Using AI Responsibly; American Libraries, January 21, 2024

Diana Panuncial , American Libraries; Using AI Responsibly

"Navigating misinformation and weighing ethical and privacy issues in artificial intelligence (AI) were top of mind for the panelists at “AI and Libraries: A Discussion on the Future,” a January 21 session at the American Library Association’s 2024 LibLearnX Conference in Baltimore. Flowers was joined by Virginia Cononie, assistant librarian and coordinator of research at University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg; Dray MacFarlane, cofounder of Tasio, an AI consulting company; and Juan Rubio, digital media learning program manager for Seattle Public Library (SPL). 

Rubio, who used AI to create a tool to help teens at SPL reflect on their mental health and well-being, said there is excitement behind the technology and how it can be harnessed, but there should also be efforts to educate patrons on how to use it responsibly. 

“I think ethical use of AI comes with creating ethical people,” he said, adding that SPL has been thinking about implementing guidelines for using AI. “Be very aware of your positionality [as librarians], because I think we are in a place of privilege—not necessarily of money or power, but of knowledge.”"

Florida’s New Advisory Ethics Opinion on Generative AI Hits the Mark; JDSupra, January 29, 2024

Ralph Artigliere , JDSupra; Florida’s New Advisory Ethics Opinion on Generative AI Hits the Mark

"As a former Florida trial lawyer and judge who appreciates emerging technology, I admit that I had more than a little concern when The Florida Bar announced it was working on a new ethics opinion on generative AI. Generative AI promises to provide monumental advantages to lawyers in their workflow, quality of work product, productivity, and time management and more. For clients, use of generative AI by their lawyers can mean better legal services delivered faster and with greater economy. In the area of eDiscovery, generative AI promises to surpass technology assisted review in helping manage the increasingly massive amounts of data.

Generative AI is new to the greater world, and certainly to busy lawyers who are not reading every blogpost on AI. The internet and journals are afire over concerns of hallucinations, confidentiality, bias, and the like. I felt a new ethics opinion might throw a wet blanket on generative AI and discourage Florida lawyers from investigating the new technology.

Thankfully, my concerns did not become reality. The Florida Bar took a thorough look at the technology and the existing ethical guidance and law and applied existing guidelines and rules in a thorough and balanced fashion. This article briefly summarizes Opinion 24-1 and highlights some of its important features.

The Opinion

On January 19, 2024, The Florida Bar released Ethics Opinion 24-1(“Opinion 24-1”)regarding the use of generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) in the practice of law. The Florida Bar and the State Bar of California are leaders in issuing ethical guidance on this issue. Opinion 24-1 draws from a solid background of ethics opinions and guidance in Florida and around the country and provides positive as well as cautionary statements regarding the emerging technologies. Overall, the guidance is well-placed and helpful for lawyers at a time when so many are weighing the use of generative AI technology in their law practices."

Where's the best place to find a robot cat? The library, of course; ZDNet, January 27, 2024

Chris Matyszczyk, , ZDNet; Where's the best place to find a robot cat? The library, of course

"As Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) reported, the library's customers are involved in a festival of adoration when it comes to these three black-and-white robot felines...

Here's Manistee County Library in Michigan with a veritable array of robotic pets. Cats, dogs and even a bird...

Let's now drift to the Hastings Public Library, also in Michigan. There, just beneath Botley the Coding Robot is: "Robotic Cat. Coming January 2024."

Now you might be wondering what the rules are for going to your local public library and taking a robot cat home with you.

Helpfully, the Reading Public Library in Massachusetts offers some guidelines...

It seems, then, that America's libraries have become homes for robot cats. They bring peace and companionship to many. And that's a good thing."

How the Federal Government Can Rein In A.I. in Law Enforcement; The New York Times, January 2, 2024

 Joy Buolamwini and Barry Friedman, The New York Times; How the Federal Government Can Rein In A.I. in Law Enforcement

"One of the most hopeful proposals involving police surveillance emerged recently from a surprising quarter — the federal Office of Management and Budget. The office, which oversees the execution of the president’s policies, has recommended sorely needed constraints on the use of artificial intelligence by federal agencies, including law enforcement.

The office’s work is commendable, but shortcomings in its proposed guidance to agencies could still leave people vulnerable to harm. Foremost among them is a provision that would allow senior officials to seek waivers by arguing that the constraints would hinder law enforcement. Those law enforcement agencies should instead be required to provide verifiable evidence that A.I. tools they or their vendors use will not cause harm, worsen discrimination or violate people’s rights."

