Autonomous Systems - Social, Legal and Ethical Issues

A report on the social, legal and ethical issues generated by the design, development and use of autonomous systems was published by the Royal Academy of Engineering last month. I produced the report based on presentations and discussions at a workshop at the Academy, where a number of experts in fields likely to employ autonomous systems discussed the timescales for their introduction, their potential impacts and the wider issues that they might give rise to. Participants were from the fields of defence and aerospace, AI and IT, surgery and healthcare, and transport. The final report focusses on the use of autonomous systems in the form of driverless vehicles and smart homes - two areas where the deployment of autonomous systems is likely to be imminent and to have a significant effect on peoples' lives. It calls for debate into the acceptability of these technologies, and the best ways to garner their benefits while minimising risks.

There was a lot of press interest in the report, with stories from the BBC, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Reuters, The Engineer, New Scientist and the Economist.

Engineering: A Beginner's Guide

My Book, Engineering: A Beginner's Guide, is published this month by Oneworld publications.

The book takes a broad look at engineering from a historical, social, cultural and philosophical point of view. It tells the story of how engineering has shaped and expanded our physical world, influenced the development of the social world and how we live and communicate, and expanded our knowledge of the natural world.

The book also sets out the ethical challenges faced by engineers and the tasks that engineers must address in the future, from mitigating global warming to developing infrastructure in the poorest parts of the world.

The book is intended for those intrigued by what engineering is all about and what a career in engineering means, and for those interested in how engineering has shaped our world - be they practising engineers or students of science and technology studies.

The book is available on Amazon now - click here.

Some quotes about the book:

"The best book of its kind. Bold and well informed. It works as an introduction to engineering for just about every conceivable audience." Steve Fuller, Professor of Sociology, University of Warwick

"A fantastic book. Full of stories that can be enjoyed by anybody who is interested in innovation and creativity." Dame Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science, Southampton University

"A beautifully considered outlook on what engineers think about and do." Igor Aleksander, Emeritus Profesor of Neural Systems Engineering, Imperial College London

"Deftly engineered. McCarthy challenges us all - not just engineers - to take responsibility for the ways in which we all increasingly engineer the world." Carl Mitcham, Professor of technology and Professor of Liberal Arts and International Studies at the Colorado School of Mines

Engineering in Context

A new book of collected essays, 'Engineering in Context' was launched at Engineers Ireland on July 2 and 3 at a symposium with the same title. The full programme for the event is here.

I was invited to speak at the symposium, and chose the topic 'Making Fun: How Engineering Influences Leisure'. I wanted to look at the ways that engineering and society interrelate, looking both at how engineering shapes our wants, needs and desires and how our wants, needs and desires influence the path of engineering. I think this interplay is interesting, because it highlights just how sensitive engineering is to social context. In the philosophy of science, it is usually assumed that if science is taken to be sensitive to social context then it cannot succeed in describing the objective truth about reality - that is to say, assuming that science is formed in part by social factors leads to a kind of relativism. In engineering this is not so. Engineering is about making things that work, and whether or not an artifact works depends crucially on both the objective nature of reality and its laws, and the level of human interest and need for the artifact.

I am currently polishing up the paper, and hope to post a version here soon.

WPE 2008

The second international Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering was held at The Royal Academy of Engineering in November 2008. I was co-host with Dave Goldberg.

A full set of abstracts from the workshop is accessible online here.

Interdisciplinary Science Reviews

I edited a special edition of the journal Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, taken over last year by new editor Willard McCarty, which was published in September 2008. On the topic Philosophy of Engineering, the edition comprised mostly articles from the 2007 Workshop on Philosophy of Engineering. Also included were some invited pieces and an extended editorial by me, called 'Should Engineers Think?' Click here to download a pdf of the full editorial. A version of this paper was presented at the University of Leeds' seminar series on engineering ethics.

The table of contents is here.