Ethics and Privacy in Autonomous Systems: A Software Exoskeleton to Empower the User

Abstract

Software systems are increasingly autonomous in making decisions on behalf of potential users. In these systems, the power of self goes beyond the ability of substituting human agents operating on software systems and exceeds the system boundaries invading the user prerogatives. Privacy and ethical issues are at the top of the research agenda in (big) data management and AI, that offer a wide range of techniques often used as key (black-box) components of autonomous systems. In this extended abstract, I discuss these issues from the software system developer perspective that uses such black-box components and outline a new approach based on a partially synthesized software exoskeleton that empowers the user by mediating her interactions in order to preserve her privacy and ethical preferences.