Issues and developments related to ethics, information, and technologies, examined in the ethics and intellectual property graduate courses I teach at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information. My Bloomsbury book "Ethics, Information, and Technology" will be published in Summer 2025. Kip Currier, PhD, JD
"In some ways, the story’s enduring appeal is easy to account for. “A Christmas Carol” is, first and foremost, a ghost story — a genre that never seems to go out of fashion. But what’s less easy to account for, and more interesting, is how this 19th-century tale has continued to speak to modern readers, offering moral lessons that have only grown more relevant over the decades.
At its core, it is a story about the forces that exist within all of us: greed and generosity, hatred and love, repentance and forgiveness. It doesn’t hurt that it concerns one of literature’s most compelling characters: Ebenezer Scrooge."
"Here’s a question I hear everywhere I go, including from fellow Christians: Why are so many Christians so cruel?...
It’s a simple question with a complicated answer, but that answer often begins with a particularly seductive temptation, one common to people of all faiths: that the faithful, those who possess eternal truth, are entitled to rule. Under this construct, might makes right, and right deserves might.
Most of us have sound enough moral instincts to reject the notion that might makes right. Power alone is not a sufficient marker of righteousness. We may watch people bow to power out of fear or awe, but yielding to power isn’t the same thing as acknowledging that it is legitimate or that it is just.
The idea that right deserves might is different and may even be more destructive. It appeals to our ambition through our virtue, which is what makes it especially treacherous. It masks its darkness. It begins with the idea that if you believe your ideas are just and right, then it’s a problem for everyone if you’re not in charge.
In that context, your own will to power is sanctified. It’s evidence not so much of your own ambition, but of your love for the community. You want what’s best for your neighbors, and what’s best for your neighbors is, well, you...
Christ’s words were clear, and they cut against every human instinct of ambition and pride:
“The last will be first.”
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
“If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Those were the words. The deeds were just as clear. He didn’t just experience a humble birth; Jesus was raised in a humble home, far from the corridors of power. As a child, he wasa refugee."
"Greek myth is not a stable thing. There is no such thing as a canonical, “original” version of a Greek myth. The stories that remain to us – the material of classical plays and poetry, and of visual culture from pottery to pediments – are already elaborations and accretions. In the ancient Greek and Roman world, stories were adapted and remade to serve the needs of the moment. The Greek tragedians often took the germ of an idea from the Homeric epics, and built an entire plot from it. Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, for instance, is in dialogue with Homer’s Odyssey: both are stories of a warrior’s return from war, but with entirely different outcomes. Euripides’s subversive play Helen proposes that the entire Trojan war was fought not in the cause of a real woman, but of an illusory, fake version sent by the gods, while the “real” Helen of Troy sat out the siege in Egypt.
Seen in this light, as novelist Pat Barker points out below, the modern appetite for working with (and maybe sometimes against) Greek myth is a part of a long continuum, rather than an innovation...
Stephen Fry on Ithaka by CP Cavafy (1911), a poem inspired by The Odyssey
Author of Mythos, Heroes and Troy, a trilogy of books retelling the myths of ancient Greece
The Odysseyis the beginning of human modernity. Suddenly, the greatest qualities a warrior could have were cunning, intelligence and curiosity, but also a sense of home – Odysseus is constantly striving to get back to his wife and son. There was something new in that. This idea of “nostos” – of returning home to the hearth after your wanderings – has been very powerful in the Greek imagination ever since.
Early last century, there was a wonderful Greek poet living in Alexandria named Constantine Cavafy. I found out about him by reading EM Forster, who met Cavafy in Alexandria and recommended him to WH Auden and others. One of Cavafy’s greatest poems is about Ithaca, the island which Odysseus spends 10 years trying to get back to. The poem is about this journey, this yearning to find the place that we think of as home, but Cavafy tells us that it’s not worth anything. You must strive for it, he says, but you’ll find it isn’t the place itself that’s the destination, it’s the striving, it’s what you learn on the way. It’s the gorgeous things you find and the people you meet and the experiences you have. So you must aim for Ithaca and simultaneously know it’s not worth getting to, because it will have nothing to give you. That’s how the poem ends, in Edmund Keeley’s terrific translation: “Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey./ Without her you wouldn’t have set out./ She has nothing left to give you now.”
