Towards A Digital Ethics of Agential Devices
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2020-08-28

As algorithms and their devices increasingly acquire agency, the need to address their ethical issues becomes ever more urgent. The range of digital devices used across archaeology and the algorithms  which  drive  them  are  progressively  black-boxed  as  they  become  more  and  more  complex, but the lack of transparency, the absence of explanation, and the increasing authority of these devices, together with the levels of trust, reliance, and expectations placed upon them, can create either a vicious or virtual circular relationship between the human and digital agent. In particular, as these tools – from software analytics to drones to bio-mimetic robotic devices – increasingly display autonomous behaviours they require a consideration of the ethics of their design, development, and application. What limits should be applied to their use? Can these agential devices contain ethical programming, and consequently exhibit ethical behaviour? Do the responsibilities and liabilities lie with the device, the designer, the user, or in some com-bination? The development of ethics in this area is still in its infancy: for example the IEEE is planning a publication in 2019 looking at the ethical issues associated with the design and use of autonomous systems, and archaeologists can learn from and build upon the digital ethics de-bates that are beginning to take place elsewhere. Furthermore, we have a responsibility to do so.

Jeremy Huggett