The push to create AI-friendly ethics codes is stripping all nuance from morality; Quartz, October 4, 2018

Olivia Goldhill, Quartz; The push to create AI-friendly ethics codes is stripping all nuance from morality

"A paper led by Veljko Dubljević, neuroethics researcher at North Carolina State University, published yesterday (Oct. 2) in PLOS ONE, claims to establish not just the answer to one ethical question, but the entire groundwork for how moral judgements are made.

According to the paper’s “Agent Deed Consequence model,” three things are taken into account when making a moral decision: the person doing the action, the moral action itself, and the consequences of that action. To test this theory, the researchers created moral scenarios that varied details about the agent, the action, and the consequences."

How Europe is fighting to change tech companies' 'wrecking ball' ethics; Guardian, 1/30/16

Julia Powles and Carissa Veliz, Guardian; How Europe is fighting to change tech companies' 'wrecking ball' ethics:

"Culture and ethics beyond law...

European politicians want the new General Data Protection Regulation – the most-debated piece of EU legislation ever – to be part of the solution, along with the remainder of Europe’s pioneering fundamental rights framework. But law is not, and cannot be, the whole. Mostly, it’s about culture and ethics.

One European institution wants to seize this broader challenge. The European data protection supervisor, or EDPS, is the EU’s smallest entity but also one of its most ambitious, and immediately followed Schulz’s address by announcing a new ethics advisory group.

EDPS hopes this group will lead an inclusive debate on human rights, technology, markets and business models in the 21st century from an ethical perspective.

Six individuals have been selected to spearhead what is initially a two-year investigative, consultative and report-writing initiative: iconoclastic American computer scientist and writer Jaron Lanier; Dutch data analytics consultant Aurélie Pols; and four philosophers, Peter Burgess, Antoinette Rouvroy, Luciano Floridi and Jeroen van den Hoven, who bring experience in political and legal philosophy, logic, and the ethics and philosophy of technology.

Technology needs a moral compass

Bringing ethics into the data debate is essential."