ANDREW PEREZ, NIKKI MCCANN RAMIREZ , Rolling Stone; ‘BREACH OF PROTOCOL’: SENATORS STILL DON’T HAVE ETHICS FILINGS FROM TRUMP NOMINEES
"Confirmation hearings for a slew of Donald Trump’s picks for his Cabinet and other high-ranking positions are scheduled to begin this week. Senate committees still have not received vetting materials for several nominees, and many of their financial disclosures and ethics disclosures have not yet been made public."
Buzz McClain, George Mason University; New Course Creates Ethical Leaders for an AI-Driven Future
"While the debates continue over artificial intelligence’s possible impacts on privacy, economics, education, and job displacement, perhaps the largest question regards the ethics of AI. Bias, accountability, transparency, and governance of the powerful technology are aspects that have yet to be fully answered.
A new cross-disciplinary course at George Mason University is designed to prepare students to tackle the ethical, societal, and governance challenges presented by AI. The course, AI: Ethics, Policy, and Society, will draw expertise from the Schar School of Policy and Government, the College of Engineering and Computing(CEC), and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS).
The master’s degree-level course begins in spring 2025 and will be taught by Jesse Kirkpatrick, a research associate professor in the CEC, the Department of Philosophy, and codirector of the Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center.
The course is important now, said Kirkpatrick, because “artificial intelligence is transforming industries, reshaping societal norms, and challenging long-standing ethical frameworks. This course provides critical insights into the ethical, societal, and policy implications of AI at a time when these technologies are increasingly deployed in areas like healthcare, criminal justice, and national defense.”"
Anne Ford, American Libraries; Stolen Pages: On the 20th anniversary of a confounding crime
"Less than two months after the robbery, Allen, Borsuk, Lipka, and Reinhard were arrested and the stolen items recovered undamaged. All four robbers confessed. All pled guilty to six federal charges, among them conspiracy to commit robbery, aiding and abetting the theft of objects of cultural heritage, and interstate transportation of stolen property.
“BJ Gooch’s ordeal had become a cause célèbre among librarians, many of whom wrote letters to the judge arguing against leniency,” wrote Falk in the Vanity Fair article about the case. In the end, Allen, Borsuk, Lipka, and Reinhard each received a sentence of seven years and three months in federal prison with no possibility of parole.
Annabel Keenan , The Art Newspaper; A new study seeks to establish ethical collecting practices for US museums
"As calls for the restitution of looted objects spread across the industry, the Penn Cultural Heritage Center (PennCHC) at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia is launching a study that will examine collecting policies and practices at US museums and encourage transparency and accountability in the sector. Launching today (29 October), the “Museums: Missions and Acquisitions Project” (dubbed M2A Project for short) will study over 450 museum collections to identify current standards and establish a framework for institutions to model their future practices...
The PennCHC has been supporting ethical collecting since its founding in 2008, including working closely with local communities in countries around the world to identify and preserve their cultural heritage. “US museums have historically acquired objects that were removed from these countries illegally or through pathways now considered inequitable,” says Richard M. Leventhal, the executive director of the PennCHC and co-principal investigator for the M2A Project. “The M2A Project is asking a very simple set of questions about these types of objects: Are US museums still acquiring them? And if so, why? Recent seizures of looted property and calls to decolonise collections force us to reconsider whether acquisitions best serve the missions of museums and the interests of their communities.”
The M2A Project evolved from the PennCHC’s Cultural Property Experts on Call Program that launched in 2020 in partnership with the US Department of State’s Cultural Heritage Coordinating Committee to protect at-risk cultural property against theft, looting and trafficking. Through this programme, the PennCHC collaborated with more than 100 museums and universities to study and document the trade in illicit artefacts."
Chris Hughes, The New York Times; Why Do People Like Elon Musk Love Donald Trump? It’s Not Just About Money.
"Mr. Trump appeals to some Silicon Valley elites because they identify with the man. To them, he is a fellow victim of the state, unjustly persecuted for his bold ideas. Practically, he is also the shield they need to escape accountability. Mr. Trump may threaten democratic norms and spread disinformation; he could even set off a recession, but he won’t challenge their ability to build the technology they like, no matter the social cost...
As much as they want to influence Mr. Trump’s policies, they also want to strike back at the Biden-Harris administration, which they believe has unfairly targeted their industry.
