure brain processes that take place without necessarily having the intention to communicate, or even while being unaware that specific information about mental states is being collected. This type of symbiotic neurotechnology has the potential to create new and philosophically fascinating cases where the question of...
Article
Full-text available
Rapid advancements in machine learning techniques allow mass surveillance to be applied on larger scales and utilize more and more personal data. These developments demand reconsideration of the privacy-security dilemma, which describes the tradeoffs between national security interests and individual privacy concerns. By investigating mass surveill...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
As automated vehicles become increasingly common on the road, the call for an appropriate preparation for its drivers is becoming more urgent. Expert opinions and insights have been acquired via a focus group discussion with eleven Dutch driving examiners to assist in inventorying what types of preparations are needed. The concept of meaningful hum...
Article
Full-text available
The introduction of automated vehicles means that some or all operational control over these vehicles is diverted away from a human driver to a technological system. The concept of Meaningful Human Control (MHC) was derived to address control issues over automated systems, allowing a system to explicitly consider human intentions and reasons. Apply...
Article
Full-text available
In this paper, in line with the general framework of value-sensitive design, we aim to operationalize the general concept of “Meaningful Human Control” (MHC) in order to pave the way for its translation into more specific design requirements. In particular, we focus on the operationalization of the first of the two conditions Santoni de Sio and Van...
Article
Full-text available
The human species is combining an increased understanding of our cognitive machinery with the development of a technology that can profoundly influence our lives and our ways of living together. Our sciences enable us to see our strengths and weaknesses, and build technology accordingly. What would future historians think of our current attempts to...
Article
Full-text available
The future adoption of automated vehicles poses many challenges, with one of the more important being the preservation of control over vehicles that are no longer (fully) operated by drivers. There is consensus that vehicles should not perform actions that are unacceptable to humans. In this paper, we introduce the concept of Meaningful Human Contr...
Chapter
Full-text available
The ethical discussion on automated vehicles (AVs) has for the most part focused on what morality requires in AV collisions which present moral dilemmas. This discussion has been challenged for its failure to address the various kinds of risk and uncertainty which we can expect to arise in AV collisions; and for overlooking certain morally relevant...
Article
Full-text available
Increased on-road testing and market availability of partially automated vehicles (AV) offers researchers and developers the opportunity to evaluate the AV's performance. The occurrence of new types of accidents involving AV's has sparked questions in regard to who is actually in control over and responsible for AV control. In this contribution, we...
Article
Full-text available
Contemporary brain reading technologies promise to provide the possibility to decode and interpret mental states and processes. Brain reading could have numerous societally relevant implications. In particular, the private character of mind might be affected, generating ethical and legal concerns. This paper aims at equipping ethicists and policy m...
Article
Full-text available
Automated driving systems (ADS) with partial automation are currently available for the consumer. They are potentially beneficial to traffic flow, fuel consumption, and safety, but human behaviour whilst driving with ADS is poorly understood. Human behaviour is currently expected to lead to dangerous circumstances as ADS could place human drivers ‘...
Poster
Full-text available
With automated vehicles becoming increasingly autonomous, with systems such as adaptive cruise control (ACC) or lane keeping assist (LKA), and traction control or anti-lock braking systems (ABS), the driver is getting ushered more and more away from the classic driving task and towards a new role of system supervisor. Therefore, we need a new way t...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Human Factors issues with automated driving systems (ADS) are becoming more apparent with the increasing prevalence of automated vehicles on the public roads. As automated driving demands increased performance of supervisory skills of the driver, rather than vehicle handling skills, a mismatch occurs between the demand and supply of the drivers' sk...
Chapter
Recent advances in cognitive neuroscience have made it possible to decode or interpret mental states of human beings by measuring brain activity. This is often referred to as ‘brain reading’: using brain measurements for mind reading. The concept of ‘brain reading’ is often used, but complex. In this paper, we will examine aspects of its meaning, a...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Brain reading technology is becoming increasingly able to read mental states in human subjects. We propose some criteria to evaluate the extent to which this capacity could be utilized, currently or in the near future, for practical, societally impacting applications.
Chapter
Full-text available
Deep Brain Stimulation is one of the latest promising and widely discussed therapeutic neurotechnologies. Yet, along with its remarkable efficacy comes a number of complications. Besides surgical operative and post–operative difficulties, behavioral/psychological alterations can occur. In a recent paper we suggested the idea that patients’ endorsem...
Article
Full-text available
Recent Libet-style experiments are of limited relevance to the debate about free action and free will, and should be understood as investigations of arbitrary actions or guesses. In Libet-style experiments, the concept of 'free action' is commonly taken to refer to a 'self-initiated voluntary act', where the self prompts an action without being pro...
Article
The susceptibility to hypnosis, which can be measured by scales, is not merely a cognitive trait. In fact, it is associated with a number of physiological correlates in the ordinary state of consciousness and in the absence of suggestions. The hypnotizability-related differences observed in sensorimotor integration suggested a major role of the cer...
Article
Full-text available
The present study evaluated the heart-rate dynamics of subjects reporting decreased (responders) or paradoxically increased relaxation (nonresponders) at the end of a threatening movie. Heart-rate dynamics were characterized by indices extracted through recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) and detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). These indices...
Article
Full-text available
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is generally considered to have great practical potential. Yet along with its remarkable efficacy, which is currently being tested in application to many pathologies, come a certain number of complications. In particular, there seem to be several adverse psychological implications behind a relevant number of postoperati...
Article
Full-text available
The cognitive trait of hypnotizability, associated with the proneness to accept suggestions, exhibits several physiological correlates including the modulation of sensorimotor integration and, in particular, of postural control. In this respect, we have shown that, at eyes closure, healthy subjects with high hypnotizability scores (highs) having th...

Questions

Questions (2)
Question
Question for philosophers of technology and post-phenomenologists. What is the relationship, if there is one, between Don Ihde's concept of "Lifeworld" and Von Uexkull's "Umwelt"?
Question
I am puzzled by the definition of "cue" as opposed to "cause". I am reviewing the literature about self-generated action (Passingham et al 2010; Nachev 2010; Shuur & Haggard 2011). The authors talk about cues extensively, as conditions that prompt an action. My question is, in what way does a "cue" differ from a "cause"? I keep missing a deep grasp on this.

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