The Ethics of Computer Simulations: Challenges and Perspectives for the Future of Science and Technology
Juan M. Durán, University of Stuttgart, Germany
Human-in-the-loop and Other Human Centric Computing Paradigms for Modeling, Simulation and Decision Support
Janusz Kacprzyk, Systems Research Institute - Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
Crowd Modeling and Simulation of Spatial Systems with Cell-DEVS
Gabriel Wainer, Carleton University, Canada
The Ethics of Computer Simulations: Challenges and Perspectives for the Future of Science and Technology
Juan M. Durán
University of Stuttgart
Germany
Brief Bio
Juan M. Durán studied computer science (1998-2003) and philosophy (2003-2008) in Argentina. Before moving to Germany for his PhD (2009-2013), he had worked for the National Aerospace Agency, taught at the University, and worked in private business. His PhD was carried out within the German Excellence Initiative Graduate School Simulation Technology, where he wrote his dissertation on the epistemology and methodology of computer simulations. After these studies, he returned to Argentina with a postdoc position granted by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council for a project on scientific explanation for computer simulations (2014-2016). After two years of research and teaching, he returned to Germany as a Research Associate at the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart, at the University of Stuttgart (2016-2018). His work focuses on the philosophy of computer simulations broadly conceived, from the methodology and epistemology, to his more recent work on ethics and the place of computer simulations in knowledge society.
Abstract
Computer simulations represent, without a doubt, a scientific novelty in contemporary research. But in what sense do they also raise philosophical concerns? Although there are a number of issues that philosophers have pointed out as central to the analysis of computer simulations, admittedly many revolve around philosophical debates with little interests for researchers working with computer simulations. The question that we should be asking, then, is what sort of issues of a philosophical nature are tailored to computer simulations and attract the interest of practitioners? A good way to approach to this question is by addressing the ethics of computer simulations. Surprisingly, there is very little discussion on this matter. Nevertheless, three viewpoints can be identified. First, it is claimed that computer simulations raise ethical concerns in cases where their results are not reliable. Second, computer simulations raise ethical concerns when they are biased (for instance, in their representations). Finally, it is claimed that computer simulations raise ethical concerns if the researchers do not behave professionally. Each viewpoint emphasises a different and relevant aspect of computer simulations. But unfortunately more needs to be said. This talk will examine all three approaches to the ethics of computer simulations and ask, furthermore, whether there are more ethical issues that are currently going under the radar of philosophers (and thus requires the aid of professional practitioners).
Human-in-the-loop and Other Human Centric Computing Paradigms for Modeling, Simulation and Decision Support
Janusz Kacprzyk
Systems Research Institute - Polish Academy of Sciences
Poland
www.ibspan.waw.pl/~kacprzyk
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Brief Bio
Janusz Kacprzyk graduated from Warsaw University of Technology, with M.Sc. in automatic control and CS, in 1977 Ph.D. in systems analysis, in 1991 D.Sc. in computer science. Professor of Computer Science at the Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, and Professor of Automatic Control at PIAP – Industrial Institute of Automation and Measurements; Honorary Professor of Mathematics, Yli Normal University, Xinjiang, China. Full Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Member of Academia Europaea and European Academy of Sciences and Arts. Foreign Member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Economic and Financial Sciences (RACEF), Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. Fellow of IEEE, IET, IFSA, EurAI, and SMIA. Doctor honoris causa of 4 universities. Frequent visiting professor in the USA, Italy, UK, Mexico, China, and Austria. Main research interests: computation intelligence, notably fuzzy logic, decisions, optimization, control, data analysis and data mining, IT/ICT, mobile robotics, systems modeling etc.Main awards: 2006 IEEE CIS Pioneer Award in Fuzzy Systems for fuzzy dynamic programming, 2006 Sixth Kaufmann Prize and Gold Medal for pioneering works on soft computing in economics and management, 2007 Pioneer Award of the Silicon Valley Section of IEEE CIS for granular computing and computing in words, IFSA 2013 Award for lifetime achievements in fuzzy systems and service to the fuzzy community, 2014 World Automation Congress Lifetime Award for contributions to soft computing. President of the Polish Operational and Systems Research Society and Past President of International Fuzzy Systems Association. Long time member of IEEE CIS Adcom, notably 2016 Chair of its Award Committee.
Abstract
Artificial intelligence is one of much talked about topics these days, and it is considered to be a crucial factor for an effective and efficient solution of many key problems facing the technology, economy and society. This hope is amplified by its remarkable ability to make use of large data sets that are omnipresent and, when analyzed and processed properly, can make it possible to obtain and codify much knowledge about what is done, or should be done, in a variety of situations. This remarkable ability of broadly perceived artificial intelligence based approaches is amplified by an universally accepted requirement they have to satify, namely to provide transparency, comprehensibility, etc. of the reasons behind and processes employed to find a solution, to just mention a few.Yet, in spite of that remarkable progress in all kinds of artificial intelligence tools and techniques, there are still many situations when a fully automated analysis and derivation of decisions is not the best solution. It may be often more expedient to explicitly include the human being in the process, notably when sophisticated problems are considered, human judgments are to be taken into account with all their subtle semantics, etc.. There are numerous examples in both, to just quote a few examples, economic planning, automation and robotics, traffic control, etc. This all calls for new computing paradigms that can be termed as human centric, in general, human-in-the-loop, in a more specific context, with many other cases.
