Onlife

THE FUTURE OF PHILOSOPHY: METAPHILOSOPHICAL DIRECTIONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY. A Symposium Marking the 40th Anniversary of the Founding of the Journal Metaphilosophy. FRIDAY 11 DECEMBER, Institute of Philosophy, School of Avanced Studies, London. Terrell Ward Bynum's lecture: Two Philosophers of the Information Age: Robert Wiener and Luciano Floridi.

The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics Edited by Luciano Floridi Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have profoundly changed many aspects of life, including the nature of entertainment, work, communication, education, healthcare, industrial production and business, social relations and conflicts. They have had a radical and widespread impact on our moral lives and hence on contemporary ethical debates. The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics provides an ambitious and authoritative introduction to the field, with discussions of a range of topics including privacy, ownership, freedom of speech, responsibility, technological determinism, the digital divide, cyber warfare, and online pornography. It offers an accessible and thoughtful survey of the transformations brought about by ICTs and their implications for the future of human life and society, for the evaluation of behaviour, and for the evolution of moral values and rights. It w...

Information: A Very Short Introduction Luciano Floridi Very Short Introductions 152 pages | 15 black and white line drawings | 174x111mm 978-0-19-955137-8 | Paperback | February 2010 Price: £7.99 Explores a concept central to modern science and society, from thermodynamics and DNA to our use of the mobile phone and the Internet. Considers concepts such as 'Infoglut' (too much information to process) and the emergence of an information society. Addresses the meaning and value of information in science, sociology, and philosophy. Raises the broader social and ethical issues relating to privacy, accessibility, and ownership of information. We live an information-soaked existence - information pours into our lives through television, radio, books, and of course, the Internet. Some say we suffer from 'infoglut'. But what is information? The concept of 'information' is a profound one, rooted in mathematics, central to whole branches of science, yet with ...

Call for Paper Towards a Comprehensive Intelligence Test (TCIT) Reconsidering the Turing Test for the 21st Century Symposium http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~aayesh/TuringTestRevisited/ At AISB2010 Convention Leicester, UK 29th March – 1st April 2010 2010 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of Turing’s paper, in which he outlined his test for machine intelligence. Turing suggested that the possibility of genuine machine thought should be replaced by a simple behaviour-based process in which a human interrogator converses blindly with a machine and another human. Although the precise nature of the test has been debated, the standard interpretation is that if, after five minutes interaction, the interrogator cannot reliably tell which respondent is the human and which the machine then the machine can be qualified as a 'thinking machine'. Through the years, this test has become synonymous as 'the benchmark' for Artificial Intelligence in popular culture. ...

Patrick Peccatte La révolution numérique considérée comme une quatrième révolution, par Luciano Floridi http://blog.tuquoque.com/post/2009/11/03 /revolution-numerique-quatrieme-revoluti on

Semantic Information and The Network Theory of Account  (forthcoming in Synthese ) The article addresses the problem of how semantic information can be upgraded to knowledge. The introductory section explains the technical terminology and the relevant background. Section two argues that, for semantic information to be upgraded to knowledge, it is necessary and sufficient to be embedded in a network of questions and answers that correctly accounts for it. Section three shows that an information flow network of type A fulfils such a requirement, by warranting that the erotetic deficit, characterising the target semantic information t by default, is correctly satisfied by the information flow of correct answers provided by an informational source s . Section four illustrates some of the major advantages of such a Network Theory of Account (NTA) and clears the ground of a few potential difficulties. Section five clarifies why NTA and an informational analysis of knowledge, accord...

NACAP 2010 @ Carnegie Mellon University - July 24-26, 2010 Simulations and Their Philosophical Implications Call for Papers/Proposals Deadline: February 1st 2010 (firm) In honor of the 60th Anniversary of the publication of Alan Turing’s groundbreaking article, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” we are centering the 2010 NACAP Conference on simulations and their philosophical implications. Since the inception of the computer, simulations have become ubiquitous tools of the trade in a wide range of disciplines from astrophysics to sociology, machine learning to logic. When experiments aren’t possible for a variety of reasons (e.g., financial, ethical, lack of a subject pool), researchers have increasingly turned to simulations to test theories, comb through data, make predictions or otherwise take knowledge in new directions. This conference will explore the philosophical implications of this increasing reliance on simulation as it applies to the broader scope of topi...

