'Bias deep inside the code': the problem with AI 'ethics' in Silicon Valley; The Guardian, March 29, 2019

Sam Levin, The Guardian; 'Bias deep inside the code': the problem with AI 'ethics' in Silicon Valley

"“Algorithms determine who gets housing loans and who doesn’t, who goes to jail and who doesn’t, who gets to go to what school,” said Malkia Devich Cyril, the executive director of the Center for Media Justice. “There is a real risk and real danger to people’s lives and people’s freedom.”

Universities and ethics boards could play a vital role in counteracting these trends. But they rarely work with people who are affected by the tech, said Laura Montoya, the cofounder and president of the Latinx in AI Coalition: “It’s one thing to really observe bias and recognize it, but it’s a completely different thing to really understand it from a personal perspective and to have experienced it yourself throughout your life.”

It’s not hard to find AI ethics groups that replicate power structures and inequality in society – and altogether exclude marginalized groups.

The Partnership on AI, an ethics-focused industry group launched by Google, Facebook, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft, does not appear to have black board members or staff listed on its site, and has a board dominated by men. A separate Microsoft research group dedicated to “fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics in AI” also excludes black voices."
 

Apple Martin tells off mother Gwyneth Paltrow for sharing photo without consent ; The Guardian, March 28, 2019

Kate Lyons, The Guardian;

Apple Martin tells off mother Gwyneth Paltrow for sharing photo without consent

 

"Paltrow posted a photo to Instagram earlier in the week of herself with Apple Martin, her 14-year-old daughter with Coldplay singer Chris Martin, at a ski field. Apple’s face is largely covered by ski goggles.

Apple commented on the post: “Mom we have discussed this. You may not post anything without my consent.”

Paltrow replied: “You can’t even see your face!”

Apple’s comment, which was later deleted, sparked debate about how much parents should share about their children’s lives on social media."

 

A study of ethicists finds they’re no more ethical than the rest of us (and no better at calling their mothers); Quartz, March 27, 2019

Olivia Goldhill, Quartz;

A study of ethicists finds they’re no more ethical than the rest of us (and no better at calling their mothers)

 

"For all their pontificating and complex moral theories, ethicists are just as disappointingly flawed as the rest of humanity. A study of 417 professors published last week in Philosophical Psychology found that, though the 151 ethics professors expressed stricter moral views, they were no better at behaving ethically."

With Vaccine Misinformation, Libraries Walk a Fine Line; Undark, March 22, 2019

Jane Roberts, Undark; 

With Vaccine Misinformation, Libraries Walk a Fine Line

As vanguards of intellectual freedom, public libraries face difficult questions regarding what vaccine materials to make available. How to decide?

"The decision on what to make available to library patrons — and what not to — would seem perilous territory for America’s foundational repositories of ideas, though debates over library collections are not new. Still, in an era beset by “fake news” and other artifacts of the disinformation age, libraries (and librarians) may once again find themselves facing difficult choices. One of the core values of librarianship, said Andrea Jamison, a lecturer in library science at Valparaiso University in Indiana, is upholding the principles of intellectual freedom — which include challenging censorship. “We do want to make sure we are presenting information that is accurate,” Jamison said. “But then the question becomes, who becomes the determining factor?”"

The New Zealand Terror Attack Shows Our Ethics Lagging Way Behind Our Technology; Forbes, March 19, 2019

Todd Essig, Forbes;

The New Zealand Terror Attack Shows Our Ethics Lagging Way Behind Our Technology

"We are failing. Collectively. Some more than others. When white nationalist terrorism struck New Zealand, after similar strikes in Norway, Pittsburgh and Charleston, it showed how we are failing to meet a central challenge posed by our technologically hyper-connected world. Namely, the cultural consequences of rapidly advancing technology require an equally accelerated and psychologically-informed life-long ethical education. The more things change, well, the more things have to change. We all have to do better.

