Markus Christen

University of Zurich | UZH · UZH Digital Society Initiative & Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine

Danaher (2016) has argued that increasing robotization can lead to retribution gaps: Situations in which the normative fact that nobody can be justly held responsible for a harmful outcome stands in conflict with our retributivist moral dispositions. In this paper, we report a cross-cultural empirical study based on Sparrow’s (2007) famous example...

Diese Leitlinien zielen darauf ab, eine wertorientierte Cybersicherheitskultur zu schaffen. Sie sollen alle relevanten Interessengruppen einer Organisation unterstützen, die mit schwierigen und zeitkritischen Cyberbedrohungen konfrontiert sind.

These guidelines seek to create a value-driven cybersecurity culture that supports all relevant stakeholders of an organization that are confronted with difficult and time-sensitive cyber threats.

Ces lignes directrices résultent d'un projet de recherche intitulé « Creating an ethical and legal governance framework for trustworthy cybersecurity in Switzerland » qui a été réalisé dans le cadre du programme national de recherche 77 « Transformation numérique » par des chercheurs de l' Pourquoi ces lignes directrices ? Elles visent à créer une...

We discuss the concept of women’s empowerment in FemTech, considering cultural and legal differences, ethical concerns, and legal consequences. We claim that it is crucial to prioritize privacy, a fundamental right, especially in the case of changes in laws related to women’s health, such as Roe v. Wade in the US.

Moral sensitivity is one of the most important educational goals in the ethical domain. This paper offers a first review of attempts to train moral sensitivity from 1979 to 2018, including 45 studies. The studies were reviewed using a combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses. Our results show that longer courses are generally more succe...

AI is getting more involved in tasks formerly exclusively assigned to humans. Most of research on perceptions and social acceptability of AI in these areas is mainly restricted to the Western world. In this study, we compare trust, perceived responsibility, and reliance of AI and human experts across OECD and Indian sample. We find that OECD partic...

Predictability is a prerequisite for effective human control of artificial intelligence (AI). For example, the inability to predict the malfunctioning of AI impedes timely human intervention. In this paper, we employ a computerized navigation task, namely, a game called lunar lander, to investigate empirically how AI's predictability compares to hu...

Danaher (2016) has argued that increasing robotization can lead to retribution gaps: Situation in which the normative fact that nobody can be justly held responsible for a harmful outcome stands in conflict with our retributivist moral dispositions. In this paper, we report a cross-cultural empirical study based on Sparrow's (2007) famous example o...

Decisions in security contexts, including armed conflict, law enforcement, and disaster relief, often need to be taken under circumstances of limited information, stress, and time pressure. Since AI systems are capable of providing a certain amount of relief in such contexts, such systems will become increasingly important, be it as decision-suppor...

AI deep learning models have become more capable, but also more complex and less explainable. To address this development, new research on so-called explainable AI (XAI) has proliferated. This paper surveys the empirical literature on XAI based on human-subject experiments. It classifies extant work across different technical and experimental dimen...

Predictability is a prerequisite for effective human control of artificial intelligence (AI). The inability to predict malfunctioning of AI, for example, impedes timely human intervention. In this paper, we empirically investigate how AI's predictability compares to the predictability of humans in a real-effort task. We show that humans are worse a...

Digital Health Technologies (DHTs) are currently being funneled through legacy regulatory processes that are not adapted to the unique particularities of this new technology class. In the absence of adequate regulation of DHTs, the briefing of a patient by their healthcare provider (HCP) as a component of informed consent can present the last line...

While artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly applied for decision-making processes, ethical decisions pose challenges for AI applications. Given that humans cannot always agree on the right thing to do, how would ethical decision-making by AI systems be perceived and how would responsibility be ascribed in human-AI collaboration? In this stud...

Background Psychiatric neurosurgery is experiencing a revival. Beside deep brain stimulation (DBS), several ablative neurosurgical procedures are currently in use. Each approach has a different profile of advantages and disadvantages. However, many psychiatrists, ethicists, and laypeople are sceptical about psychiatric neurosurgery. Methods We ide...

