- Over decades' data sets became the lifeblood of business or the new oil of the economy and driving the change. Accordingly, nowadays data has become more critical and known as Big Data. Compared to traditional datasets (formatted with titled fields), Big Data typically includes unstructured masses of data that require real-time analysis. In addition, Big Data originates new opportunities for discovering new experiences and values, helps us gain a deeper understanding of hidden values, incurs new challenges and discover answers on how to organize and effectively manage values for these massive and complex datasets. Therefore, owners of industries and business men have become interested in the potential of Big Data; tackle challenges by leveraging the power of advanced technologies (Artificial intelligence, Healthcare, Smart City, Banking and Finance, Oil & Gas, Data Mining. Internet of Things) engaging in an ethical debate (Specialists, Individuals) to build a better world. Ethical debates are typically articulated within the context of ethical theories. An ethical theory is framed and reviewed in this paper. This theory, named SAS Theory, categorized the Value (ethical wise and not as money revenue) in Big Data to three functions. (Sustain, Align, Support). These functions facilitate and stimulate the ethical behavior of Big Data to turn Values into Actions. Furthermore, this theory outlines the ethical behavior of the user personas and organizations offline and online. It also examines and shows how it might be engaged to conserve the high ethical service in some industries and technologies. Finally, this theory presents three functions that group the technologies in categorized properties using a specific parameter which is the Value Personas. Categorizing means to assign a specific ethical solution for a given technology or business.
Keywords — Big Data, Ethics, SAS Theory, Value, Value Personas.
I.
INTRODUCTION
Big Data is known as extreme large data sets. The
features of Big Data have been classified according to five
fundamental elements (5Vs), which are Volume (size of
data), Variety (different types of data from several sources),
Velocity (data collected in real time), Veracity (uncertainty
of data) and Value (benefits to various industrial and
academic fields). [
Clark [
Other researchers, like Manogaran [
As the forcing function of Big Data pushes data in our organizations and in individual lives, the balance between risk and innovation will continue to be an urgent need to meet and maintain the ability of Big Data to generate benefits from values rather than prejudices.
II.
BALANCING BIG DATA AND ETHICS
One approach is balance between risk and innovation. An article in CBS News regarding innovation titled "Predictive Policing" program that can actually predict where crimes will happen. The crime prediction boxes come from the same kind of mathematical calculation used to predict earthquakes and aftershocks. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck says «The real measure of this is not how many people you catch it is how much crime you prevent». [7]
Massive data represents tremendous opportunities for the benefit of business, education, health care, government sector, manufacturing, and many other areas. The risk, however, for privacy, is the ability to manage our reputation and online identity. What it might mean to lose or gain ownership of our personal data is just the beginning of the ethical issues. To take advantage of the benefits of Big Data innovations, we need to understand the practical risks of implementing them.
Another approach is the anonymization of data sets before they are published, targeted advertising, and so on. As the lawyer Paul Ohm [8] points out, «the data can be useful or perfectly anonymous, but never both». So, let's suppose we know things about a person in particular: where did he eat, what did he eat? It is very unlikely that we will end up violating his privacy by broadcasting "the information" that a particular person likes Pizza House and Pizza. Suppose we have this information for about 10 million of peoples, patterns emerge that do make it possible to tie data points to particular named, "located individuals".
Big Data tends to be a wide ranging technological category like Artificial Intelligence, Data mining, globalization, medicine and others. The task is what if we can categorize these technologies using functions and parameters. Where would Big Data stand regarding ethics?
As mentioned before, Big Data itself, like any technology, is ethically neutral. The use of Big Data is not the case [9]. Although the ethics involved are abstract concepts, they can have very real implications. The goal is to develop better ways to engage in an intentional ethical inquiry to inform and align our actions with our values. How could this alignment be reflected?
There is a significant amount of effort to create a digital «Bill of Rights» [10] for the acceptable use of Big Data. The White House recently released a bill on the protection of consumer rights. The values which that bill supports include transparency, security and accountability.
On a technological level, businesses need to work in
ethical frameworks - such as the IEEE P7001
Transparency in Autonomous Systems – [
Davis and Patterson define ‘Ethical decision points consist
of a series of four activities that form a continuous loop’
[
a) b) c) d)
Review: the discovery and discussion in fundamental organization values is in demand. An understanding of what values actually are not what it is estimated or other thinks. No jump to solutions without first identifying the ethical issue(s) in the situation. Example: how to value transparency in the use of Big Data.
Analysis: review of current ethical situation and gather the facts, actual data-handling practices and an assessment of how well these facts align with core organizational values. The exploration of whether a particular use of Big Data technology aligns with the values that have been identified Example: Should they create this new product feature using Big Data? Express: a simple, clear written expressions of where, when and how identified values and actions align—and where they don’t—using a common vocabulary for discussing. What specific virtues are relevant in the situation? Example: This new product feature that uses big-data technology supports value of transparency? Action: tactical plans to close alignment gaps that have been identified and to encourage and educate on how to maintain that alignment as conditions change over time Example: If we build this new product feature, we must explicitly share (in a transparent way) with our customers and ourselves on how that feature will use personal data.