Hate speech takes root and sprouts violence in the fertile ground of, as Christian Picciolini describes in White American Youth: My Descent into America's Most Violent Hate Movement--and How I Got Out, someone searching for identity, community, and purpose. Simply put, the developed world is failing to provide good-enough experiences of “identity, community, and purpose" suitable for 21st-century techno-culture. 

The old ways for learning how to be a good, decent person no longer work, or don’t work well enough for enough people. Of course it's an incredibly complex issue. But one piece is that people are now paradoxically isolated at their screens at the same time they are globally connected everywhere with anyone they choose. This paradox creates a feeling of community but without the responsibilities of community. The complexity and consequence of being fully with another person is diminished. Opportunities for empathy shrink to a vanishing point. But empathy creates the friction we need to slow and maybe even stop hate. So hate grows."

Ethics, Computing, and AI: Perspectives from MIT; MIT News, March 18, 2019

MIT News;

Ethics, Computing, and AI: Perspectives from MIT

Faculty representing all five MIT schools offer views on the ethical and societal implications of new technologies.

"The MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing will reorient the Institute to bring the power of computing and AI to all fields at MIT; allow the future of computing and AI to be shaped by all MIT disciplines; and advance research and education in ethics and public policy to help ensure that new technologies benefit the greater good.

To support ongoing planning for the new college, Dean Melissa Nobles invited faculty from all five MIT schools to offer perspectives on the societal and ethical dimensions of emerging technologies. This series presents the resulting commentaries — practical, inspiring, concerned, and clear-eyed views from an optimistic community deeply engaged with issues that are among the most consequential of our time. 

The commentaries represent diverse branches of knowledge, but they sound some common themes, including: the vision of an MIT culture in which all of us are equipped and encouraged to discern the impact and ethical implications of our endeavors."

Educators Urge Parents And High Schools To Make Ethics The Heart Of College Applications; WBUR, On Point, March 18, 2019

WBUR, On Point;

Educators Urge Parents And High Schools To Make Ethics The Heart Of College Applications

 

"A new report is calling on parents and high schools to put ethical character at the center of college admissions.

The report, though long planned, comes out as the country is still reeling from revelations that wealthy parents bribed standardized test administrators, college coaches and at least one former college trustee to admit students who might not otherwise have been qualified...

The authors make several recommendations to parents:

1. Keep the focus on your teen. "It's critical for parents to disentangle their own wishes from their teen's wishes," the authors write.
2. Follow your ethical GPS. The authors advise parents not to let their own voice intrude in college essays, and to not look the other way when hired tutors are over-involved in applications.
3. Use the admissions process as an opportunity for ethical education.
4. Be authentic. The authors recommend not sending conflicting messages to their children about what kind of college they should try to get into.
5. Help your teen contribute to others in meaningful ways. "Service trips to distant countries or launching a new service project are ... not what matters to admissions deans," the authors say. They recommend parents focus on their children's authentic interests instead.
6. Advocate for elevating ethical character and reducing achievement-related distress.
7. Model and encourage gratitude."

Facebook's privacy meltdown after Cambridge Analytica is far from over; The Guardian, March 18, 2019

Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Guardian; Facebook's privacy meltdown after Cambridge Analytica is far from over

"Facebook might not be run by Bond villains. But it’s run by people who have little knowledge of or concern for democracy or the dignity of the company’s 2.3 billion users.

The privacy meltdown story should be about how one wealthy and powerful company gave our data without our permission to hundreds of companies with no transparency, oversight, or even concern about abuse. Fortunately, the story does not end with Cambridge Analytica. The United States government revealed on Wednesday that it had opened a criminal investigation into Facebook over just these practices."

Myspace loses all content uploaded before 2016; The Guardian, March 18, 2019

Alex Hern, The Guardian; Myspace loses all content uploaded before 2016 

Faulty server migration blamed for mass deletion of songs, photos and video

"Myspace, the once mighty social network, has lost every single piece of content uploaded to its site before 2016, including millions of songs, photos and videos with no other home on the internet.
 