The current humanitarian use of drones is focused on two applications: disaster mapping and medical supply delivery. In response to the growing interest in drone deployment in the aid sector, we sought to develop a resource to support value sensitivity in humanitarian drone activities. Following a bottom-up approach encompassing a comprehensive lit...

Clients may feel trapped into sharing their private digital data with insurance companies to get a desired insurance product or premium. However, private insurance must collect some data to offer products and premiums appropriate to the client’s level of risk. This situation creates tension between the value of privacy and common insurance business...

The initial online publication contained a typesetting mistake in the author information. The original article has been corrected.

This is an expert report addressing the latest developments in robotics in the security sector, including disaster relief and armed conflict, from an ethical and legal perspective. The focus is on autonomous robots. The report is written in German, but a 4 page executive summary explains in detail the seven recommendations the report makes in the l...

The ELSI White Paper is the final achievement of the ELSI Task Force for the National Research Programme “Big Data” (NRP 75). It is an informational document that provides an overview of the key ethical, legal, and social challenges of big data and provides guidance for the collection, use, and sharing of big data. The document aims to bring togeth...

Here, we provide an ethical analysis of discrimination in private insurance to guide the application of non-discriminatory algorithms for risk prediction in the insurance context. This addresses the need for ethical guidance of data-science experts, business managers, and regulators, proposing a framework of moral reasoning behind the choice of fai...

Serious games have emerged as a promising new form of education and training. Even though the benefits of serious games for education are undisputed, there is still a further need for research on the efficacy of such games. The main goal of our research is to examine the effectiveness of a serious moral game—uFin: The Challenge—that was designed to...

Unlabelled: In order to manage ethical challenges in organizations and the workplace, moral sensitivity (MS)-the ability to identify and ascribe importance to moral issues when they arise in the workplace-is seen as the key prerequisite by researchers and professionals. However, despite the importance of MS, satisfactory reliable and valid measure...

BACKGROUND Women’s mobile health (mHealth) is a growing phenomenon in the mobile applications (apps) global market. An increasing number of women around the globe use apps with so-called female technology (femtech). Given the often private and sensitive nature of the data collected by such apps an ethical assessment from the perspective of data pri...

Background: Women's mobile health (mHealth) is a growing phenomenon in the mobile app global market. An increasing number of women worldwide use apps geared to female audiences (female technology). Given the often private and sensitive nature of the data collected by such apps, an ethical assessment from the perspective of data privacy, sharing, a...

The use of drones (or unmanned aerial vehicles, UVAs) in humanitarian action has emerged rapidly in the last decade and continues to expand. These so-called 'humanitarian drones' represent the first wave of robotics applied in the humanitarian and development contexts, providing critical information through mapping of crisis-affected areas and time...

Crews operating remotely piloted aircrafts (RPAs) in military operations may be among the few that truly experience tragic dilemmas similar to the famous Trolley Problem. In order to analyze decision-making and emotional conflict of RPA operators within Trolley-Problem-like dilemma situations, we created an RPA simulation that varied mission contex...

Color is key for the visual encoding of data, yet its use reportedly affects decision making in important ways. We examined the impact of various popular color schemes on experts’ and lay peoples’ map-based decisions in two, geography and neuroscience, scenarios, in an online visualization experiment. We found that changes in color mappings influen...

Moral sensitivity, the ability to notice ethical problems, is a key competence for health professionals. Failures to notice ethical problems can cause false treatments or the exposure of patients to severe health risks without their informed consent. In this viewpoint we argue that the training and testing of moral sensitivity among health professi...

Der Aufruf zur Stärkung der Cybersicherheit fokussiert haupt- sächlich auf technische Aspekte. Man neigt dazu, ethische und rechtliche Dilemmata zu unterschätzen, mit denen sich Cyber- sicherheits-Praktiker*innen wie CERTs bei ihrer täglichen Ar- beit konfrontiert sehen.

