Search

Artificial intelligence (AI) can bring substantial benefits to society by helping to reduce costs, increase efficiency and enable new solutions to complex problems. Using Floridi’s notion of how to design the “infosphere” as a starting point, in this chapter I consider the question: what are the limits of design, i.e. what are the conceptual constraints on designing AI for social good? The main argument of this chapter is that while design is a useful conceptual tool to shape technologies and societies, collective efforts towards designing future societies are constrained by both internal and external factors. Internal constraints on design are discussed by evoking Hardin’s thought experiment regarding “the Tragedy of the Commons”. Further, Hayek’s classical distinction between “cosmos” and “taxis” is used to demarcate external constraints on design. Finally, five design principles are presented which are aimed at helping policy makers manage the internal and external constraints on design. A successful approach to designing future societies needs to account for the emergent properties of complex systems by allowing space for serendipity and socio-technological coevolution.

This chapter provides an overview of William Forster Lloyd’s various contributions to political economy in the following areas: poor laws and population growth, the problems of commonly held property (or ‘the tragedy of the commons’), marginal utility, behavioural economics and animal intelligence. It argues that Lloyd was strongly in favour of providing support for poor relief, anticipated the law of diminishing marginal utility, and developed in embryo some of the concepts found in contemporary behavioural economics. The neglect of his work across much of the nineteenth century and then the rediscovery of different aspects of it in the twentieth century first by E.R.A. Seligman and then later by Garrett Hardin are also considered.

The late Elinor Ostrom was the person who most clearly saw through the supposed dilemma called the “tragedy of the commons” (Hardin 1968; Ostrom 1990). It was widely argued that managing common property resources was an impossible proposition, that either common property is privatized in some way or else there will be an inevitable tendency for the resource to be overharvested, possibly to complete destruction or exhaustion. Such outcomes were seen as inevitable outcomes of prisoner dilemma games where agents using common property resources will fail to cooperate uwith one another and instead seek to get as much of the resource for themselves as soon as possible. However, she understood from early in her work (Ostrom 1976) that people seek to work out arrangements for managing common property resources. As she studied this phenomenon over time she came to realize that different groups pursue different solutions. This led her to pose the concept of polycentricity and the importance of institutional diversity around the world, based on local circumstances and cultures (Ostrom 2005, 2012).

This chapter delineates the scope of digital technologies and of public space, and the discourses on these two constructs. Digital technologies, as appropriated in public spatial practice, span the distinction between public space and public media. These technologies play complex roles in both exacerbating and ameliorating many of the purported contemporary crises of public space, just as they have the potential mediate between the many different publics in urban society. In all of these aspects, they have the potential of providing platforms and tools for the rehearsal of possible future publics.

We can search among the behavioral data for the earliest known primates, or ants, or sharks, or the lost trilobites, and speculate upon what constitutes lasting, biological success, and, simultaneously, plumb the earliest philosophical caveats in search of that which is most common to all ecological idealism. These primeval factors—in whatever specific or combinatorial effect—from a Darwinian perspective must inform the genotypes of choice leading us into the future. What proteins, genes, ideas, and wholistic organisms, modified through descent in time, have noticeably exerted the resilience to get organisms through evolutionary cul-de-sacs? Disease outbreaks? Genetic squeezes? Intense competition? Sporadic violence searching for stability? Such questions now have genetic markers along the way of their odysseys, and a fascinated intellectual era engrossed by probability statistics that intimate the end of the line, or not.

This chapter analyzes the ethical implication AI has for individuals and societies. Initially, the fundamental impact that automation in general and AI in particular have on the amount and type of human work will be discussed. Obviously, the ethical challenge of AI technology is immense and scratches on the cornerstone of open societies in particular. The AI superpowers the USA and China are discussed from an ethical perspective by providing a respective framing of the approaches in those countries.

