Two Justices Clash on Congress’s Power Over Supreme Court Ethics; The New York Times, August 26, 2023

Adam Liptak , The New York Times; Two Justices Clash on Congress’s Power Over Supreme Court Ethics

"Congress has enacted laws that apply to the justices, including ones on financial disclosures and recusal. In a way, the most telling ethics legislation came from the first Congress, in 1789, requiring all federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, to take an oath promising “that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent on me.""

The Supreme Court’s Ethics Problem Has a Pretty Easy Solution; Bloomberg Law, August 25, 2023

 Michael J. Broyde, Bloomberg Law; The Supreme Court’s Ethics Problem Has a Pretty Easy Solution

"Much has been written on the ethical problems facing the Supreme Court. Writers fixate mostly on the lack of an ethics code and the conduct of specific justices.

Yet in this discussion, many have missed something key: These aren’t the real issues. In fact, US law already has the basic outlines of an ethics code. Federal law states directly that “any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

The statute, if applied uniformly and properly, solves nearly all the issues that have recently plagued the high court’s image by making the rules themselves clear.

Not only does the statute explicitly cover the justices, but every sitting justice also has accepted that the statute governs them, as noted in many cases and in the recent letter about ethics signed by the nine.

The real issue when it comes to the court’s ethical problems concerns this statute’s implementation."

AI is coming for your audiobooks. You’re right to be worried.; The Washington Post, August 16, 2023

Katherine A. Powers , The Washington Post; AI is coming for your audiobooks. You’re right to be worried.

"Apple’s narrators are cloned from the voices of professionals who have licensed the rights to their voices. Their identities are secret, but speculation abounds. It’s a touchy subject, and you can see why. Whether to sell the rights to one’s voice is an agonizing decision for a professional narrator. The money offered amounts to something like what a midrange narrator makes in four years; on the other hand, agreeing to the deal seems to many to be a betrayal of the profession, one that would risk alienating one’s peers.

According to Culp, narrators are alarmed by the advent of AI narration “as, naturally, it might mean less work for living, breathing narrators in the future."

This is how the Smithsonian will reckon with our dark inheritance; The Washington Post, August 20, 2023

Lonnie G. Bunch III, The Washington Post;  This is how the Smithsonian will reckon with our dark inheritance

"As a historian, I have always felt that a full, unvarnished, honest telling of history is the only way for us to move forward as a people, as a nation and as institutions. All of us are profoundly shaped by the past, for good and for ill, and the Smithsonian — like so many other museums and universities — is grappling with a legacy once deemed acceptable but that is so clearly ethically wrong today.

The Post’s recent coverage regarding the human remains still housed in our collections is certainly illustrative of the Smithsonian’s darkest history. This is our inheritance, and we accept the responsibility to address these wrongs to the fullest extent possible."

Local universities prepared to teach ethics of using generative AI; Rochester Business Journal, August 15, 2023

 Caurie Putnam, Rochester Business Journal; Local universities prepared to teach ethics of using generative AI

"How are local schools handling these platforms that have the potential to produce human-like AI-generated content like essays based on the input of the user? You may be surprised."

Senator wants Google to answer for accuracy, ethics of generative AI tool; HealthcareITNews, August 9, 2023

 Mike Miliard, HealthcareITNews; Senator wants Google to answer for accuracy, ethics of generative AI tool

"Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, wrote a letter to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent company Alphabet, on Aug. 8, seeking clarity into the technology developer's Med-PaLM 2, an artificial intelligence chatbot, and how it's being deployed and trained in healthcare settings."

French research centre behind controversial Covid paper found to have used questionable ethics processes; The Guardian, August 8, 2023

 Melissa Davey , The Guardian; French research centre behind controversial Covid paper found to have used questionable ethics processes

"A major French research centre that produced one of the most widely cited and controversial research papers of the Covid-19 pandemic has been found by an international research team to have used questionable and concerning ethics approval processes across hundreds of studies."

Clarence Thomas’ 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel; ProPublica, August 10, 2023

 Brett Murphy and Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica; Clarence Thomas’ 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel

"This accounting of Thomas’ travel, revealed for the first time here from an array of previously unavailable information, is the fullest to date of the generosity that has regularly afforded Thomas a lifestyle far beyond what his income could provide. And it is almost certainly an undercount.

While some of the hospitality, such as stays in personal homes, may not have required disclosure, Thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets, according to ethics experts.

Perhaps even more significant, the pattern exposes consistent violations of judicial norms, experts, including seven current and former federal judges appointed by both parties, told ProPublica. “In my career I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who served for years on the judicial committee that reviews judges’ financial disclosures. “I think it’s unprecedented.”"

