As arbiters of law and fact, judges are supposed to decide cases impartially, basing their decisions on authoritative legal sources and not being influenced by irrelevant factors. Empirical evidence, however, shows that judges are often influenced by implicit biases, which can affect the impartiality of their judgment and pose a threat to the right to a fair trial. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been increasingly used for a variety of applications in the public domain, often with the promise of being more accurate and objective than biased human decision-makers. Given this backdrop, this research article identifies how AI is being deployed by courts, mainly as decision-support tools for judges. It assesses the potential and limitations of these tools, focusing on their use for risk assessment. Further, the article shows how AI can be used as a debiasing tool, i. e., to detect patterns of bias in judicial decisions, allowing for corrective measures to be taken. Finally, it assesses the mechanisms and benefits of such use.
{"title":"Artificial intelligence and judicial decision-making: Evaluating the role of AI in debiasing","authors":"Giovana Lopes","doi":"10.14512/tatup.33.1.28","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.33.1.28","url":null,"abstract":"As arbiters of law and fact, judges are supposed to decide cases impartially, basing their decisions on authoritative legal sources and not being influenced by irrelevant factors. Empirical evidence, however, shows that judges are often influenced by implicit biases, which can affect the impartiality of their judgment and pose a threat to the right to a fair trial. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been increasingly used for a variety of applications in the public domain, often with the promise of being more accurate and objective than biased human decision-makers. Given this backdrop, this research article identifies how AI is being deployed by courts, mainly as decision-support tools for judges. It assesses the potential and limitations of these tools, focusing on their use for risk assessment. Further, the article shows how AI can be used as a debiasing tool, i. e., to detect patterns of bias in judicial decisions, allowing for corrective measures to be taken. Finally, it assesses the mechanisms and benefits of such use.","PeriodicalId":504838,"journal":{"name":"TATuP - Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis","volume":"78 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140238162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Coeckelbergh, Mark (2022): The political philosophy of AI","authors":"Michael W. Schmidt","doi":"10.14512/tatup.33.1.68","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.33.1.68","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":504838,"journal":{"name":"TATuP - Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis","volume":"2 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140241327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This research article examines overpromising in scientific discourse that may raise unrealistic expectations in order to gain trust and funding. Drawing on signaling theory, philosophy of promising, and science communication research, a conceptualization of overpromising is presented. This conceptualization facilitates the evaluation of promises in science and technology and highlights the importance of the knowledge context. Further research is needed to explore the broader dimensions and motivations for overpromising.
{"title":"Overpromising in science and technology: An evaluative conceptualization","authors":"Stefan Gaillard, Cyrus Mody, Willem Halffman","doi":"10.14512/tatup.32.3.60","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.32.3.60","url":null,"abstract":"This research article examines overpromising in scientific discourse that may raise unrealistic expectations in order to gain trust and funding. Drawing on signaling theory, philosophy of promising, and science communication research, a conceptualization of overpromising is presented. This conceptualization facilitates the evaluation of promises in science and technology and highlights the importance of the knowledge context. Further research is needed to explore the broader dimensions and motivations for overpromising.","PeriodicalId":504838,"journal":{"name":"TATuP - Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139180884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This research article considers tech hype as a mnemonic process that makes us remember or forget the world, technology, and the myriad ways we can relate to it. The argument is based on an auto-ethnographic vignette and a close reading of two key texts in the discourse on using technology for land management in India. The article shows how technology, the social, and the practice of knowledge-production can be rethought in this mock battle between hype and criticism of hype.
{"title":"Tech hype as a mnemonic process: Misremembering the land problem in India","authors":"C. Arora, Debarun Sarkar","doi":"10.14512/tatup.32.3.28","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.32.3.28","url":null,"abstract":"This research article considers tech hype as a mnemonic process that makes us remember or forget the world, technology, and the myriad ways we can relate to it. The argument is based on an auto-ethnographic vignette and a close reading of two key texts in the discourse on using technology for land management in India. The article shows how technology, the social, and the practice of knowledge-production can be rethought in this mock battle between hype and criticism of hype.","PeriodicalId":504838,"journal":{"name":"TATuP - Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis","volume":"25 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139181608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI) do not stop at schools. Integrating them beneficially into pedagogical settings is still an unfamiliar situation for schools and teachers. This article relates the fundamental pedagogical aspects of schools to digitalization and shows how the challenge of AI can be reconciled with the pedagogical approach to educational processes.
{"title":"Chatbots als pädagogische Herausforderung für Schule und Unterricht","authors":"Johannes Gutbrod, Britta Klopsch","doi":"10.14512/tatup.32.3.72","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.32.3.72","url":null,"abstract":"Chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI) do not stop at schools. Integrating them beneficially into pedagogical settings is still an unfamiliar situation for schools and teachers. This article relates the fundamental pedagogical aspects of schools to digitalization and shows how the challenge of AI can be reconciled with the pedagogical approach to educational processes.","PeriodicalId":504838,"journal":{"name":"TATuP - Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis","volume":"8 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139181653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
T. Roberson, S. Raman, Joan Leach, Samantha Vilkins
The ‘second quantum revolution’ promises new technologies enabled by quantum physics and has been the subject of substantial hype. We show that while creating expectations has helped secure support for quantum research, their iterative effects can come to affect the field in concrete ways. These iterative impacts for quantum include emerging discussions about ethics and the delivery of promised outcomes. Such contestations could open up alternative quantum futures, but this will depend on how the ‘hype helix’ of iterative expectations unfolds.
