Ethical concerns and opportunities in binding intelligent systems and blockchain technology

Abstract

Intelligent systems are becoming increasingly complex and pervade a broad range of application domains, including safety-critical systems such as e-health, finance, and energy management. Traditional approaches are no longer capable of addressing the demand for trust and transparency in these applications. Hence, the current decade is demanding intelligent systems to be autonomous, and in particular explainable, transparent, and trustworthy. To satisfy such requirements, and therefore to comply with the recent EU regulations in the matter (e.g., GDPR), intelligent systems (e.g., Multi-Agent Systems - MAS) and technologies enabling tamper-proof and distributed consensus (e.g., Blockchain Technology - BCT) are conveying into reconciling solutions. Recently, the empowerment of MAS with BCT (and the use of BCT themselves) has gained considerable momentum, raising challenges, and unveiling opportunities. However, several ethical concerns have yet to be faced. This paper elaborates on the entanglement among ethical and technological challenges while proposing and discussing approaches that address these emerging research opportunities.