COMP90087 Essay 1
AI use in Child Surveillance: A Utilitarian and Care Ethical Perspective
May 9, 2022
Introduction
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For many reasons, human parents are naturally driven to care for, and desire the best outcomes for their children. The intrinsic desire to provide familial care has provided great advantage in human evolution, and in the current age of abundant information it¡¯s important to consider whether big data will be a force for strengthening family relations, or one that drives them apart.
This essay considers the ethical implications of a hypothetical app called SafeKids, developed by the com- pany Beta. SafeKids can be configured by parents to collect data from various sources on their child¡¯s smartphone, and uses this data to synthesize digestible graphs about the child¡¯s activity which the parents can access on the companion app.
The first section of the essay will present arguments in favour of SafeKids from a utilitarian perspective, which will be followed by a rebuttal from the perspective of Care Ethics in section two.
Task 1: Utilitarian Arguments in Favour of SafeKids
Utilitarianism posits that an action or decision is ethically justified if its consequences are expected to max- imise the net utility (or equivalently minimise the net suffering) of all beings affected by it. Clearly the people who will be most affected by SafeKids are the parents and children using it directly, and this section will focus mainly on the consequences for their utility. A comprehensive analysis does, however, require consideration of the externalities imposed on the friends and families of the users, as well as society at large.
Considering the implications to broader society, utilitarians can make a strong ethical argument in favour of SafeKids due to their focus on the maximisation of net utility. The utilitarian understands that decision- making by parents is guided strongly by emotion, and often considers the need of their children as coming before the needs of others. The consequence of this is that parents make decisions based not on what will maximise overall utility, but what will create the desired outcome for themselves and their child.
A utilitarian implementation of SafeKids could be designed such that parents are presented with data that promotes utilitarian decision making. By collecting and synthesizing information from many children inter- acting in a community, Beta could provide digests to parents which directly promote (or indirectly encourage) utilitarian initiatives. SafeKids could, for example, encourage families in the community with greater means to invest time and money into mutual aid for the greater benefit of other children, as opposed to these parents focusing investment solely into the development of their offspring.
A fully realised utilitarian version of SafeKids may even employ AI algorithms to generate the digests pro- vided to parents. The AI could then be explicitly trained to generate digests which are expected to promote
COMP90087 AI and Child Surveillance May 9, 2022
utilitarian decision making and maximise overall happiness, perhaps resulting in novel ideas for the develop- ment of a more utilitarian society. Clearly an implementation of SafeKids which promotes decision making according to the principle of greatest happiness is easily justified from the perspective of a utilitarian.
SafeKids also has strong utilitarian justification from the parents and children using the system directly. Firstly, the parents using the app to monitor their kids can be expected to gain happiness from the peace- of-mind that SafeKids provides when reassuring them of the safety of their children. Not only does the app provide location tracking to ensure that the children are staying away from danger and facilitate the locating of missing persons, but it can also provide assurance of digital safety through its AI analysis of data from various sensors on the child¡¯s device. It seems clear that SafeKids promotes happiness and generates positive utility to the parents in both of these cases.
The child can also be expected to gain utility from all of the cases that were defined above for the parent, especially with respect to their preference for safety and how this could be satisfied by parental oversight of their activities. In spite of this, opponents of SafeKids may argue that elements of the system like continuous surveillance have the potential to be abused by authoritarian parents, and that the large amount of data collection facilitated by the app puts the children at risk of data breaches. The opponent argues that even without a failure occurring this could cause paranoia and discourage the child participating in healthy social activity.
While an honest utilitarian acknowledges these potentials for disaster, they note that the reduced level of cognitive development in the child limits their capacity to understand the consequences of such events. Therefore, while the suffering which would be generated by such a failure occurring cannot be ignored, the level of suffering incurred in anticipation of such a disaster can be somewhat discounted.
Overall the utilitarian can be reasonably convinced that a benevolent implementation of SafeKids (especially one based on the principle of greatest happiness) could be expected to generate positive utility for society at large. This said, they recognise the need for Beta to remain accountable for the maintenance of the app throughout its lifetime and safeguard against crises such as data breaches and abuse.