The Internet Of Things Demystified: Connect, Collect, Analyze And Act; Forbes, October 12, 2023

 Bill Geary, Forbes; The Internet Of Things Demystified: Connect, Collect, Analyze And Act

"When you get past the acronyms and buzzwords that describe the platforms that help organizations manage their operations, it all boils down to gathering information so you can make good decisions. The tech industry establishes a lot of jargon that helps differentiate one technology from another. Those terms are helpful to IT professionals but often serve to confuse everyone else. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a term that creates confusion.

I prefer to describe this technology according to what it does. IoT is nothing more than connecting things, collecting information from them, analyzing it and acting upon it accordingly: connect, collect, analyze and act. By distilling the technology into a plain description, we demystify the term. We make it attainable and approachable—something that everyone can understand."

Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless cars; NPR, August 26, 2023

 Dara Kerr, NPR; Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless cars

"An anonymous activist group called Safe Street Rebel is responsible for this so-called coning incident and dozens of others over the past few months. The group's goal is to incapacitate the driverless cars roaming San Francisco's streets as a protest against the city being used as a testing ground for this emerging technology."

Your selfies are helping AI learn. You did not consent to this.; The Washington Post, December 9, 2022

 Shira Ovide, The Washington Post; Your selfies are helping AI learn. You did not consent to this.

"My colleague Tatum Hunter spent time evaluating Lensa, an app that transforms a handful of selfies you provide into artistic portraits. And people have been using the new chatbot ChatGPT to generate silly poems or professional emails that seem like they were written by a human. These AI technologies could be profoundly helpful but they also come with a bunch of thorny ethical issues.

Tatum reported that Lensa’s portrait wizardly comes from the styles of artists whose work was included in a giant database for coaching image-generating computers. The artists didn’t give their permission to do this, and they aren’t being paid. In other words, your fun portraits are built on work ripped off from artists. ChatGPT learned to mimic humans by analyzing your recipes, social media posts, product reviews and other text from everyone on the internet...

Hany Farid, a computer science professor at the University of California at Berkeley, told me that individuals, government officials, many technology executives, journalists and educators like him are far more attuned than they were a few years ago to the potential positive and negative consequences of emerging technologies like AI. The hard part, he said, is knowing what to do to effectively limit the harms and maximize the benefits."

Trademark and copyright considerations for NFTs; Reuters, May 2, 2022

 Sharon Urias, Reuters ; Trademark and copyright considerations for NFTs

"NFTs are mostly used to verify ownership of digital goods. An easy way to understand NFTs is to think of them as unalterable certificates of authenticity for digital goods. For example, if someone purchases a piece of digital art, the NFT acts to validate and verify ownership and authenticity of the artwork. In the "real world," the closest analogy is an autographed original painting that is authenticated by the artist's signature or a certificate of authenticity issued by a reputable source...

One common question asked by clients is whether, when they purchase NFTs, they also obtain the copyright associated with it. The answer is: Not necessarily. It is important to understand what is included in the smart contract that confers the purchaser's rights to the digital asset. Similar to the purchase of a physical painting in our analogy above, although the purchaser has acquired the right to display the work, and to resell it, ownership of the copyright is not automatically conveyed.

The artist owns the copyright unless the author assigns it to the purchaser...

NFTs present interesting and novel questions for trademarks as well...

One of the questions to be resolved is whether traditional trademark legal doctrines, such as the first-sale doctrine, protects a seller, such as StockX, or whether the NFTs are new, distinct products that seek to capitalize on the trademark owners' marks...

It is always challenging for the law to keep pace with the expansion and development of new technologies and innovations. It is no different with NFTs. With the increased growth of NFTs, the need for protection also grows. Although NFTs present many opportunities for businesses, it is essential that NFT sellers clearly delineate in the smart contract what is and is not permitted with respect to intellectual property rights. In that way, both NFT sellers and buyers will be able to protect themselves and best monetize these assets."

AirTags are being used to track people and cars. Here's what is being done about it; NPR, February 18, 2022

MICHAEL LEVITT, NPR; AirTags are being used to track people and cars. Here's what is being done about it

""As technology becomes more sophisticated and advanced, as wonderful as that is for society, unfortunately, it also becomes much easier to misuse and abuse," she told NPR. "I wouldn't say that we've necessarily seen an uptick with the use of AirTags any more or less than any cutting edge technology."

