The Ethics of Cyber-conflicts in Hyperhistorical Societies

Professor Luciano Floridi discusses the ethics of cyber-conflicts for the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence. He first conveys his interpretation of the main phases of societal development, from prehistory to hyperhistory: prehistory lacks ICTs and therefore a means of recording the present for the future; history has ICTs that are controlled primarily by the state, the principal agent of information; hyperhistory deals with multi-agent systems (e.g. EU, IMF, WTO) unconstrained by any particular force. Floridi then states that in recent years, robots are now enveloping the environment and creating an AI-friendly infosphere, thereby blurring the distinction between reality and virtuality as well as that among human, machine, and nature. He concludes by emphasising that due to technology there is a certain democratisation of weapons for the first time in history and argues for the development of ethics in information conflicts.