Beneficial Artificial Intelligence Coordination by Means of a Value Sensitive Design Approach

Round  1

Reviewer 1 Report

I have reviewed the Manuscript ID: BDCC-420173, with the title "Beneficial AI Coordination by means of a Value Sensitive Design Approach". In this paper, the author explores the potential applicability of the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) methodology to the development and fostering of cooperation and collaboration between various stakeholder communities in the design and development of AI systems. I consider that the article will benefit if the author addresses within the manuscript the following aspects:

·     The sections of the manuscript in its actual form are unnumbered and are not according to the ones recommended by the BDCC MDPI Journal's Template. The manuscript under review will benefit if it is restructured in accordance with the above-mentioned template that provides a more logical structure that is much more appropriate for a research article. The restructuring of the manuscript will also help the author to better express the novelty of his work and the contribution that he has made to the current state of knowledge. Consequently, the manuscript under review should be restructured as follows: Abstract, Keywords, 1. Introduction, 2. Materials and Methods, 3. Results, 4. Discussion, 5. Conclusions (not mandatory), 6. Patents (not mandatory), Supplementary Materials (not mandatory), Author Contributions, Funding, Acknowledgments, Conflicts of Interest, Appendices and References.

·     Lines 2-3: "Beneficial AI Coordination by means of a Value Sensitive Design Approach" - acronyms must be avoided in the title, even if they are widely known. Regarding the other acronyms used in the manuscript (for example CEO, ICT) they should be explained the first time when they are introduced.

·     Lines 83-88: "Emerging from the domain of human-computer interaction (HCI) and ICT, VSD has since developed into a largely adopted design approach to incorporate human values (and perhaps even non-human) values during both the early and latter design phases of technologies^22,27. Since its inceptions in the early 1990s, VSD has been adopted as a proposed framework for the design of identity technologies²⁴, energy technologies^19,23, robotics and autonomous agents^20,28–31, information and communication technologies^32–37, health technologies^38–41, and nanotechnology^42–44." I consider that it is not appropriate for the manuscript to cover ten or more scientific works in a short sentence (like the author did) just for the sake of obtaining an appropriate size of the References section. In this section, the author must introduce a presentation of the current state of the research field by reviewing it carefully and by citing key publications. By doing so, the problem will be put into context and it will benefit the readers as well. The purpose of the literature survey is to highlight exactly, for each of the involved referenced papers the main contribution that the authors of the referenced papers have brought to the current state of knowledge, the method used by the authors of the referenced papers, a brief presentation of the main obtained results and some limitations of the referenced article. This is the only way to contextualize the current state of the art in which the authors of the manuscript position their paper and address aspects that have not been tackled/solved yet by the existing studies.

·      I consider that in addition to the actual explanations, in order to help the readers better understand the methodology of the conducted research, the author should devise a flowchart within the "Materials and Methods" section, a flowchart that depicts the steps that the author has processed in developing his research and most important of all, the final target. This flowchart will facilitate the understanding of the proposed approach and in the same time will make the article more interesting to the readers if used as a graphical abstract.

·     The citations within the manuscript are marked using uppercase (in the same way as the footnotes) or in the form "Dignum et al. (2016)", "Oosterlaken (2015)" and therefore the citations are not in accordance to the recommendations of the BDCC MDPI Journal's Template. According to this template, in the text of the manuscript, the reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [  ] and placed before the punctuation; for example [1], [1–3] or [1,3]. For embedded citations in the text with pagination, use both parentheses and brackets to indicate the reference number and page numbers; for example [5] (p. 10), or [6] (pp. 101–105).

·      I consider that the detailed hardware and software configurations that were used when developing the research should be specified in the "Materials and Methods" section, in order to provide all the necessary details for assuring the reproducibility of the study.