Monsieur Homais is one of the less likable characters in Madame Bovary . The deceitful pharmacist fakes a deep friendship for Charles Bovary. In fact, he constantly undermines his reputation with his patients, thus contributing to Charles’ ruin. Monsieur Homais is not merely wicked. A smart man, he has been convicted in the past for practicing medicine without a license and so he worries, very reasonably, that Charles might denounce him to the authorities for the illicit business of health advice and personal consultations that he keeps organising in his pharmacy. The ultimate success of the pharmacist's dodgy schemes is not surprising. Those were the days when blacksmiths and barbers could regularly act as dentists and surgeons (after all, Charles is not a doctor either, but only a “health officer”); patients and doctors had to meet face to face in order to interact; and access to health information was the privilege of a few. Mail and telegraph messages were of course commonl...

http://www.meettheboss.com/google-acquisitions-and-investments.html

5th Annual Digital Assembly Conference, Futures of Digital Studies 2010. University of Florida, February 25-27 For more information please visit http://www.english.ufl.edu/da/

`Victory at Bletchley Park Day' - Bletchley Park to receive Heritage Lottery Fund development grant. http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/news/docview.rhtm/592098

Q: What is Project 10 100 ? A: Project 10 100 (pronounced "Project 10 to the 100th") is a call for ideas to change the world, in the hope of helping as many people as possible. Q: Why is Google doing this? A: The short answer is that we think helping people is a good thing, and empowering people to help others is an even better thing. Here's the long answer . Q: How many ideas are you funding? A: We have committed $10 million to fund up to five ideas selected by our advisory board.

The Alan Turing Year webpage at http://www.turingcentenary.eu/ has been updated.

UNESCO has established its first Chair in Information and Computer Ethics. More news from AlphaGalileo

BBC - Digital Revolution (Working Title) - Digital Revolution http://www.bbc.co.uk/digitalrevolution/  An open and collaborative documentary on the way the web is changing the world.

Founded in 1964, the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) is the oldest artificial intelligence society in the world. This year, AISB eleted two new fellows: Professor Michael Wooldridge , Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, for his research on multiagent systems, and your blogger, for his research on the philosophy of information.

Computers are logical, or at least that’s what we hope. It is a relief to know that the receivers of so much attention, from so many people, and for such long hours are dependable systems, with no inclinations, temperament, or minds of their own. People, on the other hand, are crazy, or so we often suspect. They buy lottery tickets aware of the odds, smoke despite being literate, and believe that black cats could seriously damage their health. This is perhaps why we use computers to try to inculcate some logic in their heads. There is, however, a catch. You would not use a washing machine to teach your nephew how to clean his t-shirt. Likewise, our computers do very weird things in order to see that 5 + 7 = 12. So how can we rely on weird machines to teach logic to crazy minds? Although not exactly worded in this way, computer-based logic teaching was one of the themes addressed by several papers presented at two conferences recently organised by the International Association for Com...

An excellent book, old but still very readable and reliable: Metalogic: An Introduction to the Metatheory of Standard First Order Logic . Highly recommended summer-reading to any philosophy student.

Very kindly, Patrick Peccatte has just made available his French translation of my article Web 2.0 vs. the Semantic Web: A Philosophical Assessment. Thank you Patrick!

This is a book that any PhD student should read. Really. If you are a philosopher, just bear with Cajals ' impatience for the worst side of our discipline, expressed in the initial pages. After all, we have called it upon ourselves. The rest is a pure gem, beautifully written, remarkably insightful and as relevant today as it was at the beginning of last century. The mark of a great mind.

I just received the podcast of an interview I had with Nigel Warburton, you can listen to it by clicking on the title of this blog or visiting www.philosophybites.com "Luciano Floridi on The Fourth Revolution". It is also available from iTunes.

