Towards the design of ethics aware systems for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things promises to offer numerous societal benefits by providing a spectrum of user applications. However, ethical ramifications of adopting such pervasive technology on a society-wide scale have not been adequately considered. Smart things endowed with artificial intelligence may carry out decisions that entail ethical consequences. It is assumed that the functioning of a smart device does not involve any ethical responsibility vis-a-vis its application context. Such a perspective may precipitate situations that endanger essential human values or cause physical or emotional harm. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the design of ethics within intelligent systems to safeguard human interests. In order to address these concerns, we propose a novel method based on Boolean algebra that enables a machine to exhibit varying ethical behaviour by employing the concept of ethics categories and ethics modes. Such enhancement of smart things offers a way to design ethically compliant smart devices and paves way for human friendly technology ecosystems.