Clarence Thomas’ 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel

Minnesota colleges grappling with ethics and potential benefits of ChatGPT; Star Tribune, August 6, 2023

Hannah Pinski , Star Tribune ; Minnesota colleges grappling with ethics and potential benefits of ChatGPT

"While some Minnesota academics are concerned about students using ChatGPT to cheat, others are trying to figure out the best way to teach and use the tool in the classroom.

"The tricky thing about this is that you've got this single tool that can be used very much unethically in an educational setting," said Darin Ulness, a chemistry professor at Concordia College in Moorhead. "But at the same time, it can be such a valuable tool that we can't not use it.""

Justice Elena Kagan pushes for US Supreme Court to adopt own ethics code; The Oregonian, August 3, 2023

 Maxine Bernstein, The Oregonian; Justice Elena Kagan pushes for US Supreme Court to adopt own ethics code

"U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan on Thursday said she hopes the nation’s high court will adopt its own code of ethics and that the nine justices are in discussions about doing so with a wide variety of opinions.

Unlike Justice Samuel Alito, who said last week that Congress lacks the power to impose an ethics code on the Supreme Court, Kagan countered that it does.

Yet she said she believes Congress has its limits...

Kagan said she’s hopeful the Supreme Court will adopt its own code of conduct and take the question about what Congress can or cannot do “out of play.”

“It’s not a secret for me to say we have been discussing this issue,” she said. “The nine of us have a variety of views about that.”"

Gallup poll finds most Americans give Biden administration a negative ethics score; The Hill, August 3, 2023

 ALEX GANGITANO, The Hill; Gallup poll finds most Americans give Biden administration a negative ethics score

"Americans rate the ethics of the Biden administration more negatively than positively, with only 42 percent of people giving it a positive rating, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.

The 42 percent ethics score given to the “top Biden administration officials,” in the poll’s language, is just above the 37- and 38-percent scores given to former President Trump’s top officials during his administration. The poll is the first ethics assessment from Gallup since President Biden took office.

The poll found that 34 percent of Americans find the Biden officials’ ethics standards good, and 37 percent find them poor. Among Democrats, 84 percent rated the Biden administrations’ ethics as excellent or good, while only 6 percent of Republicans gave them that rating."

Is facial recognition identifying you? Are there ‘dog whistles’ in ChatGPT? Ethics in artificial intelligence gets unpacked; Northeastern Global News, August 3, 2023

 Cesareo Contreras, Northeastern Global News; Is facial recognition identifying you? Are there ‘dog whistles’ in ChatGPT? Ethics in artificial intelligence gets unpacked

"The graduate-level program at Northeastern is designed to teach researchers how to examine artificial intelligence and data systems through an ethical framework. The course is conducted by the Ethics Institute, an interdisciplinary effort supported by the Office of the Provost, the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSSH) and the Department of Philosophy and Religion...

The aim of the course was to both provide students with some background on the technical components underpinning these systems as well as the frameworks used to adequately analyze their ethical impact. 

Throughout the seminar, students each day were tasked with providing oral arguments based on the day’s reading. Each student was also tasked with developing an original thesis around the topic of discussion and presented it the final week of class. 

One central topic of discussion was algorithmic fairness, Creel says."  

A More Ethical Approach to Employing Contractors; Harvard Business Review, August 2, 2023

 Catherine Bracy, Harvard Business Review; A More Ethical Approach to Employing Contractors

"Companies that do not adopt high-road contracting practices create a race to the bottom, degrading job quality and career mobility. Enacting high-road practices, and requiring them of any vendor your company works with, helps mitigate the potential for worker harm in the first place which helps reduce future liability and risk."

Trump Told Pence ‘You’re Too Honest’ When He Objected to Jan. 6 Scheme; Rolling Stone, August 1, 2023

TIM DICKINSON , Rolling Stone; Trump Told Pence ‘You’re Too Honest’ When He Objected to Jan. 6 Scheme

"The new indictment of Donald Trump on conspiracy charges related to his attempts to subvert the results of the 2020 election makes clear that the then-president not only made false claims about who won the presidency, but “knew that they were false.”

Trump’s tortured relationship with the truth is highlighted in an exchange he allegedly had with Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 1, 2021. Trump, the indictment says, called Pence and “berated him” because Pence opposed efforts to claim that he alone had the power, in his ceremonial role presiding over the counting of the votes of the Electoral College, to reject the official tallies from the states. 

As recounted in the indictment, Pence told Trump that — as he understood the laws of our land — there was no constitutional authority invested in the vice president to make such a move.

Trump then allegedly lit into Pence, telling him: “You’re too honest.”"

