LANA COHEN, Portland Press Herald; USM tapped to develop ethics training in age of artificial intelligence
"Thompson and other researchers at the Portland-based regulatory training and ethics center hope to better understand what is behind individuals’ tendencies to cut corners ethically and use that information to create training programs for businesses, nonprofits and colleges – including those in the UMaine System – that could help prevent cheating or other unethical conduct in research."
Winston Cho, The Hollywood Reporter ; Scraping or Stealing? A Legal Reckoning Over AI Looms
"Engineers build AI art generators by feeding AI systems, known as large language models, voluminous databases of images downloaded from the internet without licenses. The artists’ suit revolves around the argument that the practice of feeding these systems copyrighted works constitutes intellectual property theft. A finding of infringement in the case may upend how most AI systems are built in the absence of regulation placing guardrails around the industry. If the AI firms are found to have infringed on any copyrights, they may be forced to destroy datasets that have been trained on copyrighted works. They also face stiff penalties of up to $150,000 for each infringement.
AI companies maintain that their conduct is protected by fair use, which allows for the utilization of copyrighted works without permission as long as that use is transformative. The doctrine permits unlicensed use of copyrighted works under limited circumstances. The factors that determine whether a work qualifies include the purpose of the use, the degree of similarity, and the impact of the derivative work on the market for the original. Central to the artists’ case is winning the argument that the AI systems don’t create works of “transformative use,” defined as when the purpose of the copyrighted work is altered to create something with a new meaning or message."
Zenaida Gonzalez Kotala, University of Central Florida ; NASA Administrator and Panel of 7 Astronauts Talk Leadership and Ethics
"It will take more than astronauts, engineers, and scientist to live in space. It will take clothes designers, food managers, communicators, artists, and a lot more.
That was one of the messages NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and several fellow former astronauts delivered Friday during a 90-minute presentation about leadership and ethics at the Plaza Live near downtown Orlando.
About 50 students from the University of Central Florida joined others from Bethune-Cookman, UF, USF and several local high schools for the free panel discussion, which was part of the Nelson Initiative on Ethics and Leadership based at the University of Florida. Nelson, a former U.S. Senator who flew on a space shuttle mission in 1986, moderated the discussion. The speakers included:
The speakers talked about what it takes to be a leader, the courage needed to do the right thing and the many challenges they faced. For example, Bowden who is African American, couldn’t get any of his state representatives to appoint him to the Naval Academy. He eventually became an astronaut. Gibson first became a surgeon because the astronaut program was closed to women until the late 70s. She was among the first six women to join the NASA corp.
“Don’t listen to people who say you can’t do something,” Bolden said at the event. “You will always find people who don’t like you for one reason or another. Don’t waste your time explaining why you are there. Just do your job.”
Bolden also said people need to think about space in broader terms, as in STEAM, not just STEM.
“Of all the 18,000 people at NASA a very, very small percentage are engineers, scientists and payload specialists,” he said. “It takes everyone in a lot of different roles.”
All the astronauts encouraged students to pursue their passion and to be leaders in their own lives.
Weatherbee said the best leaders in extreme industries share three traits, which can be adopted into any field. These leaders have an intense commitment to a mission. They care about their people as people, not for what they can give the mission, but because you are interested in their individual success. And lastly, leaders are highly competent in their technical field and know how to communicate."
Emma Roth, The Verge; Two members of Google’s Ethical AI group leave to join Timnit Gebru’s nonprofit
"Two members of Google’s Ethical AI group have announced their departures from the company, according to a report from Bloomberg. Senior researcher Alex Hanna, and software engineer Dylan Baker, will join Timnit Gebru’s nonprofit research institute, Distributed AI Research (DAIR)...
In a post announcing her resignation on Medium, Hanna criticizes the “toxic” work environment at Google, and draws attention to a lack of representation of Black women at the company."
"Volkswagen’s installation of a software “defeat device” in 11 million Volkswagen and Audi diesel vehicles sold worldwide has led to a massive vehicle recall in the United States and an official apology from the company’s now-ex CEO. The clever and sneaky algorithm, installed in the emissions-control module, detects when the cars were undergoing emissions testing. It ran the engine cleanly during tests and switched off emissions control during normal driving conditions, allowing the car to spew up to 40 times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum allowed level of nitrogen oxides, air pollutants that cause respiratory problems and smog. “This is shocking,” says Yotam Lurie, a senior lecturer of business ethics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. “It’s shocking that the software engineers of Volkswagen overlooked and neglected their fiduciary responsibility as professionals. Professionals who have a semi-regulatory responsibility within the organization to ensure safety, in this case environmental safety, even when this is less efficient or economical.” Lurie’s recently published paper on Professional Ethics for Software Engineers touches on the heart of this matter."