The company is blaming a faulty server migration for the mass deletion, which appears to have happened more than a year ago, when the first reports appeared of users unable to access older content. The company has confirmed to online archivists that music has been lost permanently, dashing hopes that a backup could be used to permanently protect the collection for future generations...

Some have questioned how the embattled company, which was purchased by Time Inc in 2016, could make such a blunder."

'I can get any novel I want in 30 seconds': can book piracy be stopped?; The Guardian, March 6, 2019

Katy Guest, The Guardian;

'I can get any novel I want in 30 seconds': can book piracy be stopped?

"The UK government’s Intellectual Property Office estimates that 17% of ebooks are consumed illegally. Generally, pirates tend to be from better-off socioeconomic groups, and aged between 30 and 60. Many use social media to ask for tips when their regular piracy website is shut down; when I contacted some, those who responded always justified it by claiming they were too poor to buy books – then tell me they read them on their e-readers, smartphones or computer screens - or that their areas lacked libraries, or they found it hard to locate books in the countries where they lived. Some felt embarrassed. Others blamed greedy authors for trying to stop them.

When we asked Guardian readers to tell us about their experiences with piracy, we had more than 130 responses from readers aged between 20 and 70. Most regularly downloaded books illegally and while some felt guilty – more than one said they only pirated “big names” and when “the author isn’t on the breadline, think Lee Child” – the majority saw nothing wrong in the practice. “Reading an author’s work is a greater compliment than ignoring it,” said one, while others claimed it was part of a greater ethos of equality, that “culture should be free to all”."

The Marines don’t want you to see what happens when propaganda stops and combat begins; The Washngton Post, March 15, 2019

Alex Horton, The Washington Post; The Marines don’t want you to see what happens when propaganda stops and combat begins

"Lagoze found himself in a murky gray area of free speech and fair-use government products. U.S. citizens can already go on Pentagon-operated sites and download free military photos and video.Their tax dollars fund it, and federal government creations are not protected by copyright.

So could Lagoze take the moments he filmed with government resources and make something new?

He worked with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University to push back against the military’s claims of impropriety. The Marine Corps relented this month."

The costs of failing to immunize children are staggering. Just ask one young boy in Oregon.; The Washington Post, March 15, 2019

Editorial Board, The Washington Post;

The costs of failing to immunize children are staggering. Just ask one young boy in Oregon.

"The argument that states should permit only narrowly defined religious objections to vaccination hinges on the idea of herd immunity, which prevents contagious diseases from spreading if a high enough proportion of a community is vaccinated. This is why vaccination requirements are linked to a child’s ability to attend school. Parents’ right to choose what happens to their own children is outweighed by the state’s interest in protecting all children.

Tetanus, while not itself infectious, is included in vaccination requirements because the shot immunizing against it also protects recipients from whooping cough and diphtheria. But the Oregon case is a reminder that the vaccination controversy is not only about whether parents have a right to endanger other people’s children. It is also about whether they have a right to endanger their own. The six-figure cost in Oregon is startling enough. The cost to the 6-year-old boy, who could barely walk when he was transferred out of the ICU, is tremendous...

Parents have substantial leeway to weigh risk as they see fit — but when does a parent’s right to be irresponsible run up against a child’s right not to contract a life-threatening illness?"

Department of Defense discusses the ethics of AI use at Carnegie Mellon; Pittsburgh Business Times, March 15, 2019

Julia Mericle, Pittsburgh Business Times;

Department of Defense discusses the ethics of AI use at Carnegie Mellon

"As artificial intelligence looms closer and closer to inevitable integration into nearly every aspect of national security, the U.S. Department of Defense tasked the Defense Innovation Board with drafting a set of guiding principles for the ethical use of AI in such cases. 

That DIB wants to know what the public thinks.

The DIB’s subcommittee on science and technology hosted a public listening session Thursday at Carnegie Mellon University focused on “The Ethical and Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence for the Department of Defense.” 

It’s one of three DIB listening sessions scheduled for across the U.S. to collect public thoughts and concerns. Using the ideas collected, the DIB will put together its guidelines in the coming months and announce a full recommendation for the DoD later this year."