The death of a star may create a supernova explosion. A massive shock wave radiates throughout the whole star, which heats up and then explodes. This flash is as bright as a whole galaxy and leaves behind a rapidly spinning neutron star. The death of Michael Jackson caused a similar supernova effect on the web this week. Initially, when news of his sudden death spread, people at Google thought they were under a cyber attack. You can see why from the graph in this blog. Millions of people who searched for the star's name on Google News were greeted with an error page: "your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application". Or the impact of a dead star.

CALL FOR PAPERS Asia-Pacific Computing and Philosophy 2009 will be held on October 1st-2nd, 2009 in Tokyo, Japan. The conference will be hosted at the University of Tokyo's Sanjo Conference Hall. Keynotes speeches will be given by Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka University) and Professor Shinsuke Shimojo (Caltech). This year AP-CAP 2009 will be held in conjunction with the Devices that Alter Perception workshop, which will form a special track. The conference invites papers from philosophy, computer science, robotics, and media arts. Practitioners of these and related fields like artificial intelligence, ethics, human-computer interaction, and society-technology studies will debate and demonstrate new research. The conference will foster a scholarly dialogue between designers and critics of computing systems. TIMELINE • July 15th, 2009: Deadline for abstract submission • August 15th, 2009: Abstract acceptance notification • September 1st, 2009: Early registratio...

A good book, with plenty of information, but... The writing is not as good as the contents: typos, cut&paste repetitions, redundant bits of information and some awkward sentences make the reader wish the text had been properly copy-edited by the publisher, especially given the fact that this is the second edition. And the philosophy is a bit too light: plenty of notes on a variety of topics, but the material could have been marshalled with a stronger hand. On the whole, worth reading together with Ferre's textbook .

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTER GAMES INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN OSLO 2009 August 13-15, 2009 Keynote speakers: Kendall Walton, author of "Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts" (Harvard University Press, 1990), Miguel Sicart, author of "The Ethics of Computer Games" (The MIT Press, 2009) and Grant Tavinor, author of "The Art of Video Games" (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming in October 2009). CALL FOR PAPERS We hereby invite scholars in any field who take a professional interest in the phenomenon of computer games to submit papers to the international conference "The Philosophy of Computer Games 2009", to be held in Oslo, Norway, on August 13-15, 2009. Accepted papers will have a clear focus on philosophy and philosophical issues in relation to computer games. They will also attempt to use specific examples rather than merely invoke "computer games" in general terms. We invite submissions focusing on, but not ...

I have now completed the two projects for Oxford University Press. One is a small book, entitled Information , written for OUP popular series Very Short Introductions . The other is the book I had been writing for ten year: The Philosophy of Information . It will also be published by OUP. Next project: the other book that complements PoI : Information Ethics . Hopefully it will not take me another decade.

The Department of Science Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark ( http://www.ivs.au.dk ) invites applications for a permanent position as Associate Professor beginning January 1, 2010. The Department of Science Studies forms part of the Faculty of Science, and is responsible for research and education in history and philosophy of science. The Department seeks a historian or philosopher of mathematics and/or computer science with significant publications and research interest within the fields of history and philosophy of mathematics and computer science broadly conceived. The requirements for a successful application are an strong record of research and teaching within history and/or philosophy of mathematics and computer science, and the ability to teach in English or Danish. Experience with academic administration and fund raising is desirable. Duties will include instruction at the undergraduate and postgraduate level within the fields of history and philosophy of mathematics and comp...

A one screen summary, just click on the title. The text, based on my writings, is courtesy of Paul B. Davis.

A very nice book, which I had meant to read since a long time ago. Slightly oldish, it is clear, well written, balanced, accessible and reasonable. The reasonableness is not to be underestimated. There are plenty of crazy, insane, mad, or otherwise ready for the asylum authors out there who will take the "technological discourse" as an excuse to vent platitudes, dispense oracular wisdom, and mumble non-sensical claims. If it were for them, not only we would still be living in the caves, which might still be an uncomfortably acceptable option, but we would still be listening to the local sibyls and magicians, and this is certainly not an improvement.