{"title":"Assessing the journey of technology hype in the field of quantum technology","authors":"T. Roberson, S. Raman, Joan Leach, Samantha Vilkins","doi":"10.14512/tatup.32.3.17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.32.3.17","url":null,"abstract":"The ‘second quantum revolution’ promises new technologies enabled by quantum physics and has been the subject of substantial hype. We show that while creating expectations has helped secure support for quantum research, their iterative effects can come to affect the field in concrete ways. These iterative impacts for quantum include emerging discussions about ethics and the delivery of promised outcomes. Such contestations could open up alternative quantum futures, but this will depend on how the ‘hype helix’ of iterative expectations unfolds.","PeriodicalId":504838,"journal":{"name":"TATuP - Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis","volume":"39 18","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139180668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Bareis, Maximilian Roßmann, Frédérique Bordignon
To date, the study of hype has become a productive but also eclectic field of research. This introduction provides an overview of the core characteristics of technology hype and distinguishes it from other future-oriented concepts. Further, the authors present promising approaches from various disciplines for studying, critiquing, and dealing with hype. The special issue assembles case studies, methodological and theoretical contributions that analyze tech hypes’ temporality, agency, and institutional dynamics. It provides insights into how hypes are triggered and fostered, but also how they can be deconstructed and anticipated.
{"title":"Technology hype: Dealing with bold expectations and overpromising","authors":"J. Bareis, Maximilian Roßmann, Frédérique Bordignon","doi":"10.14512/tatup.32.3.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.32.3.10","url":null,"abstract":"To date, the study of hype has become a productive but also eclectic field of research. This introduction provides an overview of the core characteristics of technology hype and distinguishes it from other future-oriented concepts. Further, the authors present promising approaches from various disciplines for studying, critiquing, and dealing with hype. The special issue assembles case studies, methodological and theoretical contributions that analyze tech hypes’ temporality, agency, and institutional dynamics. It provides insights into how hypes are triggered and fostered, but also how they can be deconstructed and anticipated.","PeriodicalId":504838,"journal":{"name":"TATuP - Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis","volume":"46 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139180833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Can the history of Responsible Innovation help us live better with hype?: Interview with Danielle Shanley","authors":"Danielle Shanley, Maximilian Roßmann","doi":"10.14512/tatup.32.3.86","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.32.3.86","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":504838,"journal":{"name":"TATuP - Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis","volume":"9 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139181721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Studies on hype have had a strong focus on the role of science, media and markets in overstating potential benefits or risks of emerging science and technologies. Less attention has been paid to the role of ethics in creating or sustaining hype or alarmism. This research article focuses on how bioethical approaches as well as bioethicists’ relationship towards science contribute to stem cell and organoid hype. How (if at all) may ways of doing ethics fuel exaggerated expectations and could ethics be done differently? Understanding hype-conducive ways of how ethicists engage with science and technology is of relevance not only for the broader ethical community but also for technology assessment and science and technology studies where an increasing interest in normative dimensions of their object of study has been observed.
{"title":"Efforts against stem cell hype stuck in the logic of overpromising?: An essay on hype-conducive ways of doing ethics","authors":"Anja Pichl","doi":"10.14512/tatup.32.3.66","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.32.3.66","url":null,"abstract":"Studies on hype have had a strong focus on the role of science, media and markets in overstating potential benefits or risks of emerging science and technologies. Less attention has been paid to the role of ethics in creating or sustaining hype or alarmism. This research article focuses on how bioethical approaches as well as bioethicists’ relationship towards science contribute to stem cell and organoid hype. How (if at all) may ways of doing ethics fuel exaggerated expectations and could ethics be done differently? Understanding hype-conducive ways of how ethicists engage with science and technology is of relevance not only for the broader ethical community but also for technology assessment and science and technology studies where an increasing interest in normative dimensions of their object of study has been observed.","PeriodicalId":504838,"journal":{"name":"TATuP - Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis","volume":"12 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139181772","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We understand precision medicine as a socio-technical imaginary according to Jasanoff. After briefly outlining how the imaginary of precision medicine emerged from the Human Genome Project and spread across national contexts, we raise the question of why the imaginary and the expectations and promises associated with it persist despite regular disappointment among practitioners about the failure of personalized healthcare. We argue that short-term technological hypes enable stakeholders to renew and maintain the promises of precision medicine. In our view, these hypes are around transformations of a technological assemblage. We discuss this in detail for omics and AI technologies and evaluate the recent transformations in light of the long-term imaginary of precision medicine.
{"title":"Omics and AI in precision medicine: Maintaining socio-technical imaginaries by transforming technological assemblages","authors":"Robert Meunier, Christian Herzog","doi":"10.14512/tatup.32.3.48","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.32.3.48","url":null,"abstract":"We understand precision medicine as a socio-technical imaginary according to Jasanoff. After briefly outlining how the imaginary of precision medicine emerged from the Human Genome Project and spread across national contexts, we raise the question of why the imaginary and the expectations and promises associated with it persist despite regular disappointment among practitioners about the failure of personalized healthcare. We argue that short-term technological hypes enable stakeholders to renew and maintain the promises of precision medicine. In our view, these hypes are around transformations of a technological assemblage. We discuss this in detail for omics and AI technologies and evaluate the recent transformations in light of the long-term imaginary of precision medicine.","PeriodicalId":504838,"journal":{"name":"TATuP - Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis","volume":"73 9-10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139181413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}