Elliad Dagan, American Bar Association (ABA) ; Much Abuzz About Drones: Drones and Forest Management
"Despite these on-paper benefits, widespread use of drones in forest management might bring myriad new issues. For example, access to previously inaccessible areas will provide more complete data, but it will also disturb what little habitat has managed to avoid human interference. "
David Marchese , The New York Times Magazine; Stephen Fry Would Like to Remind You That You Have No Free Will
"You said earlier you’ve been reading philosophy. Is there a particular idea that you’re tickled by lately? I suppose the real biggie is free will. I find it interesting that no one really talks about it: I would say that 98 percent of all philosophers would agree with me that essentially free will is a myth. It doesn’t exist. That ought to be shocking news on the front of every newspaper. I’m not saying we don’t look both ways before we cross the road; we decide not to leave it to luck as to whether a car is going to hit us. Nor am I saying that we don’t have responsibility for our actions: We have agency over the body in which our minds and consciousness dwell. But we can’t choose our brains, we can’t choose our genes, we can’t choose our parents. There’s so much. I mean, look at the acts of a sociopath, which are performed with absolute will in the sense that he means to do what he’s doing, but he’s doing it because he has desires and impulses which he didn’t choose to have. Nobody elects to be a sociopath. The difference between us and them is one of degree. That certainly interests me. But, generally speaking, I suppose ethics is the most interesting. You do wonder if there are enough people in the world thinking about the consequences of A.I. and technology...
What’s so interesting now is that in 20 or 30 years, we will be in exactly the same ethical positions as Prometheus and Zeus. We will say, “A.I. has reached this event horizon, this transformative moment in which it becomes self-conscious.” Will we then say we have to turn those machines off — be like Zeus — and not give A.I. fire? Or some will be like Prometheus. They will say, “Give A.I. fire; it would be fantastic to watch these creatures have their own will.""
David Smith, The Guardian; Dominion: will one Canadian company bring down Trump's empire of disinformation?
"“Libel laws may prove to be a very old mechanism to deal with a very new phenomenon of massive disinformation,” said Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist. “We have all these fact checkers but lots of people don’t care. Nothing else seems to work, so maybe this will.”...
Eisen, a former White House “ethics czar”, suggests that the Dominion case could provide at least one model for dealing with the war on truth.
“The United States and the world need to deal with disinformation,” he said.
“There can be no doubt that every method is going to be required but certainly libel law provides one very important vehicle for establishing consequences and while there’s no such thing as a guarantee when you go to court, this is an exceptionally high risk for Fox with a large price tag attached as well.”...
RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor at the University of Utah, told the Washington Post: “We are seeing the way that libel has become a real battleground in the fight against disinformation."
"The ethical commandments on the digital manipulation of photographs in journalism are simple and direct: you do not add or subtract any element of an image in post processing. Ever. If a photo didn’t turn out exactly how you had imagined, there is no laptop digital do-over. These standards are accepted by the major international wire services and most newspapers in the United States. On Wednesday, The Associated Press announced that it had severed its relationship with Narciso Contreras, a Pulitzer prize-winning freelance photographer who has covered the Syrian war extensively. The cause was a single image in which the photographer digitally removed a video camera from a corner of the frame. This type of ethical lapse happens with alarming frequency despite the clarity of the rules and the severe consequences that have befallen transgressors... But unlike previous occurrences in which the violation was discovered by readers, bloggers or other photographers, this week’s case had a twist: Mr. Contreras — facing a moral dilemma and knowing the consequences — turned himself in... By his reckoning, it would have been worse to have kept silent. “What would happen if I said nothing to them — if the picture was ever moved more widely it could bring more serious consequences,” he said. “It would put in doubt the credibility of me who shot the picture and A.P. who was distributing the picture.” “It has serious consequences — but it’s for me,” he said. “I broke up my working relationship with A.P., but I was able to bring to light a mistake that I did.”
