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Specific Challenges for Responsible
Research and Innovation
RRI in Industrial Contexts and Human Brain Simulation
Bernd Carsten Stahl, De Montfort University, UK
Abstract
Discussions of responsible research and innovation (RRI) tend to focus on publicly funded research
projects that take place in clearly described and predictable project settings. This is understandable
as publicly funded activities should safeguard and promote the public interest. It can be problematic,
however, if this leads to a neglect of research and innovation activities that take place outside of this
clearly circumscribed field. This paper describes current RRI activities in two projects which go
beyond it. It first outlines RRI in the Human Brain Project, which is a very large and multidisciplinary
project where classical project governance structures may not be counted on to deliver RRI. The
second project looks into the question of RRI in industry, where incentives and regulatory
frameworks are different from those in publicly funded research. Drawing from these two sets of
background, the paper asks how such non-standard research and innovation can be accommodated
in RRI.
Introduction: Specific Challenges of Responsible Research and
Innovation
Current discourses on responsible research and innovation (RRI) focus predominantly on publicly
funded research and innovation activities. It is easy to see that such research relies on public support
for continued funding and there is an easy case to be made that it has to be legitimate and be
socially acceptable and desirable (von Schomberg 2013). This case rests on the public nature of the
funds used to support the research. Very briefly, one can argue that, if the taxpayer pays for the
research, then the taxpayer should benefit from it. This has of course always been an implicit
assumption of public research funding, but in the past the benefit for the public was more generally
defined as the provision of innovation and the training of scientists, which was the output of the
science system that would satisfy the public interest (Jasanoff 2011). In recent decades the general
support for science has been affected by high profile cases of questionable scientific conduct and by
public debates concerning the consequences of research, such as nuclear power production or
genetically modified organisms. RRI can be read as an attempt to take these concerns seriously and
ensuring that publicly funded research lives up to its promises.
Much of the discourse on RRI understandably focuses on the type of research that has been
undertaken under the auspices of the public funder within the governance arrangements that
characterise such publicly funded research. This is perfectly acceptable, but it is also a limited view. If
RRI is to be practically relevant and have an impact on real research and innovation activities, then it
needs to be applicable to all research that is capable of affecting the public interest. This means that
it will have to cover research funded from other sources, notably industry funded research and
innovation that aims to develop new products and services with a view to increasing company
profits. RRI will also need to find ways of being relevant where project management and governance
structures are less clear and under constant negotiation.
This paper explores some of the issues that arise in such environments, where the sources of
funding are private or where the project governance structure is complex. The paper briefly outlines
two currently ongoing projects, one which focuses on the role of RRI in industry, the other one is a
highly complex and large project in the field of human brain simulation. It will recount some of the
preliminary empirical findings of these two projects and discuss the implications they have for the
debate on RRI.
Human Brain Simulation
The first project presented is the EU Flagship Human Brain Project (HBP,
https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/). The HBP is a European Commission Future and Emerging
Technologies Flagship that aims to accelerate our understanding of the human brain, enable
advances in defining and diagnosing brain disorders, and develop new brain-like technologies. As
one of the two European flagship projects, the HBP is the recipient of funding worth several hundred
million euros and has a duration of more than 10 years. It is a highly interdisciplinary project bringing
together scholars from neuroscience, computer science, medicine, social science, philosophy and
other fields.
The project was designed with the principles of RRI in mind. As a consequence it contains a
subproject on ethical and social issues. This subproject is based on the principles of RRI as developed
by Stilgoe et al. (2013) and adopted by the UK Engineering and Physical Science Research Council
(EPSRC)1. The EPSRC uses the AREA acronym to refer to RRI which stands for anticipate, reflect,
engage and act. The society and ethics subproject of the HBP aims to address all of these aspects. It
contains a full work package dedicated to foresight activities (anticipate), a work package focusing
on engagement, one work package on philosophical and conceptual work and one dedicated to the
exploration of views within the project (reflect). Finally, there is a work package on governance
which includes a research ethics committee and an ethical legal and social aspects committee which
are meant to direct the activities within the project as a whole (act).
This structure reflecting the principles of RRI was implemented because it was visible from the
outset that the project had the potential to raise significant ethical and societal concerns. Ethical
issues arising from the project have been highlighted and discussed by authors both from outside
the project (Lim 2013) and members of the society and ethics section of the project itself (Rose
2014).
The component of the project that informs the present paper is one of the work packages of the
society and ethics subproject called researcher awareness. The purpose of the work package is to
stimulate debate within the HBP in order to harness the experience and expert knowledge of its
members to raise awareness of ethical issues. The first step of this activity consisted of a set of
interviews with the leaders of all 13 subprojects. The idea was to highlight those ethical concerns
1
https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/research/framework/, 18.05.2015
that the leading scientists of the project are aware of and discuss how they are or should be
addressed. In addition the interviews were meant to show whether there were gaps in current
awareness.
This paper does not provide space for a more detailed discussion of the findings. Suffice it to say that
the interviews confirmed that there are a significant number of potential ethical concerns. Ethical
themes were defined as those issues that raised questions about the moral, legal or professional
status, duties or roles of stakeholders in the HBP and respondents raised the following:

Data protection and individual privacy

Governance of data provided to the open-access platforms

The appropriate use of animal experimentation and development of common standards

Research integrity including the maintenance of scientific diversity through collaboration

Intellectual property

The appropriate use of medical and robotic applications
Respondents touched upon all aspects of responsible research and innovation listed by the
European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme. Extrapolating into an uncertain future was problematic
for many but recognised as necessary. Reflection, in the guise of maintaining scientific integrity and
engagement with stakeholders, were the two most common interpretations of RRI.
It is important to see that the issues contained in the above list are those that are not open to simple
solutions. The HBP also raises a number of more traditional research ethics questions, such as
human data collection or animal experiments. These are covered in their research governance work
package and lead to significant bureaucratic efforts, but appear to be generally viewed as resolved.
From the perspective of this paper it is interesting that the dominant issues are not fundamentally
surprising and have mostly been foreseen during the development of the proposal. They
nevertheless remain unresolved. Despite much collaboration between the society and ethics group
and the scientific and technical subprojects, the intrinsic complexity of the problems (e.g. data
protection of medical data in a highly distributed system) is such that they are not easily overcome.
In addition the organisational complexity of the project can make it difficult to assign responsibilities
for a particular issue or its resolution.
RRI in Industry
The second project to be briefly discussed here is called “Responsible-Industry” (www.responsibleindustry.eu). This project focuses on the question of why and how RRI could play a role in research
and innovation activities that are privately funded. The profit motive of private research funding is
not necessarily consistent with a focus on societal acceptability and desirability. The question thus is
why industry might want to engage with RRI in the first place and which forms such engagement
could take. For methodological reasons the project focuses on one particular technology, namely
ICT, and on one specific grand challenge to be addressed through this technology, namely the
challenge of health, demographic change and well-being.
The idea of the project is to undertake a number of initial fact-finding activities to determine how
responsibility is interpreted and viewed by industry and other stakeholders involved in industry
funded research. These activities include 30 in-depth interviews with industry experts, a Delphi study
with more than 150 experts as well as a set of five bottom-up case studies of good practice of RRI in
industry. On the basis of these empirical investigations as well as a detailed literature review, the
project develops an implementation plan for RRI in industry. This implementation plan is then to be
tested in four case studies in industry as well as 15 industry focused focus groups.
At the time of writing the initial investigations had been concluded and the project was in the
process of developing and refining the implementation plan. Again this paper does not provide
space to discuss any of these in detail and can only highlight a few interesting findings. The first one
of these is probably that the term RRI is not widely known in industry. This is not particularly
surprising, given that it is a concept that comes from research. However, it quickly became clear that
many of the aspects that RRI aims to promote, such as foresight, public engagement or ethics
reflection, are widely used and implemented in the ICT for ageing and well-being industry.
The Delphi study (Borsella et al. 2015) did show some interesting results. One of these was that the
respondents are clearly aware that research and innovation activities in ICT for ageing and wellbeing can raise significant concerns and require a heightened level of responsibility. The following
table shows some of the key areas of concern:
Domains
Response
Percent
Individual rights and liberties (privacy, rights to freedom of movement, etc.)
49%
Health
48%
Autonomy, authenticity and identity (free will, ability to have one’s own
thoughts and make one’s own decisions, to develop social identity)
41%
Social isolation
28%
Personal safety
26%
Integrity and dignity
26%
Justice, access and equality
23%
Bodily integrity (self-determination of human beings over their own bodies)
22%
Social safety
10%
Dual use of developed technologies
10%
Environment
3%
Table 1: Domains most susceptible to ethical and societal risks in the design and development of ICT products for an
ageing society
