Wanted: The ‘perfect babysitter.’ Must pass AI scan for respect and attitude.; The Washington Post, November 23, 2018

Drew Harwell, The Washington Post; Wanted: The ‘perfect babysitter.’ Must pass AI scan for respect and attitude.

"Predictim’s chief and co-founder Sal Parsa said the company, launched last month as part of the University of California at Berkeley’s SkyDeck tech incubator, takes ethical questions about its use of the technology seriously. Parents, he said, should see the ratings as a companion that “may or may not reflect the sitter’s actual attributes.”...

...[T]ech experts say the system raises red flags of its own, including worries that it is preying on parents’ fears to sell personality scans of untested accuracy.

They also question how the systems are being trained and how vulnerable they might be to misunderstanding the blurred meanings of sitters’ social media use. For all but the highest-risk scans, the parents are given only a suggestion of questionable behavior and no specific phrases, links or details to assess on their own."

Facebook admits it discussed sharing user data for medical research project; The Guardian, April 5, 2018

Amanda Holpuch, The Guardian; Facebook admits it discussed sharing user data for medical research project

[Kip Currier: Timely to see this article, after discussing HIPAA and medical research data in my lecture yesterday on "Legal and Ethical Issues of Research Data Management (RDM)". And after my post here, responding to John Podhoretz's "sorry, you are a fool" New York Post opinion piece.]

"Medical institutions are held to a higher privacy standard than Facebook because of laws such as the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or Hipaa, which makes it illegal for health care providers and insurers to share patient data without their permission.

But it is not clear how the proposed research would have complied with this strict health privacy law.

Two people who heard Facebook’s pitch and one person familiar with it told CNBC that the proposed project would mesh data from health systems (such as diagnoses and prescribed medications) with data from Facebook (such as age, friends and likes). The idea would be to match what is known about a patient’s lifestyle with their medical needs to customize care."

Trump’s last tweet?; Washington Post, 10/2/16

E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post; Trump’s last tweet? :

"That a political party, a political system and a media blessed with broad constitutional freedoms have allowed a man like this to get so close to the presidency should be a matter for serious introspection...

If an onslaught against a Gold Star family didn’t stop him, why should his wee-hours-of-the-morning storm of vicious invective be any different?

The answer is that this episode should finally force everyone to say: enough. Trump is neither normal nor stable. He is manifestly dangerous to our country and erratic in everything except his unrestrained meanness. He should not be given fifth, sixth and seventh chances. He has shown us who he is. We should believe what we see."

"Effective Tweeting"; Bizarro, 8/9/16

Dan Piraro, Bizarro:

"Effective Tweeting"

Stop Googling. Let’s Talk; New York Times, 9/26/15

Sherry Turkle, New York Times; Stop Googling. Let’s Talk:

"I’ve been studying the psychology of online connectivity for more than 30 years. For the past five, I’ve had a special focus: What has happened to face-to-face conversation in a world where so many people say they would rather text than talk? I’ve looked at families, friendships and romance. I’ve studied schools, universities and workplaces. When college students explain to me how dividing their attention plays out in the dining hall, some refer to a “rule of three.” In a conversation among five or six people at dinner, you have to check that three people are paying attention — heads up — before you give yourself permission to look down at your phone. So conversation proceeds, but with different people having their heads up at different times. The effect is what you would expect: Conversation is kept relatively light, on topics where people feel they can drop in and out."