More Like this

1. Wastewater Monitoring Raises Privacy and Ethical Considerations

   https://doi.org/10.1109/TTS.2021.3073886  

   Jacobs, Danielle; McDaniel, Troy; Varsani, Arvind; Halden, Rolf U.; Forrest, Stephanie; Lee, Heewook (January 2021, IEEE transactions on technology and society)

   null (Ed.)

   Analysis of municipal wastewater, or sewage for public health applications is a rapidly expanding field aimed at understanding emerging epidemiological trends, including human and disease migration. The newly gained ability to extract and analyze genetic material from wastewater poses important societal and ethical questions, including: How to safeguard data? Who owns genetic data recovered from wastewater? What are the ethical and legal issues surrounding its use? In the U.S., both corporate and legal policies regarding privacy have been historically reactive instead of proactive. In wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), the pace of innovation has outpaced the ability of social and legal mechanisms to keep up. To address this discrepancy, early and robust discussions of the research, policies, and ethics surrounding WBE analysis and genetics is needed. This paper contributes to this discussion by examining ownership issues for human genetic data recovered from wastewater and the uses to which it may be put. We focus particularly on the risks associated with personally identifiable data, highlighting potential risks, relevant privacy-enhancing technologies, and appropriate ethics. The paper proposes an approach for people conducting WBE studies to help them systematically consider the ethical and privacy implications of their work. 

   more » « less
2. Whose intentions? What consequences? Interrogating “Intended Consequences” for conservation with environmental biotechnology

   https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.406  

   Barnhill‐Dilling, S_Kathleen; Delborne, Jason_A (April 2021, Conservation Science and Practice)

   Abstract Novel genetic interventions may offer innovative solutions to environmental conservation challenges, but they also represent new kinds of risks and concerns for diverse publics. Yet, by focusing on potential negative outcomes of emerging technologies like gene editing, their potential utility in species protection could lead to overblown fears of unknown and unanticipated consequences. In response, Revive and Restore organized a workshop in June 2020 entitled, “Intended Consequences,” to highlight conservation successes in the discourse and governance of genomic interventions. This article argues that if we seek to emphasize Intended Consequences to embolden innovative conservation efforts, we must simultaneously query whose intentions are included and what consequences are considered to ensure that environmental goals are accompanied by the goals of responsibility, democracy, and justice. These questions reveal that the governance and management of conservation interventions always rest upon value judgements. Inspired and informed by the Responsible Research and Innovation framework, we encourage anticipation of potential outcomes, reflection on assumptions and intentions, inclusion of diverse stakeholders and perspectives, and a commitment to responding thoughtfully to concerns and preferences of communities and broader publics. 

   more » « less
3. Arctic Sea Ice Decline and Geoengineering Solutions: Cascading Security and Ethical Considerations.

   Bennett, Alec P. (May 2022, Challenges)

   Climate change is generating sufficient risk for nation‐states and citizens throughout the Arctic to warrant potentially radical geoengineering solutions. Currently, geoengineering solutions such as surface albedo modification or aerosol deployment are in the early stages of testing and development. Due to the scale of deployments necessary to enact change, and their preliminary nature, these methods are likely to result in unforeseen consequences. These consequences may range in severity from local ecosystem impacts to large scale changes in available solar energy. The Arctic is an area that is experiencing rapid change, increased development, and exploratory interest, and proposed solutions have the potential to produce new risks to both natural and human systems. This article examines potential security and ethical considerations of geoengineering solutions in the Arctic from the perspectives of securitization, consequentialism, and risk governance ap‐ proaches, and argues that proactive and preemptive frameworks at the international level, and es‐ pecially the application of risk governance approaches, will be needed to prevent or limit negative consequences resulting from geoengineering efforts. Utilizing the unique structures already present in Arctic governance provides novel options for addressing these concerns from both the perspec‐ tive of inclusive governance and through advancing the understanding of uncertainty analysis and precautionary principles. 

   more » « less
4. Governance of interdependent ecosystem services and common-pool resources

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2023.106575  

   Tucker, Catherine M; Hribar, Mateja Šmid; Urbanc, Mimi; Bogataj, Nevenka; Gunya, Alexey; Rodela, Romina; Sigura, Maurizia; Piani, Lucia (April 2023, Land Use Policy)

   Environmental governance is recognized as a key issue in many natural and social sciences. It is highly relevant for ecosystem services and common-pool resources as well. Both fields overlap yet have typically been studied separately. Therefore, this study aimed a) to examine the emerging body of literature that incorporates concepts from both fields of research and considers governance challenges, and b) to identify policy tools and recommendations presented for addressing those challenges. The analysis of thirty-nine selected peer-review papers revealed the multiplicity of interacting governance challenges with three major categories: environmental, socioeconomic, and problems of governance itself. Governance is impeded by institutional mismatches, exclusion of local actors, corruption, and perverse policies. The proposed policy recommendations most often suggest changes in institutional arrangements and increasing scientific understanding. Meeting human needs, and increasing social equity and justice were recognized broadly as integral for improving governance, yet correlations among governance problems and solutions appear elusive. These findings extend theoretical reasoning, while carrying practical implications for policy, governance and environmental stewardship. The analysis implies that policies to improve human conditions will be key for improved environmental governance, but more research is needed to learn which types of policy recommendations prove successful given diverse local contexts. 

   more » « less
5. A Systematic Review of Biometric Monitoring in the Workplace: Analyzing Socio-technical Harms in Development, Deployment and Use

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3630106.3658945  

   Awumey, E; Das, S; Forlizzi, J (June 2024, ACM)

   Modern advances in AI have increased employer interest in tracking workers’ biometric signals — e.g., their brainwaves and facial expressions — to evaluate and make predictions about their performance and productivity. These technologies afford managers information about internal emotional and physiological states that were previously accessible only to individual workers, raising new concerns around worker privacy and autonomy. Yet, the research literature on the impact of AI-powered biometric work monitoring (AI-BWM) technologies on workers remains fragmented across disciplines and industry sectors, limiting our understanding of its impacts on workers at large. In this paper, we sytematically review 129 papers, spanning varied disciplines and industry sectors, that discuss and analyze the impact of AI-powered biometric monitoring technologies in occupational settings. We situate this literature across a process model that spans the development, deployment, and usage phases of these technologies. We further draw on Shelby et al.’s Taxonomy of Socio-technical Harms in AI systems to systematize the harms experienced by workers across the three phases of our process model. We find that the development, deployment, and sustained use of AI-powered biometric work monitoring technologies put workers at risk of a number of the socio-technical harms specified by Shelby et al.: e.g., by forcing workers to exert additional emotional labor to avoid flagging unreliable affect monitoring systems, or through the use of these data to make inferences about productivity. Our research contributes to the field of critical AI studies by highlighting the potential for a cascade of harms to occur when the impact of these technologies on workers is not considered at all phases of our process model. 

   more » « less