"Crossing Boundaries: The Ethics of AI and Geographic Information Technologies" has just been by published UT Philosophy PhD candidate Isaac Oluoch in the International Journal of Geo-Information.
Abstract: Over the past two decades, there has been increasing research on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and geographic information technologies for monitoring and mapping varying phenomena on the Earth’s surface. At the same time, there has been growing attention given to the ethical challenges that these technologies present (both individually and collectively in fields such as critical cartography, ethics of AI and GeoAI). This attention has produced a growing number of critical commentaries and articles as well as guidelines (by academic, governmental, and private institutions) that have been drafted to raise these ethical challenges and suggest potential solutions. This paper presents a review of 16 ethical guidelines of AI and 8 guidelines of geographic information technologies, analysing how these guidelines define and employ a number of ethical values and principles (e.g., autonomy, bias, privacy, and consent). One of the key findings from this review is the asymmetrical mentioning of certain values and principles within the guidelines. The AI guidelines make very clear the potential of AI to negatively impact social and environmental justice, autonomy, fairness and dignity, while far less attention is given to these impacts in the geographic information guidelines. This points to a need for the geo-information guidelines to be more attentive to the role geographic information can play in disempowering individuals and groups.
Isaac says of his new publication: "I am happy to announce my recent publication in the International Journal of Geoinformation titled 'Crossing Boundaries: the Ethics of AI and Geographic Information Technologies'. This article presents a review of 24 ethical guidelines on artificial intelligence and geoinformation technologies, focusing on how these guidelines define ethical values and issues such as autonomy, privacy, bias, discrimination and transparency. As artificial intelligence is increasingly relied on for geoinformation research, critical attention to how such ethical values can be better embedded and issues can be better mitigated, is becoming more necessary."
Michael Nagenborg (Isaac's PhD supervisor) adds: "Isaac started to work on the Ethics and Politics of Remote Sensing in his PSTS master thesis, which led to the PhD project “PhD project "Framework for responsible and accountable deprivation area mapping in support of pro-poor policies" (FRAME-PRO). In his latest paper, he provide his readers with a splendid overview of the ethical challenges of using AI with geo-spatial data. Congratulations!"
