Law or Ethic? Personal Data Regulation and Internet of Things

There are no doubts that the Internet of Things is next ‘big thing’ in the computer industry. It is estimated that 20 billion IoT devices will be connected by 2020. That will change markets from retails to services and help to develop concepts like smart cities and introduce new products like autonomous cars.

The concept of IoT based on creating and processing data. Most of them refer to information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. For instance, IoT devices can collect an identification number, location data or an online identifier. Therefore this information should be treated as personal data and if so they are protected by national regulation, international agreements and self-regulation.

Due to regulation challenges to the internet environment national legal framework is not sufficient for setting an adequate standard of protection for natural person. The cross-border nature of IoT activities should lead us to international law all the more that protection of personal data is part of the right to privacy. Nevertheless, the protection cannot be considered as being sufficient as the result of limited application to companies.

The weakness of self-regulatory mechanisms is lack of sanction. Due to its voluntary character they cannot be applied to everyone on the market. In effect only, motivated or principled enough companies take part in them as market pressure is not strong enough to oblige everyone to adopt the respective rules.

The issue I would like to discuss in my presentation is how to regulate personal data protection to make it adequate for the protection of human rights and simultaneously enable technological and economic development. It is especially important in the light of EU’s General Data Protection Regulation which comes into force on 25th May of 2018. I will base on these rules to demonstrate strengths and weakness of legal regulation comparing to solutions based on ethics.

Uncertainty in emotion recognition

The research field of affective computing is gaining attention and applications. There are decisions made on the basis of affective computing solutions. The decisions on sales or marketing cost money. Perhaps more decision influencing people lives are to come in the next decades. Can people trust affective computing? Are people aware of the uncertainty related to automatic emotion recognition?

Affective computing researchers are well familiar with the limitations of the domain. The methods provided so far are, as all artificial intelligence algorithms, susceptible to noise, mislabeled data, changing contextual circumstances. Emotional expressions, that the algorithms are basing on, are highly individual and even might change depending on a mood. In-the-wild conditions make the results even less reliable. All mentioned factors lead to uncertainty in the analysis of human affect. Uncertainty can be described as a state of the analyst, that cannot foresee a phenomenon due to intrinsic variability of the phenomenon itself, or to lack of knowledge and information. But still most research studies in affective computing concentrate on improving accuracies rather than reliability of the results. Commercially available emotion recognition solutions provide no information on confidence of the result so far. The quantification and characterization of the resulting output uncertainty is an important matter when results are used to guide decision making.

To be held at Restauracja Cała Naprzód, Tokarska 21/25, 80-888 Gdańsk, Poland.

There will be a bus taking people to the restaurant.

**IF YOU ARE STAYING AT THE SHERTON, PLEASE LET MARTY WOLF KNOW**

The bus leaves Focus Sopot at 6:45

The bus leaves SWPS at 6:55 (Villa 33 guests, please walk to here.)

The bus leaves Novotel Gdansk Marina at 7:00

The bus leaves Mercure Gdansk Poseidon at 7:05

The bus leaves Focus Gdansk at 7:15

Everyone will receive a train ticket for returning to their hotels.

More than a year ago in AUSED, arose the opportunity to activate a project, in collaboration with EthosIT and the Milan Polytechnic, with the aim of creating a model for the practical adoption of the AMC Code of Ethics to be used from member companies.

Guna responded enthusiastically to the call and now we are on the path that will lead us to adapt the current company's ethical codes so as to incorporate the principles of IT Ethics included in AMC Code. We will analyze the steps taken and the results achieved.

The next phase will be to use this experience in order to facilitate the journey to other AUSED members who will decide to take this virtuous path.