Task 2: Care Ethical Arguments Against SafeKids
Care ethicists are known to often provide strong opposition to utilitarian ideas, especially on the grounds that utilitarians fail to consider the human relationships and emotions that are affected by their actions. They find fault in the consequential nature of utilitarianism and emphasize the maintenance and strengthening of immediate relationships as opposed to seeking decisions whose consequences are expected to maximise a measure of overall happiness or utility.
A prominent care ethicist, Joan Tronto, proposes four elements which are required for an individual to be an effective and ethical carer. The first is attentiveness, which measures their tendency to be aware of the need for care in others. Secondly, responsibility, the willingness of the carer to respond to and provide care to those in need. Thirdly competence, the ability to provide care which successfully meets the needs of the cared-for, and finally responsiveness, which involves the acknowledgement of the potential for abuse in care, and requires empathy for the conditions in which others exist. Combined, these elements provide a framework which can be used to assess the acceptability of the SafeKids app from a Care Ethical perspective.
Looking at these features individually, the care ethicist acknowledges that a parent choosing to use the app is attentive to the needs of their child in the sense that they understand the child¡¯s vulnerability to dangerous or malicious influences. They further demonstrate attentiveness through their willingness to setup and continue to monitor the app over time. Similarly, a parent utilising SafeKids for caring reasons can reasonably be assumed to be taking a level of responsibility for the care of the child, since they are
COMP90087 AI and Child Surveillance May 9, 2022
receiving information which they are responsible to act upon. The care ethicist could use these observations to argue in favour of the app, however a clear argument can be levelled against this claim that SafeKids promotes responsibility.
When considering the somewhat narrower definition of care ethics proposed by , the care ethicist recognises that taking responsibility for monitoring the SafeKids app may be used as a substitute for face-to-face interaction between the parent and child. Under Bubeck¡¯s definition, the care ethicist ar- gues that this replacement of face-to-face interaction goes against the principle of effective care, since it disregards human relationships and emotions in favour of trusting the data digest presented by the app. Considering this emphasis on face-to-face care, usage of SafeKids clearly has the potential to weaken familial relationships by sabotaging trusted communication channels between parents and children.
Similar to the argument against responsibility, it is plausible that widespread adoption of SafeKids has the potential to reduce competence in care in the broader community. This is because increased dependence on the app will naturally result in a deterioration of the ability to perform effective face-to-face care. This is a significant indictment against the ethical acceptability of SafeKids, since the platform could be expected to scale this consequence to a large amount of parents. On these grounds the care ethicist argues against the ethical suitability of the platform.
Finally, considering responsiveness provides perhaps the strongest argument against proliferation of the app. Responsive care requires consideration of the potential for abuse, and SafeKids exposes children to many additional vectors for abuse and harm. The app could, for example, be used by abusive parents to exert an even greater level of control over their children and perhaps even prevent them from seeking help. Beta also cannot be assumed to have benign intentions, and it is clear to see how the immense amount of data they collect about the children could be abused for marketing or more nefarious reasons. This is especially salient when considering that Beta has a great level of informational, technological, and psychological power over the adult and child users.
In addition to the potential for abuse by Beta, the possibility of a data breach must be considered, which exposes the users to potential abuse by vast networks of malicious actors. Clearly the care ethicist cannot consider the proposed implementation of SafeKids to be ethically acceptable without significantly more being done to address these vectors for abuse.
Conclusion
At face value, the intentions of the app seem virtuous, and as if they would contribute to both generating positive utility and promoting care. A clear utilitarian argument can be presented in favour of SafeKids because of its ability to encourage decision making which follows utilitarian lines, but this argument is incomplete due to its downplaying of the potential for abuse. Instead the care ethical argument makes a more compelling case for how widespread use of the app is unjustified due to the degradation it could cause to relationships of care. Further action must be taken to address the potentials for abuse, increase accountability of Beta, and increase the level of transparency in the system before SafeKids could be considered ethically approved for deployment.
Word Count: 1649
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