It is thus clear that the respondents to the Delphi understand the importance of RRI. One surprising
insight arising from the Delphi was that the motivations for addressing broader concerns in industry
are not as narrow and focused on functional benefits as one might expect. While commercial
organisations are by definition profit oriented, the respondents indicated that the reasons for
engaging in RRI are much broader than those that refer directly to profit generation. The following
figure represents the answers to the question why respondents would engage in RRI as received in
the first round of the Delphi study:
48.1%
Benefits for humankind
Favored access to financial support
Better corporate image
Better market penetration
5.2%
14.8%
18.5%
59.3%
Higher acceptability of ICT products
Improved matching of ICT products with societal
needs
Enhanced quality of ICT products
74.8%
28.9%
0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0% 70.0% 80.0%
Figure 1: Possible benefits from the inclusion of RRI in the ICT industry for an ageing society
Overall the preliminary findings of the project at this stage seem to suggest that a possible
preconception that companies are less interested in RRI and, if they are interested, pursue it only for
functional reasons would be wrong. Companies display a complex mix of motivations. In practice
they can be much more advanced in terms of responsible research and innovation than publicly
funded research organisations.
The way in which the concept of RRI can be communicated to profit oriented organisations therefore
requires further thought. A suitable way maybe to identify good practice and to use insight gained
about possible ways of implementing RRI in industry to supplement existing strengths. A further
question would be how RRI could be integrated in existing structures and processes including, for
example, corporate social responsibility, quality assurance and of course research and development.
Conclusion
This paper gives a brief update of RRI-related research in two research projects. These projects are
characterised by the fact that they focus on environments that diverged from those usually implied
in the discourse on RRI. In one case the project is highly complex, multidisciplinary and requires very
specific governance structures due to its size and subject matters. In the other case the question of
the role of RRI in privately funded research and innovation activities was explored.
The brief overview outlined here does not allow for any robust conclusions or recommendations.
But it does provide some interesting insights. It shows that RRI has relevance beyond standard
academic research projects, but that the way it is realised and implemented is not always
straightforward. As always, the devil is in the detail. The human brain project, despite its strong
emphasis on RRI, is still struggling with the question of how to make sure that responsibilities get
distributed across the consortium and RRI is not seen as a specialist activity by the experts in the
society and ethics sub-project. Such questions of implementation appear to be of similar relevance
in the industry context. Industry and profit oriented companies are engaged in numerous
responsibilities. The question how the RRI discourse relates to these existing responsibilities is
currently far from clear. Further work both in the HBP and Responsible-Industry will shed further
light on these questions.
One tentative conclusion to be drawn from these observations is that the discourse on RRI needs to
explicitly conceptualise questions of implementation and evaluation of RRI activities. Elsewhere I
have suggested seeing RRI as a meta-responsibility, which aims to shape, maintain, develop,
coordinate and align existing and novel responsibilities (Stahl 2013). To put it differently, we do not
need to invent new responsibilities but make sure that the existing ones work in a way that leads to
an overall desirable outcome. The observations discussed in this paper support that position.
Aligning and shaping existing responsibilities to achieve a societal goal will require more than
principles and examples of good practice. It will need active leadership by individuals with a vision. It
will entail power struggles and tactical manoeuvres. It will on occasion be messy and confusing as
social realities usually are. RRI, if it is to move beyond window dressing, will need to accept this
challenge.
Acknowledgements
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh
Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 604102 (Human Brain Project)
and 609817 (Responsible-Industry).
The author would like to thank in particular the members of the Italian Association for Industrial
Research (AIRI) (Elisabetta Borsella, Andrea Porcari, Elvio Mantovani) for the permission to reuse
material from the Delphi Study of the Responsible-Industry project.
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