First, we briefly present the essence of some new computing paradigms that try to attain a synergy, and bridge the gap between the human user and computer systems, notably the so-called: human centric computing, human centered computing, human computing, etc. Then, we will discuss in more detail some approaches to the so-called human-in-the-loop, on some examples of planning and intelligent robotics. We will consider them in the context of systems modeling and decision making. We present a brief account of modern approaches to real world decision making, emphasize the concept of a decision making process that involves more factors and aspects like: the use of explicit and tacit knowledge, intuition, individual habitual domains, non-trivial rationality, different paradigms, etc. We advocate the need for computer based decision support systems. After a short presentation of their history and classification, we indicate that decision support systems should incorporate some sort of “intelligence”, and we first briefly mention some views of intelligence in an individual and collective perspective. We also mention the role of modeling and simulation for solving complex problems. We indicate possible advantages of using those new human-centered computing paradigms in the decision making and support context, and advocate the use of human consistent forms of presentation of data and results, and decision suggestions. We will concentrate on the use of some novel tools of verbalization, notably the use of linguistic summaries of large sets of data. Finally, we show an example of our own implementation of a data/document driven decision support system for a computer retailer in which linguistic database summaries, elements of business intelligence and Web intelligence are combined.
Crowd Modeling and Simulation of Spatial Systems with Cell-DEVS
Gabriel Wainer
Carleton University
Canada
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Brief Bio
Gabriel Wainer (FSCS, SMIEEE) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He received the M.C.S. (1993) and Ph.D. degrees (1998, with highest honors) in Computer Science from the Universidad de Buenos Aires and IUSPIM (now Polytech de Marseille), Université Aix Marseille, (France). In July 2000, he joined the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton University (Ottawa, ON, Canada), where he is now a Full Professor and Associate Chair for Graduate Studies. Previously he was Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, and he was a visiting scholar or invited Professor in different Universities, including the Arizona Center of Integrated Modelling and Simulation (ACIMS, University of Arizona), Laboratory of Systems Sciences of Marseille (LSIS-CNRS), University of Nice, Université Paul Cézanne (Marseille), IMS (Bordeaux, France), INRIA Sophia-Antipolis (France), Computer Science Department (UBA, Argentina), Applied Mathematics Institute (UBA, Argentina), National University of Rosario (Argentina) Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Universidad Politécnica de Catalonia (Spain). The Advanced Real-Time Simulation lab was an Associate Team of INRIA Prof. Wainer was Vice-President Conferences was Vice-President Publications, and a member of the Board of Directors of the The Society for Computer Simulation International (SCS) (1998-2000: International Section; 2004-2006: M&S Methodologies Council; Member-at-large 2011-17). He is a Certified Professional on Modeling and Simulation, and one of the Charter Members of the MSPCC (Modelling and Simulation Professional Certification Commision). He was a chair of the DEVS standardization study group (SISO). He is Special Issues Editor of the Transactions of the Society for Computer Simulation International (SCS), member of the Editorial Board of IEEE Computing in Science and Engineering, Wireless Networks (Elsevier), Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation (SAGE), and the International Journal of Simulation and Process Modelling (Inderscience). He has served as paper reviewer, session chair, and conference organizer in different organizations. Prof. Wainer's is author of a book on Real-Time systems, three other on Discrete-Event Simulation and over 350 articles in different venues. He has collaborated in the organization of over 170 conferences in the area (including the co-founding of the Symposium of Theory of Modeling and Simulation - TMS/DEVS, SIMUTools and the start of SimAUD). His research interests are focused in the areas of Discrete Event Modelling and Simulation, parallel and distributed simulation, and Real-Time systems (with special focus in operating systems and scheduling). He is the head of the Advanced Real-Time Simulation lab, located at Carleton University's Centre for advanced Simulation and Visualization (V-Sim). He is a member of the Real-Time and Distributed Systems lab at Carleton University. He has received funding from numerous sources, both public and private. Up to date he has received over 3.2M$ as Principal Investigator, and over 1.1M$ as co-applicant of numerous grants totaling over 30M$. I have supervised 5 Postdoctoral fellows, 10 PhD students, 1 Research Assistant, 54 Masters and over 100 4th year Engineering students since 1997. I currently supervise 1 Postdoctoral fellow, 6 PhD students, and 5 Masters students (two new PhD students have been accepted to begin in September 2016). He has been the recipient of various awards, including the IBM Eclipse Innovation Award, a Leadership award by the Society for Modeling and Simulation International, various Best Paper awards. He has been awarded Carleton University's Research Achievement Award (2005 and 2014), the First Bernard P. Zeigler DEVS Modeling and Simulation Award (2010), the SCS Outstanding Professional Award (2011), Carleton University’s Mentorship Award (2013), and the SCS Distinguished Service Award (2015). He is a Fellow of SCS (2016) and a recipient of the Nepean's Canada 150 Anniversary Medal (2017).
Abstract
Recent advances in computer technology have influenced simulation techniques to become an effective approach to understand physical systems. In recent years, grid-shaped cellular models have gained popularity in this sense. In particular, Cellular Automata (CA) have been widely used with these purposes. Despite their usefulness to describe complex behavior, CA can require large amounts of compute time, mainly due to its synchronous nature. The use of a discrete time base also constrains the precision of the model. Besides this, CA do not describe adequately most of existing physical systems whose nature is asynchronous. The Cell-DEVS formalism was defined in order to attack these problems. The goal of Cell-DEVS is to build discrete-event cell spaces, improving their definition by making the timing specification more expressive.
We will introduce the main characteristics of the Cell-DEVS formalism, and will show how to model complex cell spaces in. We will present different examples of application, and discuss open research issues in this area. We will then focus on advanced models of pedestrian flow and crowds. The methodology uses a cellular modeling approach in which each cell is defined as a discrete event agent, and defines a procedure to couple cells evolving the state of the influenced neighbors.