Review: 'The Inventor' is a coolly appalling portrait of Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos scandal; The Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2019

Justin Chang, The Los Angeles Times;

Review: 'The Inventor' is a coolly appalling portrait of Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos scandal

"As a quick glance at this week’s headlines will remind you — a staggering college admissions scandal, a wave of indictments in the cases of Paul Manafort and Jussie Smollett — we are living in deeply fraudulent times. But if there are few people or institutions worthy of our trust anymore, perhaps we can still trust that, eventually, Alex Gibney will get around to making sense of it all. Over the course of his unflagging, indispensable career he has churned out documentaries on Scientology and Enron, Lance Armstrong and Casino Jack — individual case studies in a rich and fascinating investigation of the American hustler at work.

 

Gibney approaches his subjects with the air of an appalled moralist and, increasingly, a grudging connoisseur. His clean, straightforward style, which usually combines smart talking heads, slick graphics and reams of meticulous data, is clearly galvanized by these charismatic individuals, who are pathological in their dishonesty and riveting in their chutzpah. And he is equally fascinated by the reactions, ranging from unquestioning belief to conflicted loyalty, that they foster among their followers and associates, who in many cases shielded them, at least for a while, from public discovery and censure.

 

“The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” Gibney’s latest exercise in coolly measured outrage, is an engrossing companion piece to his other works in this vein. The subject of this HBO documentary is Elizabeth Holmes, the self-styled biotech visionary who dropped out of Stanford at age 19 and founded a company called Theranos, which promised to bring about a revolution in preventive medicine and personal healthcare. Its top-secret weapon was a compact machine called the Edison, which could purportedly run more than 200 individual tests from just a few drops of blood, obtained with just a prick of the finger.

 

Holmes’ vision of a brave new world — one in which anyone could stop by Walgreens and obtain a comprehensive, potentially life-saving snapshot of their health — proved tantalizing enough to raise more than $400 million and earned her a reputation as possibly the greatest inventor since, well, Thomas Edison. Her investors included Betsy DeVos, Rupert Murdoch and the Waltons; Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and James Mattis sat on her board of directors. But that was all before the Wall Street Journal’s John Carreyrou and other investigative journalists exposed glaring faults in the Edison’s design and sent the company’s $10-billion valuation spiraling down to nothing. Theranos dissolved in 2018, and Holmes and former company president Sunny Balwani were charged with conspiracy and fraud.

 

Full disclosure: As the son of a retired medical technologist who spent more than 30 years testing blood the traditional way, I approached “The Inventor” with great fascination and more than a little schadenfreude. The movie, for its part, seems both magnetized and repelled by its subject, a reaction that it will likely share with its audience. Gibney is perhaps overly fond of deploying intense, lingering close-ups of Holmes’ face and peering deep into her unnerving blue eyes (“She didn’t blink,” a former employee recalls). If the eyes are the windows to the soul, “The Inventor” just keeps looking and looking, as though uncertain whether or not its subject has one."

I Almost Died Riding an E-Scooter Like 99 percent of users, I wasn’t wearing a helmet.; Slate, March 14, 2019

Rachel Withers, Slate;

I Almost Died Riding an E-Scooter

Like 99 percent of users, I wasn’t wearing a helmet.

"I’ve been rather flippant with friends about what happened because it’s the only way I know how to deal. It’s laughable that you’d get seriously injured scooting. But this isn’t particularly funny. People are always going to be idiots, yes, but idiot people are currently getting seriously injured, in ways that might have been prevented, because tech companies flippantly dumped their product all over cities, without an adequate helmet solution. Facebook’s “move fast and break things” mantra can be applied to many tech companies, but in the case of e-scooters, it might just be “move fast and break skulls.”"

Where is William H. Macy in the college admissions scandal?; The Washington Post, March 14, 2019

Monica Hesse, The Washington Post;

Where is William H. Macy in the college admissions scandal?

"The most vomitous line in the whole indictment comes from a dad — New York attorney Gordon Caplan — who tells a witness on the phone, “To be honest, I’m not worried about the moral issue.”"