More than any other administration in the internet era, President Biden and Ms. Harris have pushed tech companies toward serving the public interest...
Last year, Mr. Andreessen, whose venture capital firm is heavily invested in crypto, wrote a widely discussed “manifesto” claiming that enemy voices of “bureaucracy, vetocracy, gerontocracy” are opposed to the “pursuit of technology, abundance and life.” In a barely concealed critique of the Biden-Harris administration, he argued that those who believe in carefully assessing the impact of new technologies before adopting them are “deeply immoral.”
Fox News Radio; Tristan Harris & Aza Raskin: We Need Laws Where Companies Are Held Accountable For Harms Created By A.I.
"Tristan Harris & Aza Raskin, co-founders of the Center for Humane Technology, joined Brian Kilmeade Show to discuss the dangers of A.I. Tristian and Aza spoke about the mental health risks of A.I. on children. Raskin and Harris compared A.I. to a little kid who after being birthed causes havoc. Harris and Raskin believe that there needs to be laws holding companies accountable for any harms that are created by A.I. the way parents are held accountable when their child causes problems. Aza and Tristan also spoke about how the fundamental uncomfortable truth of AI is that the promise of AI and the peril of AI cannot be separated. Adding, the same technology that allows us to edit our family photos and develop new antibiotics also enables deep fake nudes of teen girls and can create super pandemics"
Joe Biden , The Washington Post; Joe Biden: My plan to reform the Supreme Court and ensure no president is above the law
"That’s why — in the face of increasing threats to America’s democratic institutions — I am calling for three bold reforms to restore trust and accountability to the court and our democracy.
First, I am calling for a constitutional amendment called the No One Is Above the Law Amendment. It would make clear that there is noimmunity for crimes a former president committed while in office. I share our Founders’ belief that the president’s power is limited, not absolute. We are a nation of laws — not of kings or dictators.
Second, we have had term limits for presidents for nearly 75 years. We should have the same for Supreme Court justices. The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court. Term limits would help ensure that the court’s membership changes with some regularity. That would make timing for court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary. It would reduce the chance that any single presidency radically alters the makeup of the court for generations to come. I support a system in which the president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court.
Third, I’m calling for a binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court. This is common sense. The court’s current voluntary ethics code is weak and self-enforced. Justices should be required to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest. Every other federal judge is bound by an enforceable code of conduct, and there is no reason for the Supreme Court to be exempt.
All three of these reforms are supported by a majority of Americans — as well as conservative and liberal constitutional scholars. And I want to thank the bipartisan Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States for its insightful analysis, which informed some of these proposals.
We can and must prevent the abuse of presidential power. We can and must restore the public’s faith in the Supreme Court. We can and must strengthen the guardrails of democracy.
In America, no one is above the law. In America, the people rule."
Ruth Marcus, The Washington Post; God save us from this dishonorable court
"Smith’s office is now consigned to assess the tatters in which the court’s ruling has left its prosecution and determine, like a homeowner after a tornado has touched down, what can be salvaged.
The country is now left to worry about whether Trump will ever be held accountable — and about the implications of the court’s ruling for future presidents, including, most chillingly, Trump himself.
As Jackson wrote in a separate dissent, “Having now cast the shadow of doubt over when — if ever — a former President will be subject to criminal liability for any criminal conduct he engages in while on duty, the majority incentivizes all future Presidents to cross the line of criminality while in office, knowing that unless they act ‘manifestly or palpably beyond [their] authority,’ they will be presumed above prosecution and punishment alike.”
Sotomayor was similarly apocalyptic. “With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” she closed her dissent. Both Sotomayor and Jackson abandoned the customary “respectfully” — for good reason.
God knows what a reelected Trump would do in a second term. God save us from this dishonorable court."
Ryan Tarinelli, The Roll Call; Historians, legal experts express dismay at Trump immunity ruling
"Historians and legal experts warned Monday that the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling opens the door to dangerous abuses of power and strikes against foundational American principles of accountability under the law...
Presidential historian and author Michael Beschloss was among those who referred to the idea that the decision cut against the intent of the nation’s founders.
“Thanks to Supreme Court today, Presidents in future will have access to far more unaccountable power than they ever have had in American history,” Beschloss posted on social media. “Founders wanted a President, not a King.”...
Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor who ran unsuccessfully in the GOP 2024 presidential primary, said the Supreme Court gave presidents greater control of the Justice Department. That’s because, Hutchinson argued, the decision says an “official act” that gets immunity includes threatening to fire the attorney general if he does not take an action.
