essay help

Issued: April 7, 2014

Due: April 16, 2014

Consider the following scenario from Tavani.

Forester and Morrison ask whether an ‘expert administrator’ should be designed in a way so that it is programmed to mislead or even to lie to human beings in cases where it might (generally, but unofficially) seem ‘appropriate’ for human administrators to do so. Consider that politicians and executives are sometimes put in situations where they are not permitted to be totally forthcoming. In these cases, being able to be deceptive with respect to answers to certain kinds of questions may be a requirement for being an ‘expert’ (or at least successful) human administrator? If so, should the ‘skill’ of ‘being able to deceive’ (or of ‘not being totally forthcoming’) be built into such a system? Is it morally permissible to design such a system?

The above scenario, based on a question by Tom Forester and Perry Morrison (1994), illustrates one ethically controversial application of an ES (Expert Systems (ESs) are discussed in Section10.6.1). If you were a member of the program team designing such an application, which kinds of values would you build into this ES?

Write a 4 page paper exploring this issue described in Tavani. Take a position and defend it making use of the ethical process described in the first four chapters of Brown and Chapter 3 in Tavani. In addition use the philosophical theories utilitarianism, deontology and character-based as discussed in Tavani (chapter 2) and Brown (chapter 4) to support your arguments. You must demonstrate that you have read these materials by making at least 5 citations using both sources.

Use 1” borders, double spacing, and 12 point Times New Roman type. Check for all spelling errors, as papers with even one such error will not be graded. Be sure to have an appropriate introduction, logically reasoned arguments and a good conclusion. You may wish to consult the Academic Resource Center in Wahlstrom Library for assistance with writing mechanics.

Like previous papers, all papers should be first submitted online and the hard copy should include the Turnitin report screenshot.

Reference (as included in Tavani):

Forester, Tom, and Perry Morrison. 1994. Computer Ethics: Cautionary Tales and Ethical Dilemmas in Computing. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.