These four activities are validated by three functions where ethics can converge with Big Data.
A discussion of ethics and Big Data depends on how people
define ethics. In general, ethics involves analyzing the
conduct that may be beneficial or harmful to other people
[
While the nine elements mentioned earlier are related
directly to data (Volume, Variety …etc.), Value(s) «are
things that people care about» [
Patterson defines the Value Personas [
Valuable personas provide a means to frame an explicit ethical inquiry and are very flexible and modifiable in many given ways. How? The Valuable personas play the parameter in functions presented in "Values". In this paper, the Valuable personas deliver an ethical behavior which appears in the three functions that control Big Data. This leads us to the SAS (Sustain, Align, and Support) theory: a)
Sustain: this function is generated when ethics are set upon creation of big data, where the ethical decision should be taken instantly. − −
our actions all the time. The ‘Sustain Function’ shows up in online technology while surfing the net and using social media, or in some technologies like Artificial intelligence and robotics.
Valuable Personas can help analyze the conflicts between what you value and how you should act based on these values. The behavioral response should be spontaneous to take action. That means only when taking action online, for example, the ethical and nonethical value shows up. The advantage of Value Personas is identifying which values are showing up in actions and how.
The Value Personas can provide a mechanism for developing a common vocabulary based on and inspired by the own personal moral codes, and aims at developing a set of common and shared values, which help to reduce barriers on line and could inspire collaboration to productivity and innovation.
Align: Values can be aligned intensely with Big Data. This function is applicable on technology and organization more than individuals. c)
Support: Values are not ethics. Ethics are derived from values. This function illustrates values as a “stone” holding Big Data. − − − −
may hold conflicting values; this can lead to contradictory actions. This conflicting issue could rise in some technology, like medicine. Ethics for this career have been generated before the rise of Big Data concept. For Example, changing the data-handling policy for an organization or product without notifying anyone means it is not acting in alignment with its values.
those conflicts transparent. Value Personas can help analyze the conflicts between what we value and how we should act based on those values.
which ethical alignment can be measured. In practice, the weight of this ‘key’ starts with ethical information literacy in education.
Courses about computer ethics need to be included in education programs, workshops and conferences. In practice, ethics start in education. Additionally, public libraries can serve technical support for those who need answers regarding ethical issues for students and other attendees by offering an online service and seminars.
These functions are useful for understanding how technologies are classified in Big Data properly and the importance of the Value Personas as a parameter or ‘Key’.
IV.
DATA The usage of these ethical perspectives described above is useful for understanding how issues are revealed in Big Data ethics. However, it is possible to better understand how and why ethics help to shed light on a problem such as Big Data ethical concerns.
As a key, the Value Personas help clear these values. Following organizational actions, Value Personas provide a way to facilitate discussion about organizational alignment in actions, business practices and individual behaviors based on common set of values. Value Personas provide a description of key roles, ethical decision points, alignment, actions and anticipated outcomes. Value Personas help identify shared values and create a vocabulary for explicit dialogue, reducing the risk of misalignment (produced by some politics in an organization) and encouraging collaboration and innovation between the team works in an e-type (e-business, e-HR …) technology.
Value Personas may either evolve regularly based on changes in market conditions, new technologies, legislation, common practices, or evolutions in business model, or may stay essentially intact and unchanged for long periods. The dynamics of the conditions where business decisions are made are highly variable and subject to influences that are often difficult to expect. Value Personas can be expected to be used in the process of being able to be revised, updated, and adjusted.
Technologists are constantly working to change the capabilities of Big Data. Social norms and legislation evolve more slowly. Competitive market forces, depending on the sector, can evolve at many different rates, instantaneously, quarterly or annually. There is no reason to hope that the ability to maintain alignment between values and actions can be fully expressed in advance of all commercial conditions. Indeed, one of the advantages of the innovation opportunities offered by Big Data is that it allows companies and organizations to adapt quickly to these market forces and competition.
The Google Code of ethics Conduct is an example. This
code is one of the ways where Google put values into
practice, with a cliché «Don't be evil». This code is built
around the recognition that everything they do in connection
with work at Google will be, and should be, measured
against the highest possible standards of ethical business
conduct [
The ability to align values with actions allows organizations to create a common and shared sense of action and purpose about any given business initiative. What matters, ethically speaking, is turning the question of "should we do this" into "how can we do this" and eventually free more thinking and collaborative work.
Value Personas, as a tool for developing this capacity, are inherently evolving. Comprehensive, multi-day workshops can give organizations enough time to develop an awareness regarding their values and articulate suggested actions at various ethical decision points. However, these methods and tools work equally well in conferences conversations or in an informal meeting where ethical issues suddenly arise and ethical discussions begin.