Inspiring, and it does indeed apply very well to philosophy (as it was suggested by Steve Clark on philos-l): "This is a paper by Mark Edmunson in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It's about literary texts, but with some clear relevance to philosophical texts as well." One may have reservations: what happens to literature (or indeed philosophy), once you're no longer young? Becoming who you are is an endless work in progress, but the point of the article seems to be that there is a stage when most of this work in progress is actually done and that then is when literature/philosophy can play a role. It seems like a Gaussian: texts begin by being irrelevant and end by being irrelevant, peaking in your youth. This is notthe case, or the common practice of re-reading would be meaningless. And why listening to the professors, when you can read the masters? It is not true that they own the keys to the warehouse.

AHRC-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow Department of Philosophy School of Humanities University of Hertfordshire • Salary: UH6 • Grade: £24,877-£29,704 • Ref Number: EN8899 We invite applications for the position of Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, to work on the project “The Construction of Personal Identities Online”. The position is full-time, fixed term (18 months). The project is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The principal investigator is Professor Luciano Floridi. The aim of the project is to investigate the construction of personal identities (PI) when they are digitally mediated, that is, when individuals are embedded in virtual environments that provide unprecedented affordances and different constraints for PI development, as well as innovative opportunities of interactions with other agents, both human and artificial. For further information about the project, please visit http://www.philosophyo...

The story goes that when the Roman horsemen first saw Pyrrhus’ twenty war elephants, at the battle of Heraclea (280 BC), they were so terrorised by these strange creatures, which they have never seen before, that they galloped away and the Roman legions lost the battle. Today, the new elephants are electronic. The phenomenon might have just begun to emerge in the public debate but, in post-informational societies, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are increasingly shaping armed conflicts. In terms of conventional military operations, ICTs have revolutionized communications, making possible complex new modes of field operations. Of course, ICTs have also made possible the swift analysis of vast amounts of data, enabling the military, intelligence and law enforcement communities to take action in ever more timely and targeted ways. But even more significantly, battles are nowadays fought by highly mobile forces, armed with real-time ICT devices, satellites, battlefield se...

The Information Society An International Journal, Volume 25 Issue 3 2009 has just published a special issue on the philosophy of information. Here is the tale of contents: INTRODUCTION The Information Society and Its Philosophy: Introduction to the Special Issue on “The Philosophy of Information, Its Nature, and Future Developments” 153 – 158 Author: Luciano Floridi DOI: 10.1080/01972240902848583 ARTICLES Floridi's Philosophy of Information and Information Ethics: Current Perspectives, Future Directions 159 – 168 Author: Charles Ess DOI: 10.1080/01972240902848708 From the Philosophy of Information to the Philosophy of Information Culture 169 – 174 Authors: Adam Briggle; Carl Mitcham DOI: 10.1080/01972240902848765 Epistemic Values and Information Management 175 – 189 Authors: Don Fallis; Dennis Whitcomb DOI: 10.1080/01972240902848831 Developing the Information and Knowledge Agend...

Against Digital Ontology , Synthese , 2009, 168.1, (2009), 151-178. Abstract The paper argues that digital ontology (the ultimate nature of reality is digital, and the universe is a computational system equivalent to a Turing Machine) should be carefully distinguished from informational ontology (the ultimate nature of reality is structural), in order to abandon the former and retain only the latter as a promising line of research. Digital vs. analogue is a Boolean dichotomy typical of our computational paradigm, but digital and analogue are only “modes of presentation” of Being (to paraphrase Kant), that is, ways in which reality is experienced or conceptualised by an epistemic agent at a given level of abstraction. A preferable alternative is provided by an informational approach to structural realism, according to which knowledge of the world is knowledge of its structures. The most reasonable ontological commitment turns out to be in favour of an interpretation of reali...

First Call for Papers InterFace is a new type of annual event. Part conference, part workshop, part networking opportunity, it will bring together postdocs, early career academics and postgraduate researchers from the fields of Information Technology and the Humanities in order to foster cutting-edge collaboration. As well as having a focus on Digital Humanities, it will also be an important forum for Humanities contributions to Computer Science. The event will furthermore provide a permanent web presence for communication between delegates both during, and following, the conference. Delegate numbers are limited to 80 (half representing each sector) and all participants will be expected to present a poster or a ‘lightning talk’ (a two minute presentation) as a stimulus for discussion and networking sessions. Delegates can also expect to receive illuminating keynote talks from world-leading experts, presentations on successful interdisciplinary projects, ‘Insider’s Guides’ and workshop...