The four cases of cross-border management of water resource reviewed in this chapter include the Northwest Atlantic ground-fishery, the Columbia River anadromous fishery, the Colorado River Compact water allocation system, and the Great Lakes Commission and Compact. They illustrate the associated problems with cross-border governmental resource management. Among other lessons, they show that effectiveness relies on the “good will” of the negotiators as well as the pursuit of the principles reviewed in previous chapters.

The conflict between Arabs and Israelis has many points of friction, but doubtless the most complicated to solve is Jerusalem in general, and the Old City in particular. While it is difficult to see East Jerusalem returned to Palestinian hands, the solution to this complicated issue may come from rethinking the status of the Old City. The Old City is a walled territory of 0.9 Km2 where the most sacred places for the three monotheistic religions meet. While it is true that many initiatives (partition plan, Olmert, Clinton Parameters) have tried to prevent either party from being the guardian of Holy Places, none of these initiatives have succeeded in finding a way to do that. The key to achieve an agreement between Arabs and Israelis on the issue of Jerusalem is not to declare the Old City as an international zone but to declare it as a global, international and supranational resource. In other words, that the Old City should be consider a Global Common with no possibility of being dominated and or exploited by any state. Only through this way territorial claims on the Old City will be avoided and thus an insurmountable point for any peace plan for the Middle East will eliminate.

International business adds another level of complexity in decision-making, since aspects from home and host countries need to be encountered. As in today’s globalized world of supply chains and value streams cutting across borders, the ethical aspects need to be encountered likewise. This chapter addresses fundamental ethical standards in international business and illustrates the different societal perspectives. The “Tragedy of the Commons” will be demonstrated in particular in an international context where responsibility is rarely taken on a broader level (rainforest grubbing, overfishing) and a systematic responsibility is ignored, leading to global effects as could have been seen with SARS-CoV-2 and the following COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Ethical dilemma will be explained, and its driving factors will be analyzed. As a guide to ethical conduct, an ethical compass is suggested that provides clear guardrails to manage in an international context. An example will be demonstrated of how AI can support ethical decision-making.

This chapter further explores the notion of “collective imperfect duty.” It uses this notion to further define “the commons” as a conceptual and often legal entity that emerges from “collective imperfect duty.” This phenomenon explains the rise of environmental advocacy organizations that express society’s interests in the most significant problem of our time. By promulgating their expertise into the public sphere, these organizations not only provide the scientific and socio-economic information and expertise necessary for our social discourse to be “reasoned,” but they also assert the “noble nature” of declaring the immorality of environmental destruction. They do this in our public discourse thereby making it “reasoned.” As illustrations, this chapter also examines the history of, and the current contributions of three of these environmental advocacy organizations: The Wilderness Society, The Sierra Club, and The Environmental Defense Fund. The role of a business coalition, the Western Energy Alliance, is also reviewed.

The purpose of this paper is to model the influence of Kantian moral scruples in a dynamic environment. Our objectives are twofold. Firstly, we investigate how a Nash equilibrium among agents who have moral scruples may ensure that the exploitation of a common-property renewable resource is Pareto efficient at every point of time. Secondly, we outline a prototype model that shows, in an overlapping generation framework, how a community’s sense of morality may evolve over time and identifies conditions under which the community may reach a steady-state level of morality in which everyone is perfectly Kantian.

The utopian vision of the digital world was once viewed as a space without borders and government. As the digital world expanded and turned into a key resource for governments, businesses, individuals and organizations, it became evident the need of governance structures for the digital world. This chapter starts out the analysis of governance structures with concepts from the tragedy of the commons. It explores different elements of digital governance in order to enhance the global systemic trust in the digital world.

This article describes a simulation for resource allocation. As a particular case, it describes how would be the assignment in an ad hoc network. We present the results of a simulation allocating resources from one system (communications network) to another system (agent collections). In the description of the model first shows the behavior of the allocation of resources towards the nodes depending on the usefulness of the network and the satisfaction of the agents. Based on the mathematical model of the tragedy of the commons, the behavior of the system is shown. The usefulness and satisfaction of the system are measured. Resource allocation is modeled as an interaction. The computational model Interaction Nets is used as the basis of the simulation.