“I can only imagine how this may be abused,” Hutchinson tweeted...
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., issued a statement that the ruling “makes perfect sense to me” because core constitutional authorities must come with absolute immunity and other official acts will be determined by factual analysis.
“The Supreme Court’s dissent in this case is foolish in every way, particularly Justice Sotomayor and Justice Jackson’s argument that this decision allows a president to assassinate their opponent,” Graham said. “The liberal members of the Court and the Left have lost their minds when it comes to President Trump.”...
A White House official responded to the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision by noting Biden has said “nobody is above the law.”
“That is a core American principle and how our system of justice works,” spokesman Ian Sams said in an email. “We need leaders like President Biden who respect the justice system and don’t tear it down.”"
Vivek H. Murthy, The New York Times; Surgeon General: Why I’m Calling for a Warning Label on Social Media Platforms
"It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents. A surgeon general’s warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe. Evidence from tobacco studies show that warning labels can increase awareness and change behavior. When asked if a warning from the surgeon general would prompt them to limit or monitor their children’s social media use, 76 percent of people in one recent survey of Latino parents said yes...
It’s no wonder that when it comes to managing social media for their kids, so many parents are feeling stress and anxiety — and even shame.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Faced with high levels of car-accident-related deaths in the mid- to late 20th century, lawmakers successfully demanded seatbelts, airbags, crash testing and a host of other measures that ultimately made cars safer. This January the F.A.A. grounded about 170 planes when a door plug came off one Boeing 737 Max 9 while the plane was in the air. And the following month, a massive recall of dairy products was conducted because of a listeria contamination that claimed two lives.
Why is it that we have failed to respond to the harms of social media when they are no less urgent or widespread than those posed by unsafe cars, planes or food? These harms are not a failure of willpower and parenting; they are the consequence of unleashing powerful technology without adequate safety measures, transparency or accountability."
Deepa Shivaram, NPR; Why G7 leaders are turning to a special guest — Pope Francis — for advice on AI
"Pope Francis himself has been at the receiving end of AI misinformation. Last year, a picture of the pope wearing a large white puffer coat went viral. The image was generated by AI, and it prompted conversations on deepfakes and the spread of disinformation through AI technology.
In his annual message on New Year's Day this year, the pope focused on how AI can be used for peace.
His work on the issue goes back several years, when the Vatican and tech companies like Microsoft started working together to create a set of principles known as the Rome Call for AI Ethics, published in 2020. Companies and governments that sign on to the call have agreed to voluntary commitments aimed at promoting transparency and accountability in AI development."
Erik Ortiz, NBC News; Alex Jones lashes out after agreeing to sell assets to pay legal debt to Sandy Hook families
"Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families, said their fight is far from over.
“Alex Jones has hurt so many people,” Mattei said in a statement. “The Connecticut families have fought for years to hold him responsible no matter the cost and at great personal peril. Their steadfast focus on meaningful accountability, and not just money, is what has now brought him to the brink of justice in the way that matters most.”
Jones had previously sought a bankruptcy settlement with the families, but that was rejected.
In the wake of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which a gunman killed 20 children and six adults, Jones repeatedly suggested the massacre was a hoax. At his trial in Texas in 2022, he generally blamed “corporate media” for twisting his words and misportraying him, but did not specify how."
"“Big Tech has played this game really successfully in the past decade,” said Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor who previously founded Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society without raising money outside the university. “The number of academics who have been paid by Facebook alone is extraordinary.”
Most tech-focused academics say their work is not influenced by the companies, and the journals that publish their studies have ethics rules designed to ward off egregious interference. But in interviews, two dozen professors said that by controlling funding and access to data, tech companies wield “soft power,” slowing down research, sparking tension between academics and their institutions, and shifting the fields’ targets in small — but potentially transformative — ways...
Harvard’s Lessig, who spent years heading a center on ethics issues in society at the university, is developing a system for academics to verify that their research is truly independent. He hopes to present the initiative, the Academic Integrity Project, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He is still looking for funding."
Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, The Washington Post ; Jan. 6 shattered her family. Now they’re trying to forgive.
"After rioters stormed the Capitol, relatives and friends who disagreed with their actions faced a difficult choice: Should they turn their loved ones over to authorities? Could they continue to have relationships with people accused of trying to interfere with the peaceful transition of power?"