A price to be paid for open-access academic publishing; The Guardian, March 13, 2019

Letters, The Guardian; A price to be paid for open-access academic publishing

"The headlong rush towards further adoption of open-access models demands careful thought, says Prof Sarah Kember. Elsevier is a strong supporter of open access, says its vice-president of global policy, Gemma Hersh. The UK has moved further and faster than any other major research funding country, says Stephen Lotinga. It is difficult to find good (unpaid) reviewers for every article in scientific journals, says John Boardman"

The Guardian view on academic publishing: disastrous capitalism Editorial; March 4, 2019

The Guardian; The Guardian view on academic publishing: disastrous capitalism  

Editorial

"In California the state university system has been paying $11m (£8.3m) a year for access to Elsevier journals, but it has just announced that it won’t be renewing these subscriptions. In Britain and Europe the move towards open access publishing has been driven by funding bodies. In some ways it has been very successful. More than half of all British scientific research is now published under open access terms: either freely available from the moment of publication, or paywalled for a year or more so that the publishers can make a profit before being placed on general release.

Yet, somehow, the new system has not yet worked out any cheaper for the universities. Publishers have responded to the demand that they make their product free to readers by charging their writers fees to cover the costs of preparing an article. These range from around £500 to $5,000, and apparently the work gets more expensive the more that publishers do it. A report last year from Professor Adam Tickell pointed out that the costs both of subscriptions and of these “article preparation costs” has been steadily rising at a rate above inflation ever since the UK’s open access policy was adopted in 2012. In some ways the scientific publishing model resembles the economy of the social internet: labour is provided free in exchange for the hope of status, while huge profits are made by a few big firms who run the market places. In both cases, we need a rebalancing of power."
 

One of Silicon Valley’s most prominent voices for ethical investing is implicated in a college admissions bribery scandal; Recode, March 12, 2019

Theodore Schleifer, Recode; One of Silicon Valley’s most prominent voices for ethical investing is implicated in a college admissions bribery scandal

"What is particularly damaging for TPG is that McGlashan has positioned himself as a leading voice in Silicon Valley for social responsibility...

McGlashan also allegedly made a $250,000 donation to USC in order for his son to enter through the school’s “side door,” according to the charges, by creating the impression that he was a potential recruited kicker or punter for the school’s football team — all thanks to Photoshop. This was all accomplished through mail fraud, prosecutors say.

“I’m gonna make him a kicker/punter and they’re gonna walk him through with football, and I’ll get a picture and figure out how to Photoshop,” William Rick Singer, the college prep adviser at the heart of the scandal, allegedly told McGlashan in August 2018.

“He does have really strong legs,” McGlashan told Singer. “Maybe he’ll become a kicker. You never know.”

“Pretty funny,” McGlashan would later add. “The way the world works these days is unbelievable.”"

Famed Investor Named In Elite College Scandal, Raising Critical Ethics Questions for All; Forbes, March 13, 2019

Morgan Simon, Forbes; Famed Investor Named In Elite College Scandal, Raising Critical Ethics Questions for All

"Yesterday, William E. “Bill” McGlashan Jr., Founder and Managing Partner of the $13B TPG Growth fund, was indicted in the elite college scandal. He was particularly noted for his candor in recorded phone calls about his efforts to buy a slot at USC for his child for $250,000. The tactic, employed by ringleader William Singer, was to photoshop McGlashan’s son to look like a recruitment-worthy football kicker — despite the fact that his son’s high school did not have a football team.

McGlashan has recently gained notoriety as a proponent of impact investing. The Rise Fund, an initiative he co-founded under the TPG umbrella, has raised over $2B for interventions seeking to address global poverty and climate change.

The fact that McGlashan was a proponent of ethical investment has raised several deep questions for the sector, and for the general public. Does exercising your unchecked privilege in the world make you less ethical - separate from whether or not your actions are illegal? Should promoters of ethical investments be held to a higher standard when it comes to their personal ethics? Do you need to have impeccable ethics to be a good impact investor?...