NA-CAP@IU 2009: Networks and Their Philosophical Implications June 14th - 16th At Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana In recent years, across several different academic disciplines, including biology, computer science, cognitive science, informatics, philosophy and psychology, a shift in the study of complex systems is readily visible. This shift away from a focus on the individual components of a system to the interrelations between them has provided the groundwork for what might broadly be called a "network" perspective, as it has become increasingly clear that simple components can produce astoundingly complex and varied behavior when they work in consort. Evidence for this observation is seen everywhere from biological neural networks, stigmergic systems, and animal behavior to networked computing, social networking, and dynamic systems. This conference will explore the philosophical implications of this network perspective as it applies to the broader scope of top...

The two Executive Committees of the International Association for Computing And Philosophy ( IACAP ) and of the Society for Machines and Mentality ( SFMM ) have agreed to transform SFMM into a IACAP Special Interest Group (SIG). Among the many advantages brought about by the creation of the new SFMM-SIG are: enhanced synergies between the two groups in organising activities and events (e.g. APA meetings) and attracting high-quality research; economic savings; and the transformation of Springer’s Minds and Machines into IACAP official journal.

Sometimes the old road should have never been left for the new one. Take the new skype (version 4.x): a disaster, a video-related bug (my guess, it was a problem for version 2.x as well) slowly eats up all your memory until the computer crashes. Second opinion? It's also big and ugly. So better go back to the old 3.8x. You can find it here http://www.oldapps.com/skype.php

Episteme , volume 6, 2009, Pages 25-37 DOI 10.3366/E174236000800052X Preprint available here . The paper develops some of the conclusions, reached in Floridi (2007) , concerning the future developments of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and their impact on our lives. The two main theses supported in that article were that, as the information society develops, the threshold between online and offline is becoming increasingly blurred, and that once there won't be any significant difference, we shall gradually re-conceptualise ourselves not as cyborgs but rather as inforgs, i.e. socially connected, informational organisms. In this paper, I look at the development of the so-called Semantic Web and Web 2.0 from this perspective and try to forecast their future. Regarding the Semantic Web, I argue that it is a clear and well-defined project, which, despite some authoritative views to the contrary, is not a promising reality and will probably fail in the same way AI has...

On Monday, I was waiting for my opponent to show up for a university squash match, but since he was a bit late I thought I could check my email. You cannot imagine my surprise, delight, confusion and useful energy (to which I owe a 3-0) when I read that the American Philosophical Association had select me to receive the Barwise Prize “for significant and sustained contributions to areas relevant to philosophy and computing [...] in recognition of his research on the philosophy of information”. I will receive the award during the APA’s Eastern Meeting in NY in December 2009, when I will deliver the Barwise Lecture. Amazing. Previous winners are: 2007, David Chalmers (Australian National University); 2006, James H. Moor (Dartmouth College); 2005, Hubert Dreyfus (UC Berkeley); 2004, Deborah Johnson (University of Virginia); 2003, Daniel Dennett (Tufts University); 2002, Patrick Suppes (Stanford University). Humbling.

Funded with £165,521 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), this research, entitled ‘The Construction of Personal Identities Online’, will explore how people reinvent themselves in virtual environments. Information and communication technologies are building a new habitat (infosphere) in which people spend an increasing amount of time and how individuals construct and maintain their personal identities online (PIOs) is a problem of growing and pressing importance. Today, PIOs can be created and developed, as an ongoing work-in-progress, to provide experiential enrichment, expand, improve or even help to repair relationships with others and with the world, or enable imaginative projections (the "being in someone else's shoes" experience), thus fostering tolerance. However, PIOs can also be mis-constructed, stolen, "abused", or lead to psychologically or morally unhealthy lives, causing a loss of engagement with the actual world and rea...