In general, organizations have a set of ideal core values to provide a starting point for the less formal use cases. However, even in an incident of disagreement over core values, Value Personas can generate a tool to start productive ethical conversations. This conversation could begin about A.I. that represents a totally different intelligence from ours as humans.
These conversations become productive when made
transparent and explicit. Value Personas can help as a tool.
The goal is clear, and divergent actions of plan are required.
One must take into account each person’s role involved, and
define exactly what each person will do, in what order, and
highlight, predicts the results or objectives for each action.
McEwan argues "A.I. becomes responsible for helping in
their design and their generation” [
Therefore the products, features and services, should make the organization more beneficial for all its users with one guiding principle: Is what they’re offering useful in ensuring ethical action?
There are four critical Values that could establish standard models for Big Data in organizations: a) b) c) d)
Privacy Vs secrecy: Privacy doesn’t always mean secrecy. Ensuring data confidentiality means defining and enforcing information rules - not just rules for collecting data, but also for their use, maintaining and keep. Data owners must have the ability to manage the flow of their private information on massive third-party analytical systems Although private information generated and shared it can still remain confidential: It is unrealistic to think about information as secret or shared, totally private or completely public. For many reasons, data (and metadata) are shared or generated by design with trusted services (e.g. address books, images, GPS, cell tower, and Wi-Fi localization of our cell phones). But it's not because we're talking about medical data, financial data, address book data, location data, reading data, or other things that we share the generated information.
Transparency in Big Data: Massive data is powerful when secondary uses of datasets produce new predictions and readings. Obviously, this leads to commercial data, with people like data brokers, collecting massive amounts of data about data owners (in general are clients), often without their knowledge or permission, and shared unexpectedly. For Big Data to work in ethical terms, data owners (people which create and process data) need to have a transparent view of how their data is used or sold Big Data able to compromise identity. Privacy and secrecy protections are not enough anymore. Big Data analysis can compromise identity by allowing official organization and surveillance institutional oversight and even determine who we are before we make our own opinion. Big Data owners need to start thinking about what kind of Big Data predictions and inferences they would allow and which ones they should not.
With the help of the social media technologies, the data created by users are regenerated by developers and analysts, reducing the human experience to limited set of quantitative variables. The capitalist modernity is the source that shapes the world to numbers with statistical analysis. Therefore, this paper suggested the needs for reflection on the qualitative nature of ethics in Big Data regarding quantitative heterogeneous arithmetic large datasets.
There is a lot of work to be done to translate the S.A.S. theory with its three functions (Sustain, Align, and Support) into laws and rules that will lead to an ethical management of Big Data. Moreover, we must certainly develop more principles by building more powerful technological tools. Every person involve in Big Data management should engage in the ethical discussion of how Big Data is used. Database developers and administrators are at the forefront of the issue. The law is a powerful part of the Big Data ethic, but it is far from being able to handle the many use cases and nuanced scenarios that arise. Organizational principles, institutional ethics statements, self-monitoring and alternate forms of ethical guidelines are also needed. The technology itself can help provide an important element of the ethical mix.
How? This could be in form of an Intelligent Data Tracer (IDT) that would tell us how our data is being used and would allow us to decide whether or not we want our data to be used in the analysis that takes place beyond our spheres of awareness and control. We also need clear rules to determine (by default) what types of personal data processing are allowed and what types of decisions based on these data are acceptable especially when data affect people's lives.
But the important point is this; first we need a great data ethics rules second a Value Personas to be at the center of these critical ethical discussions and keep in mind Big Data ethics is for everyone.
V.
CONCLUSION
The ethical contexts described in this paper examine the ethical behavior of Big Data to turn Values into Actions using functions (Sustain, Align, and Support) and parameters like Value Personas described in the SAS theory. What makes ethics actions so valuable is that it helps formulate arguments about what is right or wrong using logical and coherent opinions. This can help to evaluate and understand that the usage of Big Data is morally right.
Ethical feasible theories take all people, other than the
decision maker, into consideration. It assumes that moral is
good and moral principles are objective and based on
reasoning facts and common maintained values. [
In our daily lives, Big Data becomes a main force. It affects what others know about us and vice versa, as well as how we act because of the information they share with us. Besides our contribution, like it or not, the tools of this force like cameras, sensors surround us and we use it.
By examining this ethical theory, we can better recognize converging and diverging views on moral data, better understand the context and logic of the arguments presented and, in doing so, better assess how the future sequence of action is or should be justified.
This general conclusion sheds light on the use of Big Data. It also unlocks the way for finding ways to simplify ethical gaps. Big Data is here to stay, to value ethics with results facilitating advances in the given technologies, artificial intelligence, medicine, globalization, to name a few. The objective of this paper is to categorize these technologies in functions and assign the right Value Personas parameters. The positive ethical usage results provide the balance point that supports the use of Big Data. Moreover, the use of ethical theories, such as SAS, aids us better to recognize and manage how Big Bata affects in our lives. [10] D. Weitzner "We Can’t Wait: Obama Administration Calls for