Williams said that what was rare was a technology company taking the issue seriously and moving to address it.

"[Apple is] not only listening to the field, but actively reaching out at times to do safety checks. That in and of itself might sound like a very small step, but it's rare," she said.

Still, Galperin thinks that Apple should have done more to protect people ahead of time. 

"The mitigations that Apple had in place at the time that the AirTag came out were woefully insufficient," Galperin said. 

"I think that Apple has been very careful and responsive after putting the product out and introducing new mitigations. But the fact that they chose to bring the product to market in the state that it was in last year, is shameful.""

Stephen G. Breyer may shape tech’s copyright battles for years to come; The Washington Post, January 27, 2022

Cristiano Lima with research by Aaron Schaffer, The Washington Post; Stephen G. Breyer may shape tech’s copyright battles for years to come

"Stephen G. Breyer may shape tech’s copyright battles for years to come

With the looming retirement of Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, tech policy wonks say the high court is losing one of the nation’s preeminent thought leaders on intellectual property and copyright.

But while Breyer may be on his way out of federal court, his influence over those standards, and how they map onto emerging technologies, is poised to live on long after.

For decades, Breyer has carved out a unique role on the bench as a copyright specialist, said Meredith Rose, senior policy counsel at consumer group Public Knowledge. And his advocacy for a more limited view of intellectual property rights than some of his colleagues, such as the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, made him a “rarity” in the space, Rose said. 

“He’s definitely got the biggest depth of experience in copyright issues on the bench currently,” she said. “It was really him and Justice Ginsburg were the two titans of copyright.”

Corynne McSherry, legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called Breyer “a very strong voice for a balanced intellectual property system” that ensured that copyright and patents are “encouraging innovation, encouraging new creativity … as opposed to thwarting it.”

These traits, they said, were exemplified in one of Breyer’s most recent high-profile copyright cases: the contentious, decade-long Google v. Oracle bout."

Killer Robots Aren’t Science Fiction. A Push to Ban Them Is Growing.; The New York Times, December 17, 2022

Adam Satariano, Nick Cumming-Bruce and Rick Gladstone, The New York Times; Killer Robots Aren’t Science Fiction. A Push to Ban Them Is Growing.

A U.N. conference made little headway this week on limiting development and use of killer robots, prompting stepped-up calls to outlaw such weapons with a new treaty.

"It may have seemed like an obscure United Nations conclave, but a meeting this week in Geneva was followed intently by experts in artificial intelligence, military strategy, disarmament and humanitarian law.

The reason for the interest? Killer robots — drones, guns and bombs that decide on their own, with artificial brains, whether to attack and kill — and what should be done, if anything, to regulate or ban them.

Once the domain of science fiction films like the “Terminator” series and “RoboCop,” killer robots, more technically known as Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, have been invented and tested at an accelerated pace with little oversight. Some prototypes have even been used in actual conflicts.

The evolution of these machines is considered a potentially seismic event in warfare, akin to the invention of gunpowder and nuclear bombs."

Killer farm robot dispatches weeds with electric bolts; The Guardian, April 29, 2021

 Damian Carrington, The Guardian; Killer farm robot dispatches weeds with electric bolts

"In a sunny field in Hampshire, a killer robot is on the prowl. Once its artificial intelligence engine has locked on to its target, a black electrode descends and delivers an 8,000-volt blast. A crackle, a puff of smoke, and the target is dead – a weed, boiled alive from the inside.

It is part of a fourth agricultural revolution, its makers say, bringing automation and big data into farming to produce more while harming the environment less. Pressure to cut pesticide use and increasing resistance to the chemicals meant killing weeds was the top priority for the farmers advising the robot company.

The killer robot, called Dick, is the world’s first to target individual weeds in arable crops and, on its first public demonstration, it is destroying broad-leaved weeds identified using pattern recognition. A scout robot, called Tom, has already scanned the field in detail and passed the data to an AI engine called Wilma to plot the targets. Dick’s onboard AI then ensures a bullseye hit."

Bloomfield residents raise concerns about sharing sidewalk space with delivery robots; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 26, 2021

NICK TROMBOLA , Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Bloomfield residents raise concerns about sharing sidewalk space with delivery robots

"Bloomfield may be sharing its streets with delivery robots in the near future — a development that has residents of the neighborhood raising concerns about their implementation.

Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure is planning a pilot program to test out personal delivery devices, or PDDs, in Bloomfield this summer. The devices will come from Los Angeles-based Kiwibot.

The six-month pilot program, tentatively set to start in June, is meant to help the city learn more about how the emerging technology could affect communities, according to Erin Clark, a policy analyst at the city agency."

Emerging technologies pose ethical quandaries. Where does IT leadership fit in?; CIO Dive, February 22, 2021

Katie Malone, CIO Dive; Emerging technologies pose ethical quandaries. Where does IT leadership fit in?

""More organizations are seeing that trust is a measurement of profitability, of organizational health, of success," said Catherine Bannister, Tech Savvy and ethical tech leader at Deloitte. "This notion of ethics is becoming much more visible to stakeholders across the board and they are using that as a measure of trust, both internally and externally."

But there's no common definition for what ethical technology looks like and the conversation is ongoing. Instead, CIOs and other members of IT leadership are responsible for figuring out what tech ethics mean for their organizations in the near- and long-term. 

If an organization doesn't do its ethical due diligence, customers will catch on and trust will be diminished, according to Bannister."

15 Ethical Crises In Technology That Have Industry Leaders Concerned; Forbes Technology Council, July 9, 2020

Forbes Technology Council; 15 Ethical Crises In Technology That Have Industry Leaders Concerned

"Growing technologies such as artificial intelligence have incredible potential. However, they also can come with ethical concerns, such as privacy violations and data safety. These issues must be addressed before people can safely implement emerging technologies in their daily lives.

As industry leaders, the members of Forbes Technology Council keep a close eye on issues impacting the field. Below, they share 15 ethical crises they’re concerned about and what can be done to remedy them."

Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore; Harvard Business Review, December 10, 2019

Greg Satell, Harvard Business Review; Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore

"Shift 2: From Rapid Iteration to Exploration. Over the past 30 years, we’ve had the luxury of working with technologies we understand extremely well. Every generation of microchips opened vast new possibilities, but worked exactly the same way as the last generation, creating minimal switching costs. The main challenge was to design applications.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that rapid iteration emerged as a key strategy. When you understand the fundamental technology that underlies a product or service, you can move quickly, trying out nearly endless permutations until you arrive at an optimized solution. That’s often far more effective than a more planned, deliberate approach.

Over the next decade or two, however, the challenge will be to advance technology that we don’t understand well at all. Quantum and neuromorphic computing are still in their nascent stages. Exponential improvements in genomics and materials science are redefining the boundaries of those fields. There are also ethical issues involved with artificial intelligence and genomics that will require us to tread carefully.

So in the future, we will need to put greater emphasis on exploration. We will need to spend time understanding these new technologies and how they relate to our businesses. Most of all, it’s imperative to start exploring early. By the time many of these technologies hit their stride, it may be too late to catch up."

Ethics and AI conference launched by CMU, K&L Gates; Pittsburgh Business Times, March 6, 2018

Patty Tascarella, Pittsburgh Business Times; Ethics and AI conference launched by CMU, K&L Gates

"The inaugural Carnegie Mellon University-K&L Gates Conference on Ethics and Artificial Intelligence is slated for April 9-10.

Leaders from industry, academia and government will explore ethical issues surrounding emerging technologies at the two-day event in Pittsburgh."

Privacy Concerns in Emerging Technologies; American Bar Association Webinar: Thursday, May 25, 2017

American Bar Association Webinar: Thursday, May 25, 2017Privacy Concerns in Emerging Technologies

• 

1.50 CLE

Format:

Webinar

Date:

May 25, 2017

Time:

12:00 PM - 1:30 PM ET

Add to Calendar

Credits:

1.50 General CLE Credit Hours

Panelist(s):

Jodi Daniel

Scott Stiefel

Moderator(s):

Alya Sulaiman

Sponsor(s):

Center for Professional Development

Health Law Section

The rise in health information technology and wearable devices has brought innovative models of healthcare delivery, as well as increasing privacy risks and compliance concerns. Join our expert faculty as they discuss privacy issues confronting emerging technologies.

Topics will include:

• Applicability of HIPAA to technology companies
• Office for Civil Rights (OCR) guidance on HIPAA and cloud computing
• Increasing Focus on Patient Right of Access
• Recent enforcement settlements affecting emerging health care technologies and developers
• Privacy considerations in the era of the Internet of Things (IoT)/Wearables