Winter 2010 Issue

Keith Miller

Computer Science and the Ethics of Technology

Faculty Spotlight By Amy Spies

Keith Miller

What is it about a predator that isn’t terrifying? We might initially think of a “predator” as a mountain lion, a bear, or perhaps even a wolf. But what, exactly, is terrifying about them? Is it their failure to recognize human boundaries? Is it their refusal to acknowledge human authority?

Yet, we, the human public, feel their absence. Our attempts to reintegrate them into the landscape – their landscape – happened only after many and lengthy debates, studies, decisions, with resistance all along the way.

Robotic predators – i.e., “unmanned aerial vehicles” armed with missiles and “flown” by a pilot from the comfort of his cubicle in Maryland or Nevada – on the other hand, carry out their deadly purposes nearly undetected and against an “enemy.”

Some, including UIS professor of computer science and computer ethics Dr. Keith Miller, might consider the use of these robots problematic, not merely because of what they do.

The problem is, Miller explains, “We haven’t talked about this.”

Miller, who is also the first Louise Hartman Schewe and Karl Schewe Professor in Liberal Arts & Sciences, is an expert in identifying ethical issues that lie at the intersections of technology and society: in computer science, software development, and yes, the ethics of “use,” including military use of both software and hardware.

Miller’s expertise began as an undergraduate at Concordia University, then a Lutheran teacher’s college, in Seward, Neb., where he graduated in 1973 with an education degree and certifications in physics and math. While there, Miller had the opportunity to “play” with the FORTRAN computer “lurking in the basement of the mathematics building,” he said.

Miller started his professional life as a math teacher at a Lutheran high school/junior college institution in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He taught for two years and then decided to go to graduate school at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., where he earned his master’s degree in mathematics. He says he “indulged in computing” there, but still, he did not get his degree in computer science.

While a graduate student in mathematics, Miller worked in predicting probabilities of failure: “It costs a lot of money to run tests,” he points out. “So how good is good enough? How small should the probabilities be? Both of these are ethical questions, not technical ones.”

After graduate school, Miller returned to the Canadian high school/junior college, where he and his wife, Dr. Bethany Spielman, a biomedical ethics professor for Southern Illinois University’s School of Medicine, whom he met as an undergraduate, both taught. Eventually, Spielman “wanted to go on. She was interested in ethics and theology,” he said. They went to the University of Iowa, where she earned her PhD in biomedical ethics and Miller earned his PhD in computing science.

Miller was offered a job at William & Mary after he completed his PhD as a computer science assistant professor, which he accepted. Miller also taught at Virginia Commonwealth and he worked part time at the NASA-Langley Research Center. His many experiences further exposed him to the ethical conundrum of the society-technology interchange and its impacts on human life.

Early in his career at William & Mary, Miller and mentor Steve Park co-wrote an article on random number generators, “Random Number Generators: Good Ones Are Hard to Find” in the journal Communications of the ACM in 1988, in which Miller and Park identify a set of criteria to determine minimum standards for software performance, something that in 1988 hadn’t yet been done. Miller and his co-author both recognized the serious need for this minimum standard to, in essence, prevent technological catastrophes and potentially the loss of human life due to a “computer glitch,” he said. The article has been cited nearly 800 times and is still cited today.

In the late 1980s, Miller was already writing about ethical issues facing society in his article “Integrating Ethics into the Computer Science Curriculum,” published in Computer Science Education in 1988. He has since published no less than 41 journal articles about or pertaining to ethics in computer science, software development and use (or re-use, as the case might be).

The combination of his experiences and expertise in probabilities and software testing resulted in Miller’s pursuit of an important question: “How good is good enough has become a theme in my work. That question convinced me there really was important work there. … But my wife’s work [in biomedical ethics] influenced me, also. … The hard part and more interesting part is what number is good enough? It’s really hard to get any number…” he said.

“Here is a paradigm classic case,” Miller explained. “If software is flying an airplane, then the probability of failure should be very low (and subsequently the software’s reliability should be very high). But what is the right number?”

“My technical expertise in testing and quality is a pretty good fit,” Miller continued, “because if you put a deadly missile on a robot, ‘issues’ become, shall we say, compelling.”