I think it’s a very brilliant and moving poem, even in translation (I’m sure if you were fluent in modern Greek it would be even more astonishing). It’s an example of what the Greek myths can give us in terms of retellings. All the JRR Tolkien books arenostosstories, stories of returns home –The Hobbitis subtitledThere and Back Again. It is the most mythic, primal, elemental story that we have.As told to Killian Fox"
"About five months after Pope Francis spoke of the responsibility political leaders have to ensure that artificial intelligence is used ethically, the University of Notre Dame has announced that it will develop faith-based frameworks for ethical uses of the technology.
Notre Dame, one of the preeminent Catholic universities in the United States located in South Bend, Indiana, announced on Oct. 10 that it has been awarded a $539,000 grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to develop the frameworks – a process that will begin with a one year planning project.
The development of the frameworks will be led by the Notre Dame Institute for Ethics and the Common Good. Meghan Sullivan, the institute’s director, said that “this is a pivotal moment for technology ethics.”
“[Artificial General Intelligence] is developing quickly and has the potential to change our economies, our systems of education and the fabric of our social lives,” Sullivan, who is also the university’s Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy, said in a statement. “We believe that the wisdom of faith traditions can make a significant contribution to the development of ethical frameworks for AGI.”
According to an announcement from the university, the one-year planning project to begin the process of developing the frameworks will engage and build a network of leaders in higher education and technology, as well as those of different faiths to broach the topic of ethical uses of AI, and eventually create the faith-based ethical frameworks.
“This project will encourage broader dialogue about the role that concepts such as dignity, embodiment, love, transcendence and being created in the image of God should play in how we understand and use this technology,” Sullivan said. “These concepts – as the bedrock of many faith-based traditions – are vital for how we advance the common good in the era of AGI.”
The project will culminate in September 2025 with a conference that will focus on the most pressing faith-based issues relating to the proliferation of AGI and provide training and networking opportunities for leaders who attend, according to the university."
"“The digital world is not a ready-made. It is changing every day. We, we can change it. We can shape it. And we need Catholic communicators to do it, with love and with human intelligence,” said Dr. Ruffini.
In a recorded speech delivered during the 7th National Catholic Social Communications Convention (NCSCC) in Lipa City, south of Manila, on August 5, the Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication (Vatican News' parent organization, underscored the Church’s responsibility to guide technological advancements with moral clarity and human-centered values.
“So the basic question is not about machines, but about humans, about us. There are and always will be things that a technology cannot replace, like freedom, like the miracle of encounter between people, like the surprise of the unexpected, the conversion, the outburst of ingenuity, the gratuitous love,” he said.
Organized by the Episcopal Commission on Social Communications (ECSC) of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), the convention aims to explore advancements and risks in AI, offering insights on leveraging the technology for positive impact while addressing potential negative consequences."
[Kip Currier: A remarkable short video. Poignant, uplifting, inspiring. A reminder of what matters most, and what's worth striving for and toward.
Watch and share with others.]
"“So much in her story was compelling for me,” Mo told The Atlantic. “It is unique, about a girl doing a male macho dance, and universal, about love and sorrow.”"
Adam Rogers, Wired; Stan Lee Unleashed the Heroic Power of the Outcast "From the fantasy-pulp midden, Lee had excavated a gem of a truth: These
tales about men and women in garish tights hitting each other were also
about more. Superheroes had incredible abilities, yes, but they were
also often the victims of prejudice themselves, or trapped in moral webs
stronger than anything Spider-Man ever thwipped. So the comics
appealed to people who felt the same, even before Lee and the other
Marvel creators published the first African American heroes, the first
popular Asian American heroes, and strong, leading-character women in
numbers large enough to populate a dozen summer crossovers...
His death encouraged people to tell stories of Lee’s kindness and
enthusiasm. But for every story that circulated after Lee’s death about
how wonderful and caring he was, comics professionals tell other tales
in which Lee is … not.
Every bit as complicated as the characters
he helped bring into the world, Lee taught generations of nerds the
concepts of responsibility, morality, and love. He waged a sometimes
ham-fisted battle against prejudice, misunderstanding, and evil. This is
what makes some of nerd-dom’s recent tack toward intolerance so
painful; otherishness is engineered into comics’ radioactive, mutated
DNA. Even if Lee wasn’t a super human, he was superhuman, empowering
colleagues to leap creative obstacles and to give readers a sense of
their own secret strengths."
"Mahler said he would not go into great detail, because of privacy
rules. But he wrote that the gunman “thanked me for saving him, for
showing him kindness, and for treating him the same way I treat every
other patient.