·     Lines 214-216: "The written comprehensive evidence volume consists of 223 separate reports by policy experts, academics, NGOs, think tanks, governmental bodies, and industry leaders. Similarly, the oral evidence volume consists of 57 separate oral testimonies by similar groups and individuals." Regarding the dataset, I consider that the author should explain in the paper and justify if the 223 written reports along with the 57 oral testimonies constitute a representative sample of the population from the considered area, in what concerns its structure: age, gender, occupation, educational level, family size.

·       Lines 264-265: The so-called Table 2 is rather a figure. Consequently, it must be renamed and renumbered as a figure, within which the axes' titles must be specified, along with the measuring units (if applicable).

·     The "Results" section is missing. In this section the author should provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn. After having analyzed the results, the author should move forward to the "Discussion" section.

·     The "Discussion" section is missing. In order to validate the usefulness of his research, in this section, the author must make a comparison between his approach from the manuscript and other ones that have been developed and used in the literature for the same purpose.

·      Lines 326-327: "The findings of this paper, if valid, may allow both stakeholders and engineers to better conceptualize the values of different groups…" First of all, I consider that the expression "if valid" is not the best choice, maybe "has the potential", or "is suitable" ("if" implies some uncertainty). Therefore, the author should rewrite this sentence more clearly, as the words "if" expresses uncertainty. Secondly, I consider that it will benefit the manuscript and in the same time it will highlight even more the author's contribution if he provides an insight stating more clear what is the purpose and usefulness of his study. The paper will benefit if the author makes a step further, beyond his approach and provides an insight at the end of the "Discussion" section regarding what he considers to be, based on the obtained results, the most important steps that all the involved parties should take in order to benefit from the results of the research conducted within the manuscript.

·     The Figures' citations: In the manuscript under review, the Figures are referred in the main text as Fig. 1, Fig. 2, etc. According to the BDCC MDPI Journal's Template, this information must appear as Figure 1, Figure 2, etc. Please address this issue by modifying the way in which the figures are referred in the main text, according to the Energies BDCC Journal's Template.

·     Line 363: "Any remaining errors are the peer reviewers’ alone, you know who you are." Obviously, the peer reviewers are not responsible for the author's errors. In the actual form of this statement, the author states that any errors are somebody else’s fault, which in my opinion is a risky assertion. The author should assume the responsibility for the remaining errors and not to pass them to the peer reviewers. If the author has intended to acknowledge the referees for potential constructive comments and suggestions, he must reformulate the sentence. Please express more clearly this sentence, its meaning is unclear and discussable.  

·     The "References" section: I consider that the author should pay more attention to the details, by revising and correcting the format of the References section, according to the BDCC MDPI Journal's Template recommendations.

·     Line 318: "…i.e., reports, testimony, newspapers, etc…" In a scientific paper one should avoid using run-on expressions, such as "and so forth", "and so on" or "etc.". Therefore, instead of "etc.", the sentence should mention all the elements that have been into account in the study, as they are relevant to the analysis and to the obtained results.

Author Response

See attached word document

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The proposal describes a case study where the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) paradigm is applied at the UK Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence. It is an interesting study supported by the fact that the submission is one of the few existing contributions that attempt to evaluate the merits of the VSD framework for AI coordination per se. However, this reviewer suggests the following modifications prior to publication:

Personal statements like ‘I’, ‘me’ etc. should be replaced

The research methodology should be clearly indicated: principal/secondary goals, requirements/assumptions, limitations, null/alternative hypothesis, etc.

How at the case study, the VSD methodology contributed to outperform conventional approaches?. This must be more explicitly discussed (if possible, analytically)

What is the different between taking into consideration the selected values and to apply a doctrine (In accordance with its politics/military connotation, not regarding religious/philosophical)

Author Response

See attached revision notes. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round  2

Reviewer 1 Report

I have reviewed the revised version of the manuscript "Beneficial AI Coordination by means of a Value Sensitive Design Approach" (under the revised title "Beneficial Artificial Intelligence Coordination by means of a Value Sensitive Design Approach"), Manuscript ID: BDCC-420173 that has been submitted for publication in the MDPI Big Data and Cognitive Computing Journal and I can state that the manuscript has been improved.