The uses of robots and other artificial agents are at once terrifying and mind-boggling, in part because of the ease with which they have been integrated into a variety of previously human-only interactions, and also because those issues of probability and reliability become blatantly clear. Luciano Floridi, founder and director of the Oxford University Information Ethics Research Group, professor of philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, England, and a colleague of Miller’s, says artificial agents include “…digital robots online, known as webbots, to computerized companions for elderly people, like Primo Puel, and hybrid agents (imagine a driver using a GPS in a highly computerized vehicle).” Floridi says these agents present “new challenges … in terms of moral education, responsibility and accountability.”

Floridi has concerns: “Consider the ethical issues arising from ‘the triple A,’” he said, “namely the availability, accessibility and accuracy of informational resources; the corresponding questions concerning standards of reliability and trustworthiness of information sources; or the so-called digital divide. The more people become accustomed to live and work immersed within an informational environment, the easier it becomes to unveil the new ethical difficulties that they encounter.”

Currently, Miller and his colleague debate, among other things, the ethical and philosophical issues regarding the uses and purposes of robots and artificial agents. It so happens that Floridi is a prolific author and highly regarded as an expert in information ethics and the philosophy of information. His work is internationally renowned and cutting-edge. Miller and Floridi are working together on two projects at the moment, a special section on computing and the environment, and a possible master’s degree program in computers and philosophy. Floridi admires Miller for “many things, but perhaps, above all, his sharp mind and his great intellectual honesty,” he said.

As yet another demonstration of his expertise, skill, and broad thinking, Miller is the associate director of UIS’ Emiquon Field Station. The Emiquon is a 7,500-acre floodplain restoration effort by UIS and The Nature Conservancy. He has even co-written an article, “Consequences of Prairie Wetland Drainage for Crustacean Biodiversity and Metapopulations,” in Conservation Biology in 2003. Thus, Miller has achieved contributions to the fields of computer science, ethics and now ecology.

Miller recently was named the first Louise Hartman Schewe and Karl Schewe Professor in Liberal Arts & Sciences, in part because of his interdisciplinarity and collaborative abilities, which, according to former College of Liberal Arts & Sciences dean Dr. Margot Duley, “include computer scientists, philosophers, biologists, physicists, lawyers and historians.”

As a faculty member, Dr. Ted Mims, chair of UIS’ computer science department, says Miller “has made significant contributions in building our undergraduate and graduate degree programs. He was one of the first faculty at UIS to offer an online class, and he developed and offered our graduate research seminar closure classes both on campus and online. As a teacher, he consistently receives excellent student evaluations for his teaching. Numerous scholars have sought out Dr. Miller to collaborate on research with them, which validates his scholarship as the highest quality.”

Mims continued: “Dr. Miller is an enthusiastic and highly motivated professional. … In his years at UIS, Dr. Miller has brought national and international recognition to UIS and the University of Illinois. When our faculty attend conferences, professional colleagues of Dr. Miller seek us out to tell us about some project they worked on with him or how they are using the results of his research in their classes.”

Further, over the course of his career, Miller has authored or co-authored 60 journal articles, 75 papers and contributed to 20 books and Web sites, as well as conducted his own scholarly work. As a result of this endowed chair, Miller has had the opportunity to travel to Tokyo to the Asian-Pacific Computers and Philosophy meeting, to Paris with UIS colleague and associate professor in philosophy Peter Boltuc, to Greece, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and many other places. Miller notes that he would have been unable to participate in computers and philosophy in this way without the Schewe money. He is assured that Mrs. Schewe would love that he is traveling, learning and contributing more to the fields of computer science, philosophy and ethics.

As if teaching, conducting his own research and writing were not enough, Miller is also editor-in-chief for Technology & Society Magazine, a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and its Society on Social Implications of Technology. According to its Web site, the Society “focuses on environmental, health, and safety implications of technology; engineering ethics and professional responsibility; the history of electrotechnology; technical expertise and public policy; peace technology; as well as on social issues related to energy, information technology and telecommunications.” The organization sponsors online discussions as well as conferences on current pressing issues facing privacy, advertising, technology, sustainability and many other issues surrounding the ethics and use of technology. Miller is currently working with Floridi on a special issue of the magazine addressing sustainability and computing.

Miller’s work is vital to the fields of computer science and computer ethics because, says Floridi, “he brings a crucial interdisciplinary flavor to an area of research where people often belong to separate camps, either computer science or ethics.”

In a world and time where “the information revolution has been changing the world profoundly, irreversibly and problematically for some time now,” says Floridi, Miller’s expertise and willingness to see more than one perspective are invaluable. Because of Miller’s contributions to both the computer science and computer ethics disciplines, we, as a society, will be better able to debate the issues that lie on the social-technological interface… including those disturbing drones.