“This was the same Robert Bowers that just committed mass homicide.
The Robert Bowers who instilled panic in my heart worrying my parents
were two of his 11 victims less than an hour before his arrival.
“I’m sure he had no idea I was Jewish. Why thank a Jewish nurse, when
15 minutes beforehand, you’d shoot me in the head with no remorse?
“I didn’t say a word to him about my religion. I chose not to say
anything to him the entire time. I wanted him to feel compassion. I
chose to show him empathy. I felt that the best way to honour his
victims was for a Jew to prove him wrong. Besides, if he finds out I’m
Jewish, does it really matter?
The better question is, what does it mean
to you?”
In conclusion, Mahler wrote: “If my actions mean anything, love means everything.”"
Ellie Silverman, Arelis R. Hernández and Steve Hendrix, Washington Post; Hundreds mourn for Heather Heyer, killed during Nazi protest in Charlottesville "“Thank you for making the word ‘hate’ more real,” said her law office coworker Feda Khateeb-Wilson. “But...thank you for making the word ‘love’ even stronger.” In a packed old theater in the center of the quiet college town that has become a racial battleground, those who knew Heyer turned her memorial into a call for both understanding and action. “They tried to kill my child to shut her up, but guess what, you just magnified her,” said her mother Susan Bro, sparking a cheering ovation from the packed auditorium, where Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va) were among the crowd. “No father should ever have to do this,” said Mark Heyer, his voice breaking on a stage filled with flowers and images of the 32-year-old paralegal who was killed Saturday when a car plowed into a crowd of protestors gathered to oppose a white supremacist rally."
Paige Lavender, Huff Post; Obama Responds To Charlottesville Violence With A Quote From Nelson Mandela "Former President Barack Obama tweeted a quote from former South African President Nelson Mandela Saturday in an apparent response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia... “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love. For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite,” Obama tweeted. The quote is from Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. Obama’s series of tweets also featured a photo of him greeting children at a day care facility in Bethesda, Maryland, in 2011."
"CBR: Greg, late last month, an interview you did with Comicosity that discussed Wonder Woman’s sexuality generated a lot of subsequent coverage. I don’t want to make this interview about another interview you did, but what was your take on how that story took a life on its own, and the reaction to your comments?Greg Rucka: I think we saw the reaction of a lot of people who don’t know anything about the character, and are deciding this is yet another hill that they’re going to stand their ground on. I rate this in the same place as saying, “You did a Ghostbusters movie, and they’re all women! You ruined it!” Really? I mean, really?
I was asked a specific question at point blank. DC would not want me to lie, or prevaricate, and I am not serving the character well or doing my job if I lie or prevaricate. Representation matters enormously.
I honestly think, if we really want to drill down on this, at the heart of the negative response — and the negative response has been loud and vocal, but from a minority, and a very small minority — you’re seeing the response of people going, “I didn’t want to have to talk about that!” OK, but the people out there who need to hear it, I care far more about them. I guarantee you, if we lost readers over this, we gained more.
For people to go, “It’s a publicity stunt” — no, it’s not. You’ll see it’s just another element of the character. It’s like when we were talking about Kate way back in the day, and I was writing Batwoman. Yeah, she’s queer. She’s also got red hair and is Jewish. These are elements of character. These are not the definition of character."
"I cannot walk into a room with pictures of Humayun. For all these years, I haven’t been able to clean the closet where his things are — I had to ask my daughter-in-law to do it. Walking onto the convention stage, with a huge picture of my son behind me, I could hardly control myself. What mother could? Donald Trump has children whom he loves. Does he really need to wonder why I did not speak?
Donald Trump said that maybe I wasn’t allowed to say anything. That is not true. My husband asked me if I wanted to speak, but I told him I could not. My religion teaches me that all human beings are equal in God’s eyes. Husband and wife are part of each other; you should love and respect each other so you can take care of the family."
"The twist, which recast a figure of fun into a tragic hero, sparked an emotional online outpouring that has continued unabated, at times crossing creatively into the real world. Even David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the creators of the show, called it one of the most shocking revelations they ever received from George R.R. Martin, who writes the books the series is based on and conceived the details of Hodor’s origin.
[SPOILER BELOW]
“There’s a very nice thing going around the Internet that says, ‘Not all heroes hold weapons, some hold doors,’ ” Kristian Nairn, the 6-foot-11 Irish actor who played him, said on Tuesday. “He is a hero now, but I think he always was, in his own way.”"
