Whistleblowing and the machine -- towards a considered position
For policymakers and AI developers, this paper highlights the need for regulatory frameworks around machine whistleblowing, but it is a conceptual argument without empirical results.
The paper argues that machine whistleblowing should be normative and principled, grounded in existing societal understanding, and calls for government regulators to formulate an informed stance on what machines should be allowed to whistleblow on and how to legally protect developers.
Artificial intelligent agents and autonomous systems are embedded in our environments. They are both a commercial product and a personal tool that generates a lot of data and can draw conclusions from it: machines generate and keep secrets. But should machines protect all secrets? It has been shown that artificial agents are able to whistleblow and it has been argued that digital multi-agent environments should allow for agents in them to whistleblow. We argue that machine whistleblowing must be normative and principled and routed in the existing understanding of whistleblowing as an important rule-breaking mechanism in society. We also argue that there is a need for government regulators to formulate an informed stance on both what machines should be allowed to whistleblow on and how to legally protect those who develop whistleblowing machines