Increasingly complex and autonomous systems require machine ethics to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks to society arising from the new technology. It is challenging to decide which type of ethical theory to employ and how to implement it effectively. This survey provides a threefold contribution. First, it introduces a trimorphic taxono...

In this contribution, we present the conception of the serious moral game uMed: Your Choice for the training of medical students’ moral sensitivity and resoluteness. First, we offer an overview of the moral competences that we aim to train through the game: an empathic concern for relevant groups; an awareness of one’s susceptibility to biases and...

The question of whether neuroscience has normative implications or not becomes practically relevant when neuromodulation technologies are used with the aim of pursuing normative goals. The historical burden of such an endeavor is grave and the current knowledge of the neural foundations of moral capacities is surely insufficient for tailored interv...

Luciano Floridi was not the first to discuss the idea of group privacy, but he was perhaps the first to discuss it in relation to the insights derived from big data analytics. He has argued that it is important to investigate the possibility that groups have rights to privacy that are not reducible to the privacy of individuals forming such groups....

Up to date, more than 80 codes exist for handling ethical risks of artificial intelligence and big data. In this paper, we analyse where those codes converge and where they differ. Based on an in-depth analysis of 20 guidelines, we identify three procedural action types (1. control and document, 2. inform, 3. assign responsibility) as well as four...

Computer werden leistungsfähiger und können komplizierte Probleme immer schneller lösen. Gleichzeitig stehen, dank Internet und Smartphones, grosse Mengen an Daten zur Verfügung. Beides fördert die Entwicklung von künstlicher Intelligenz (KI). Anspruchsvolle Aufgaben, an denen bisherige Computerprogramme gescheitert sind, löst künstliche Intelligen...

Increasingly complex and autonomous systems require machine ethics to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks to society arising from the new technology. It is challenging to decide which type of ethical theory to employ and how to implement it effectively. This survey provides a threefold contribution. Firstly, it introduces a taxonomy to ana...

Increasingly complex and autonomous systems require machine ethics to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks to society arising from the new technology. It is challenging to decide which type of ethical theory to employ and how to implement it effectively. This survey provides a threefold contribution. Firstly, it introduces a taxonomy to ana...

This open access book provides the first comprehensive collection of papers that provide an integrative view on cybersecurity. It discusses theories, problems and solutions on the relevant ethical issues involved. This work is sorely needed in a world where cybersecurity has become indispensable to protect trust and confidence in the digital infras...

The “Code of Ethics for Data-Based Value Creation” is aimed at companies and organizations that offer services or products based on data. Its purpose is to systematically address the ethical issues that arise in the creation or use of such products and services. To this end, concrete recommendations are made, based on three ethical and three proced...

The call to build up cybersecurity capacities across nations still has mainly a technical focus. One tends to underestimate ethical and legal dilemmas that cybersecurity practitioners such as CERTs (Computer Emergency Response Teams) face in their daily work. This contribution outlines some of these dilemmas and points to the work of the European C...

This chapter presents several ethical frameworks that are useful for analysing ethical questions of cybersecurity. It begins with two frameworks that are important in practice: the principlist framework employed in the Menlo Report on cybersecurity research and the rights-based principle that is influential in the law, in particular EU law. It is a...

Moral sensitivity, understood as an individual’s capability of identifying and ascribing importance to moral issues when they arise, is often considered a key competence in professional life and a precondition of ethical behavior. With a focus on business settings, this article presents a new measure to assess individual’s sensitivity to moral and...

Intellectual humility can be broadly construed as being conscious of the limits of one’s existing knowledge and capable of acquiring more knowledge, which makes it a key virtue of the information age. However, the claim “I am (intellectually) humble” seems paradoxical in that someone who has the disposition in question would not typically volunteer...

Business applications relying on processing of large amounts of heterogeneous data (Big Data) are considered to be key drivers of innovation in the digital economy. However, these applications also pose ethical issues that may undermine the credibility of data-driven businesses. In our contribution, we discuss ethical problems that are associated w...

Purpose: Cybersecurity in healthcare has become an urgent matter in recent years due to various malicious attacks on hospitals and other parts of the healthcare infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to provide an outline of how core values of the health systems, such as the principles of biomedical ethics, are in a supportive or conflicting...