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology seeks applicants for a post-doctoral research position to work on projects relating to applications of ontology in medicine and biology. The successful candidate will work with ontology researchers in the New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences in Buffalo, New York. He or she will have expertise in at least two of the following areas: ontology, logic, philosophy of science, bioinformatics, biology, medicine, computer science. Further details are available from Barry Smith or under posting number 0900040 at http://ubjobs.buffalo.edu .

Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG and Bani present: THE INFLUENCERS Festival of media action and radical entertainment February 5-6-7 2009 Center of Contemporary Culture Barcelona, Spain http://www.theinfluencers.org featuring: BLU, Improv Everywhere, Julius Von Bismarck, Survival Research Labs, Swoon, Wolfgang Staehle, Wu Ming, Ztohoven Welcome to the 5th edition of The Influencers! Curated by Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG and Bani, The Influencers is a cult festival exploring unconventional weapons of mass communication. Over the past six years The Influencers has been defined as a gallery of unclassifiable projects, an investigation on guerrilla communication, a demonstration of present-day science fiction, a talk show you won't see on TV. The Influencers is a three intense days event spent interweaving tales of subversion, manipulation and the transformation of live elements of contemporary culture. See you all in Barcelona! More Info: Cristi...

Trondheim, NTNU, Dragvoll - March 9-13, 2009 Lecturers (course) Prof. Charles Ess, Drury University, USA Prof. John Weckert, Charles Sturt University, Australia Associate professor May Thorseth, NTNU, Norway PhD Research fellow Johnny Hartz Søraker, Twente University, Netherlands Further contributors to workshop part (which is part of the course) Dr. Annamaria Carusi, Oxford University, UK Prof. Dag Elgesem, University of Bergen, Norway (One or two more contributors) There will be a combination of plenary lectures, presentations and discussions of essay proposals. Course description Virtuality will be scrutinized from different perspectives in this combined course and workshop. We believe that virtuality is philosophically and ethically relevant to a range of different aspects of life in a world where most people make use of modern information and communication technologies - most obviously, the Internet, but certainly also Internet-enabled mobile devices. And, as online communications...

LA-CAP09 - Call for Papers COMPUTING AND PHILOSOPHY: LA-CAP 2009 Mexico City, Mexico, June 22-23, 2009 LA-CAP09 is the first Latin American Conference on Computing and Philosophy will be held on the Campus of the National University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, Mexico. One of the aims of this conference is to build the Latin American section of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP): see IACAP for further informations. Conference Chair: Francisco Hernández Quiroz (UNAM – México) Juan Manuel Durán (UNC - Argentina) IMPORTANT DATES • March 1, 2009. End of submission of extended abstract. • March 29, 2009. Notification of acceptance. • May 17, 2009. Early registration deadline. • June 22-23, 2009. Conference. KEYNOTE SPEAKERS • Prof. Wilfried Sieg. Carnegie Mellon. USA. • Prof. Víctor Rodríguez. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Argentina We are expecting the confirmation of two more keynote speakers....

CiE 2009 is the fifth in a series of conferences organised by CiE (Computability in Europe), a European network of mathematicians, logicians, computer scientists, philosophers, physicists and others interested in new developments in computability and their underlying significance for the real world. Previous meetings took place in Amsterdam (2005), Swansea (2006), Siena (2007) and Athens (2008). The scope of the conference is broad, and includes the history and philosophy of computability and computer science. The Programme Committee especially encourages submissions in these areas. The deadline for submission of papers has just been extended to February 1. For the call for papers, click on the title of this blog.

Call for papers, for the 4th International and IJCAI-09 Workshop on EXPLANATION-AWARE COMPUTING (ExaCt 2009) 11-12 July 2009, Pasadena, CA, USA Paper submission deadline: March 6, 2009** Both within AI systems and in interactive systems, the ability to explain reasoning processes and results can have substantial impact. Within the field of knowledge-based systems, explanations have been considered as an important link between humans and machines. There, their main purpose has been to increase the confidence of the user in the system’s result (persuasion) or the system as a whole (satisfaction), by providing evidence of how it was derived (transparency). More recently, in recommender systems good explanations have also been used to help to inspire user trust and loyalty (trust), and make it quicker and easier (efficiency) for users to find what they want (effectiveness). Additional AI research has focused on how computer systems can themselves use explanations, for example to f...