The Ethics of Making (and Publishing) AI Art; Lifehacker, July 31, 2023

Brendan Hesse, Lifehacker; The Ethics of Making (and Publishing) AI Art

"This post is part of Lifehacker’s “Living With AI” series: We investigate the current state of AI, walk through how it can be useful (and how it can’t), and evaluate where this revolutionary tech is heading next. Read more here...

Are there ethical uses of AI art?

Despite the ethical and legal issues, some argue there is a place for these tools, and that they can even be helpful to professional artists...

Given all these concerns, it’s hard to recommend AI art creators, even if the intent to use them is innocent. Nevertheless, these tools are here, and unless some future regulations force them to change, we can’t stop folks from giving them a try. But, if you do, please keep in mind the legal and ethical issues associated with making and sharing AI art, think twice about sharing it, and never claim an AI-generated image as your own work."

No, Justice Alito. Congress should not butt out on Supreme Court ethics.; The Washington Post, July 30, 2023

Ruth Marcus , The Washington Post; No, Justice Alito. Congress should not butt out on Supreme Court ethics.

"Since 1948, Congress has required federal judges — including Supreme Court justices — to recuse themselves from deciding cases in which their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Is that unconstitutional? Since 1978, it has required federal judges — including justices — to file financial disclosure forms. Is that unconstitutional? (The justices, including Alito, say they voluntarilyfollow those rules.) Since 1989, it has imposed strict limits on outside income and gifts for federal judges — including justices. Is that unconstitutional? Just last year, Congress amended the ethics rules to mandate that federal judges — including justices — promptly disclose their stock transactions. Is that unconstitutional?

Why would it be? The Alito argument, such as it is, proves too much. It would mean that Congress could not make it a crime for justices to accept bribes. And why would Congress have power to impose ethics rules on the executive branch but not on the judiciary — or are those unconstitutional, too?

We don’t want Congress punishing the court for issuing decisions with which lawmakers disagree. Respect for the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary counsels caution in this area. But it does not dictate hands off, no matter what Alito might wish."

Trump attorney calls him ‘the most ethical American I know’ in wake of superseding indictment ; The Hill, July 30, 2023

LAUREN SFORZA  , The Hill; Trump attorney calls him ‘the most ethical American I know’ in wake of superseding indictment

"Alina Habba, an attorney for Donald Trump, praised the former president for being “the most ethical American” she knows after he was hit with fresh superseding charges that accused he and his handlers of deleting footage sought by the federal government in a classified documents case.

“When he has his turn in court and when we get to file our papers, you will see that every single video, every single surveillance tape that was requested, was turned over,” Habba told Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” 

“If President Trump didn’t want something turned over, I assure you, that is something that could have been done, but he never would act like that. He is the most ethical American I know.”"

The Supreme Court’s excuses for ethics violations insult our intelligence; The Hill, July 25, 2023

 STEVEN LUBET, The Hill; The Supreme Court’s excuses for ethics violations insult our intelligence

"The three justices’ hollow rationalizations display a patronizing expectation that the public will ultimately buy whatever they say, no matter how implausible. 

But to paraphrase the late Justice Robert Jackson: Supreme Court justices do not get the last word because they are infallible; they only believe themselves infallible because they get the last word. When it comes to judicial ethics, that has to change."

‘Judeo-Christian’ roots will ensure U.S. military AI is used ethically, general says; The Washington Post, July 22, 2023

Shera Avi-Yonah , The Washington Post; ‘Judeo-Christian’ roots will ensure U.S. military AI is used ethically, general says

"A three-star Air Force general said the U.S. military’s approach to artificial intelligence is more ethical than adversaries’ because it is a “Judeo-Christian society,” an assessment that drew scrutiny from experts who say people from a wide range of religious and ethical traditions can work to resolve the dilemmas AI poses.

Lt. Gen. Richard G. Moore Jr. made the comment at a Hudson Institute event Thursday while answering a question about how the Pentagonviews autonomous warfare. The Department of Defense has been discussing AI ethics at its highest levels, said Moore, who is the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for plans and programs.

“Regardless of what your beliefs are, our society is a Judeo-Christian society, and we have a moral compass. Not everybody does,” Moore said. “And there are those that are willing to go for the ends regardless of what means have to be employed.”"

ChatGPT: Ethics and the 21st Century Lawyer; New York State Bar Association (NYSBA), July 24, 2023

New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) ; ChatGPT: Ethics and the 21st Century Lawyer

"The ChatGPT Lawyer incident raises many questions of skills and ethics.  This program will discuss the disciplinary decisions arising from that incident in the Southern District of New York and how this may inform future use of AI technology in the practice of law in federal and state court. Panelists will cover the use of Chat GPT and the use of AI in other legal research tools (Westlaw, Lexis). Attendees will gain an understanding of best practices for writing briefs and citing cases appropriately using AI."