In this paper, we outline the structure and content of a code of ethics for companies engaged in data-based business, i.e. companies whose value propositions strongly depends on using data. The code provides an ethical reference for all people in the organization who are responsible for activities around data. It is primarily targeting private indu...

Evolutionary systems theory identifies niches as key developmental inheritances for animals. The human evolved developmental niche (EDN) is characterized by positive touch, responsiveness, play, and social togetherness and provides the responsive, relational dynamism that optimizes development. Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of the human...

The presentation introduces a search & rescue scenario for autonomous ethical decision making support.

In this chapter, we analyze questions pertaining to the use of predictive models based on big data from the point of view of Allen Buchanan’s ‘morality of inclusion”. Here we discuss to potential ethical risks of big data that are normally not discussed in the literature. We illustrate ethical threats of big data for the morality of inclusion with...

Luciano Floridi was not the first to discuss the idea of group privacy, but he was perhaps the first to discuss it in relation to the insights derived from big data analytics. He has argued that it is important to investigate the possibility that groups have rights to privacy that are not reducible to the privacy of individuals forming such groups....

Here we provide an ethical analysis of discrimination in private insurance to guide the application of non-discriminatory algorithms for risk prediction in the insurance context. This addresses the need for ethical guidance of data-science experts and business managers. The reference to private insurance as a business practice is essential in our a...

Definitive (and shortened) version published in Italian as a book chapter in "Per cosa lottare. Le frontiere del progressismo", edited by Enrico Biale and Corrado Fumagalli, Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Milano

Paper is open access: https://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en116/r-s/how-to-include-ethics-in-machine-learning-research

In unserem Beitrag fassen wir drei Themen einer jüngst veröffentlichten Studie zur Technikfolgenabschätzung ziviler Drohnen zusammen. Erstens legen wir dar, dass der Rechtsbegriff der Drohne unklar geregelt ist und dass eine technische Definition des Begriffs „Drohne“ der falsche Weg ist. Wir präsentieren eine alternative Einbindung des Drohnenbegr...

Introduction In many countries, the number of organ donations after circulatory determination of death (DCDD) is increasing, although various aspects of DCDD are critically discussed in medical ethics. In our work, we identify ethically relevant aspects of the DCDD—in particular regarding preparatory measures and the irreversibility of the death cr...

Relationship of cybersecurity and ethics in the health domain

Human endeavors such as promoting science or creating art have a close connection to underlying values and virtues. For example, creativity, curiosity or objectivity provide orientation when working as scientist or artist, outlining the ultimate aim of practitioners active in those domains. The appreciation and interpretation of domain values are e...

To make good decisions, people must be able to identify the ethical features of a situation, i.e., to notice when and how the welfare of others and ethical values are at stake. In the work of military and law enforcement officers, moral sensitivity is of special importance, due to an especially stressful working environment and the severe consequen...

Fünfzehn Jahre nach ihrer Entstehung ist die Neuroethik ein internationales wissenschaftliches Feld mit enormer Dynamik. Innerhalb weniger Jahre wurden eigene Kongresse, Zeitschriften, Forschungsförderprogramme, Fachgesellschaften und Institute gegründet. Gleichwohl besteht erheblicher Dissens über die Definition und den Gegenstandsbereich dieses n...

This study explored the use of wearable devices to track self-recorded health data and the willingness to share this data with re- searchers. Participants aged ≥ 50 years (n = 1,013) were interviewed in a representative telephone survey. Results indicated that 43.3% of all participants used one or more mobile devices (activity tracker, smartwatch,...

Zunehmend diskutiert man in der Wissenschaft, wie Videospiele zur gezielten Förderung von ethischem Verhalten eingesetzt werden können. Doch die konkrete Umsetzung dieser Idee ist mit diversen Schwierigkeiten verbunden und braucht seriöse Forschung. Seit einigen Jahren zeigt sich ein bemerkenswerter Wandel in der Beurteilung von Videospielen aus de...