Rumour is a collective emergent phenomenon with a potential for provoking a crisis. Modelling approaches have been deployed since five decades ago; however, the focus was mostly on epidemic behaviour of the rumours which does not take into account the differences between agents. We use social practice theory to model agent decision-making in organizational rumourmongering. Such an approach provides us with an opportunity to model rumourmongering agents with a layer of cognitive realism and study the impacts of various intervention strategies for prevention and control of rumours in organizations.

Accountability and responsibility are key concepts in the academic and societal debate on Autonomous Weapon Systems, but these notions are often used as high-level overarching constructs and are not operationalised to be useful in practice. “Meaningful Human Control” is often mentioned as a requirement for the deployment of Autonomous Weapon Systems, but a common definition of what this notion means in practice, and a clear understanding of its relation with responsibility and accountability is also lacking. In this paper, we present a definition of these concepts and describe the relations between accountability, responsibility, control and oversight in order to show how these notions are distinct but also connected. We focus on accountability as a particular form of responsibility—the obligation to explain one’s action to a forum—and we present three ways in which the introduction of Autonomous Weapon Systems may create “accountability gaps”. We propose a Framework for Comprehensive Human Oversight based on an engineering, socio-technical and governance perspective on control. Our main claim is that combining the control mechanisms at technical, socio-technical and governance levels will lead to comprehensive human oversight over Autonomous Weapon Systems which may ensure solid controllability and accountability for the behaviour of Autonomous Weapon Systems. Finally, we give an overview of the military control instruments that are currently used in the Netherlands and show the applicability of the comprehensive human oversight Framework to Autonomous Weapon Systems. Our analysis reveals two main gaps in the current control mechanisms as applied to Autonomous Weapon Systems. We have identified three first options as future work for the design of a control mechanism, one in the technological layer, one in the socio-technical layer and one the governance layer, in order to achieve comprehensive human oversight and ensure accountability over Autonomous Weapon Systems.

Evidence-driven agent-based modeling plays a useful part in understanding social phenomena. By integrating social-cognitive theories in our agent models, we bear evidence from social and psychological studies on our models for human decision-making. Social practice theory (SPT) provides a socio-cognitive theory that emphasizes three empirically and theoretically grounded aspects of behavior: habituality, sociality, and interconnectivity. Previous work has emphasized the importance of SPT for agents, has made abstract models of SPT, or used SPT to study energy systems. This article provides a set of requirements for integrating SPT in agent models and an evaluation of 11 current agent models with respect to these requirements. We find that current agent models do not fully capture habituality, sociality, or interconnectivity, nor is there a model that aims to integrate all three aspects. For example, current models do not support context-dependent habits, use a comprehensive set of collective concepts, and support hierarchies of activities. Our evaluation allows researchers to pick one of the current agent models depending on their needs regarding habituality, sociality, and interconnectivity. Furthermore, this article shows the usefulness of an agent model that integrates SPT and provides requirements that help modelers to achieve this model.

To better understand the impact of deliberations during participatory policymaking events, we introduce and explore the concept of group proximity. An example of such events is citizens' summits, during which many parallel groups deliberate on solutions for a policy issue. At the summit that was studied, each group followed a value deliberation process with the aim to increase mutual understanding among participants. They were asked to rank the solutions in their order of preference before and after the deliberation. From these rankings, group proximity can be calculated with a rank correlation, enabling a precise comparison of participants' preferences in each deliberative group. High group proximity indicates very similar rankings in a deliberative group, while low group proximity demonstrates the opposite. Comparing group proximity of the before and after rankings shows if a group ranked convergent, unchanged or divergent. This measure allows for a quantitative analysis of early-stage public policymaking processes.

In the political debate on Autonomous Weapon Systems strong views and opinions are voiced, but empirical research to support these opinions is lacking. Insight into which moral values are related to the deployment of Autonomous Weapon Systems is missing. We describe the empirical results of two studies on moral values regarding Autonomous Weapon Systems that aim to understand the perception of people pertaining to the introduction of Autonomous Weapon Systems. One study consists of a sample of military personnel of the Dutch Ministry of Defense and the second study contains a sample of civilians. The results indicate both groups are more anxious about the deployment of Autonomous Weapon Systems than about the deployment of Human Operated drones, and that they perceive Autonomous Weapon Systems to have less respect for the dignity of human life. The concerns for Autonomous Weapon Systems creating new kinds of psychological and moral harm is very present in the public debate, and this is in our opinion one element that deserves to be carefully considered in future debates on the ethics of the design and deployment of Autonomous Weapon Systems. The results of these studies reveal a common ground regarding the moral values of human dignity and anxiety pertaining the introduction of Autonomous Weapon Systems which could further the ethical debate.

This article reports the findings of AI4People, an Atomium—EISMD initiative designed to lay the foundations for a “Good AI Society”. We introduce the core opportunities and risks of AI for society; present a synthesis of five ethical principles that should undergird its development and adoption; and offer 20 concrete recommendations—to assess, to develop, to incentivise, and to support good AI—which in some cases may be undertaken directly by national or supranational policy makers, while in others may be led by other stakeholders. If adopted, these recommendations would serve as a firm foundation for the establishment of a Good AI Society.

Ethics by Design concerns the methods, algorithms and tools needed to endow autonomous agents with the capability to reason about the ethical aspects of their decisions, and the methods, tools and formalisms to guarantee that an agent's behavior remains within given moral bounds. In this context some questions arise: How and to what extent can agents understand the social reality in which they operate, and the other intelligences (AI, animals and humans) with which they co-exist? What are the ethical concerns in the emerging new forms of society, and how do we ensure the human dimension is upheld in interactions and decisions by autonomous agents?. But overall, the central question is: "Can we, and should we, build ethically-aware agents?" This paper presents initial conclusions from the thematic day of the same name held at PRIMA2017, on October 2017.