Technical Ethics

  • The intersection of Blockchain , Law and Ethics is a brand new paradigm for research in recent years. Contemporary research primarily addresses technology aspects, while issues , such as empathy, privacy ,ethics , security, ethics, trust, reliability, usability, accessibility and acceptability , have been totally neglected Conflicting requirements for example “right to be forgotten” in case of GDPR , also make it extremely hard to visualize a holistic approach.

    On the other hand, opportunities exist for these to support one another. Particularly, w.r.t TenderBullet , where the core ethical question of introducing integrity to the process The main objective of this section is to present our vision for next generation procurement system and to explore pertinent factors. We propose a unified framework that plans to incorporate AI , IOT and a game theoretic model to address intivisation of actors. We illustrate our work in progress using an example. We then present major challenges for the realization .

  • Discussing about ethics, as something crystal clear , for us personally, would be totally unethical. Our journey has yet not even started , and its too hard to contemplate the decisions, we would make in hypothetical situations where ethics are concerned. We acknowledge the fact that , this is not something one can teach or evaluate in current setting . So, that being put aside, there are 2 things we can write about -

    • First , ethics as function of a software supply chain

    • Second , ethics pertaining to TenderBullet

    We plan to utilize the “Andon Cord” approach as pioneered by Toyota , for managing the software produced for TenderBullet.

    Each of the underlying components will be thoroughly PEN-tested using multiple tools and mechanisms.

    We will make use of Spring Cloud contract for Testing API, amoung a pehlotra of other trivial practices .

    TenderBullet would require a certain level of ethical principals to operate , but again this is such a vague mindset. Being aware of Maslow’s theory , it by belief that we would have to take out chance of corruption by stakeholders all together. This is something that requires a detailed exploration , we have only considered obfuscation of Bids as an initial step in this direction.

  • There is no single standardized blockchain smart contract methodology that can be used as defacto approach from legal prespective. CommonAccord (commonaccord.org) initiative is working to realize this goal.

    We are currently been exploring openlaw (openlaw.io) and The Accord Project (https://accordproject.org/) .

    We are leaning towards latter , due to 2 reasons ,

  • first , its engagement with Google Summer of code and

  • second its openness to any blockchain with particular affinity for Hyperledger fabric (and also use of elegant Behavior driven design approach). (Described the technical aspects in the Appendix section)

  • Detailed exploration for Security assurance correctness verification, etc., of blockchain smart contracts , is still pending.