Ethics is also about acknowledging the ways that those of us with privilege — whether it be due to social class, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, or the intersections between — can be complicit in exploiting others through fully legal means."

Top Universities Join to Push ‘Public Interest Technology’; The New York Times, March 11, 2019

Natasha Singer, The New York Times;

Top Universities Join to Push ‘Public Interest Technology’

"As technology becomes increasingly pervasive in American life, universities across the United States have been devising ways to teach students how to grapple with the consequences on society.

Now, 21 leading universities are banding together to promote their various programs. On Monday, the schools announced that they had formed a new organization called the Public Interest Technology University Network.

Members of the group include Arizona State University, the City University of New York, Harvard University, Howard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. Their goal is to train the next generation of software engineers, policymakers, civic leaders and social justice advocates to develop, regulate and use technology for the public good.

In other words, the group aims to both humanize technologists and technologize humanists.

“We think about two halves of the pipeline,” said Alexandra Givens, executive director of the Institute for Technology Law and Policy at Georgetown Law School. “One is helping technologists think about the social, ethical, legal and policy implications of their work.”

 

The other, she said, is helping students interested in law, government and nonprofit careers to learn computational and technology skills to serve the public."

Mark Zuckerberg And The Tech World Still Do Not Understand Ethics; Forbes, March 11, 2019

Derek Lidow, Forbes;

Mark Zuckerberg And The Tech World Still Do Not Understand Ethics

 

"Why the widespread blindness to the ethical and social dangers of tech startups specifically? Here are five of the principal causes: 

Tech startups see themselves as saviors of the world...

Complex technology and tech business models deflect investor due diligence...

Expectations for technology startups encourage expedient, not ethical, decision making...

We’ve fetishized disruption...

Tech promises founders and investors vast—vast—amounts of money."  

Colleges Build Network for Ethical Tech; Inside Higher Ed, March 12, 2019

Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed;

Colleges Build Network for Ethical Tech

"Twenty-one U.S. colleges and universities are working together to train a new generation of civic-minded technologists and tech-savvy policy makers.

The Public Interest Technology University Network, announced yesterday, is supported by the Ford Foundation, New America and the Hewlett Foundation. (Read an opinion piece by the leaders of these organizations about the new network today.)

The network will support curriculum development and faculty hiring in the nascent field of public interest technology. It will also explore how to support graduates who pursue careers in this field and create new internships and fellowships."

The college admissions scam is the perfect scandal in the golden age of grifters; The Washington Post, March 13, 2019

Gabrielle Bluestone, The Washington Post;

The college admissions scam is the perfect scandal in the golden age of grifters

"Gabrielle Bluestone was executive producer of the documentary “Fyre.”...

Like the Fyre Festival disaster, the Varsity Blues scam is shocking because of an apparent disconnect: In both cases, ambitious people went to extraordinary lengths to create the appearance of success and, along the way, lost track of the substance.

The Fyre Festival’s Billy McFarland used a promotional video full of Instagram models and a savvy social media rollout strategy to convince prospective ticket buyers that he had a private island set up to offer an outrageously luxurious music festival experience. The Varsity Blues families allegedly used cruder methods, including Photoshopped pictures of kids participating in sports they didn’t play and faked “athletic résumés," and then backing up their fictions with outrageous sums of cash."

In These Divided Times, Is Civility Under Siege?; NPR, March 12, 2019

Leila Fadel, NPR;

In These Divided Times, Is Civility Under Siege?

"The calls for civility can feel like an effort to stifle people's outrage over injustice or hate, because civility can be a tool to build or a weapon to silence.

"To what purpose is civility going to be used? Is it going to be more inclusive?" Itagaki asks. "Is it going to mean that you're bringing more people's voices into the political debates, or are you using civility as a way to go back to the old hierarchies and the status quo since the founding of the American republic, where you only had white male propertied free landowners who were able to vote?"

So for some, now is a time to take a step back and be civil to each other. For others, it's imperative to be uncivil in a way that has led to social justice in the past."