Gretchen Cuda Kroen, cleveland.com; Who owns your cells? Legacy of Henrietta Lacks raises ethical questions about profits from medical research
"While the legal victory may have given the family some closure, it has raised concerns for bioethicists in Cleveland and elsewhere.
The case raises important questions about owning one’s own body; whether individuals are entitled to a share of the profits from medical discoveries derived from research on their own cells, organs and genetic material.
But it also offers a tremendous opportunity to not only acknowledge the ethical failures of the past and the seeds of mistrust they have sown, but to guide society toward building better, more trustworthy medical institutions, said Aaron Goldenberg, who directs the Bioethics Center for Community Health and Genomic Equity (CHANGE) at Case Western Reserve University."
David Ignatius, The Washington Post; Why is AMLO worried about an outsider? She’s funny, profane — and inspiring.
"“Beware of what is happening in Mexico,” Gálvez warns me at the end of our conversation. “Our president is capable of anything. He has no limits.”
A chilling example of what frightens many Mexicans about López Obrador happened last Wednesday morning at the president’s office, a few miles from where I was talking to Gálvez.
At his regular morning news conference that day, reporters asked López Obrador about five young men from Jalisco who had disappeared a few days before. A horrific video had just surfaced that showed the five, friends since childhood, their bodies battered and bloody, with their mouths taped shut and their hands tied behind their backs. One victim was forced to bludgeon another with a brick and then decapitate him, before he was killed himself. Investigators later recovered their badly burned bodies. The governor of Jalisco said the murders were “clearly linked to organized crime.”
And what did the president say when reporters asked him to comment on this appalling crime? “Can’t hear,” said López Obrador, cupping his hand to his ear. He then told a crude joke about a poor Mexican man who pretended he couldn’t hear a question. And then he smiled and walked offstage."
Jeremy W. Peters , The New York Times; Report on Anti-Gay Slur Could Put Local News Site Out of Business
"Some First Amendment advocates said the playbook was relatively easy to replicate: A public official unhappy with the coverage sues, creating crushing costs for an outlet."
Eileen Yu, ZDNet ; AI ethics toolkit updated to include more assessment components
"A software toolkit has been updated to help financial institutions cover more areas in evaluating their "responsible" use of artificial intelligence (AI).
First launched in February last year, the assessment toolkit focuses on four key principles around fairness, ethics, accountability, and transparency -- collectively called FEAT. It offers a checklist and methodologies for businesses in the financial sector to define the objectives of their AI and data analytics use and identify potential bias.
The toolkit was developed by a consortium led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) that compromises 31 industry players, including Bank of China, BNY Mellon, Google Cloud, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Visa, OCBC Bank, Amazon Web Services, IBM, and Citibank."
Stephen I. Vladeck, The New York Times ; Supreme Court Justices Don’t Like Being Criticized in Public, Which Is a Good Reason to Keep Doing It
"We will all disagree as to whether public criticism of the court in specific contexts is fair. But what can’t be denied is that public pressure on the court has been, both historically and recently, a meaningful check on the institution’s excesses — and an essential means by which the public is able to hold unelected and otherwise unaccountable judges and justices to account.
In the case of the shadow docket, it has led the court to tamp down its aggressiveness and try to provide more explanations for its less justified interventions. In the hotly debated case of ethics reform going on now, all nine justices have already publicly committed to following at least broad ethical norms. The court can go further, and it can (and should) adopt formal internal mechanisms to enforce whatever rules the justices agree to bind themselves to — much in the way that internal inspectors general hold both the executive and legislative branches to account.
The point is not that any one set of reforms is a magic bullet. Rather, it is that a court whose legitimacy depends at least to some degree on public support is not, should not be and never has been immune to criticism and pressure from the same public."
Jason Willick, The Washington Post ; Why Supreme Court ‘ethics’ legislation would do more harm than good
"Lower courts have a formal process for fielding complaints of judicial misconduct, because lower-court judges can be censured or temporarily suspended from cases by panels of fellow judges. The Supreme Court is different — it does not, by definition, answer to other courts, so any code of conduct would be unenforceable within the judicial branch. Accountability at the highest levels of the executive and judicial branches must come from the political process: impeachment. By installing a permanent investigative bureaucracy to scrutinize the Supreme Court, the Senate legislation would warp constitutional lines of authority."
