New Legal Ethics Opinion Cautions Lawyers: You ‘Must Be Proficient’ In the Use of Generative AI; LawSites, June 24, 2024

Bob Ambrogi , LawSites; New Legal Ethics Opinion Cautions Lawyers: You ‘Must Be Proficient’ In the Use of Generative AI

"A new legal ethics opinion on the use of generative AI in law practice makes one point very clear: lawyers are required to maintain competence across all technological means relevant to their practices, and that includes the use of generative AI.

The opinion, jointly issued by the Pennsylvania Bar Association and Philadelphia Bar Association, was issued to educate attorneys on the benefits and pitfalls of using generative AI and to provide ethical guidelines.

While the opinion is focused on AI, it repeatedly emphasizes that a lawyer’s ethical obligations surrounding this emerging form of technology are no different than those for any form of technology...

12 Points of Responsibility

The 16-page opinion offers a concise primer on the use of generative AI in law practice, including a brief background on the technology and a summary of other states’ ethics opinions.

But most importantly, it concludes with 12 points of responsibility pertaining to lawyers using generative AI:

• Be truthful and accurate: The opinion warns that lawyers must ensure that AI-generated content, such as legal documents or advice, is truthful, accurate and based on sound legal reasoning, upholding principles of honesty and integrity in their professional conduct.
• Verify all citations and the accuracy of cited materials: Lawyers must ensure the citations they use in legal documents or arguments are accurate and relevant. That includes verifying that the citations accurately reflect the content they reference.
• Ensure competence: Lawyers must be competent in using AI technologies.
• Maintain confidentiality: Lawyers must safeguard information relating to the representation of a client and ensure that AI systems handling confidential data both adhere to strict confidentiality measures and prevent the sharing of confidential data with others not protected by the attorney-client privilege.
• Identify conflicts of interest: Lawyers must be vigilant, the opinion says, in identifying and addressing potential conflicts of interest arising from using AI systems.
• Communicate with clients: Lawyers must communicate with clients about using AI in their practices, providing clear and transparent explanations of how such tools are employed and their potential impact on case outcomes. If necessary, lawyers should obtain client consent before using certain AI tools.
• Ensure information is unbiased and accurate: Lawyers must ensure that the data used to train AI models is accurate, unbiased, and ethically sourced to prevent perpetuating biases or inaccuracies in AI-generated content.
• Ensure AI is properly used: Lawyers must be vigilant against the misuse of AI-generated content, ensuring it is not used to deceive or manipulate legal processes, evidence or outcomes.
• Adhere to ethical standards: Lawyers must stay informed about relevant regulations and guidelines governing the use of AI in legal practice to ensure compliance with legal and ethical standards.
• Exercise professional judgment: Lawyers must exercise their professional judgment in conjunction with AI-generated content, and recognize that AI is a tool that assists but does not replace legal expertise and analysis.
• Use proper billing practices: AI has tremendous time-saving capabilities. Lawyers must, therefore, ensure that AI-related expenses are reasonable and appropriately disclosed to clients.
• Maintain transparency: Lawyers should be transparent with clients, colleagues, and the courts about the use of AI tools in legal practice, including disclosing any limitations or uncertainties associated with AI-generated content.

My Advice: Don’t Be Stupid

Over the years of writing about legal technology and legal ethics, I have developed my own shortcut rule for staying out of trouble: Don’t be stupid...

You can read the full opinion here: Joint Formal Opinion 2024-200."

Jan. 6 shattered her family. Now they’re trying to forgive.; The Washington Post, January 9, 2023

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?"

Keeping true to the Declaration of Independence is a matter of ethics; Ventura County Star, July 2, 2023

Ed Jones, Ventura County Star; Keeping true to the Declaration of Independence is a matter of ethics

"How do we keep faith with Jefferson, Franklin and the other founders? Due to the imperfections in human nature, there is no foolproof way, but a good plan would be to have all levels of our government — national, state and local — adopt ethical training similar to that of elective office holders here in California. Periodically, they must participate in ethics training which assumes there are universal ethical values consisting of fairness, loyalty, compassion trustworthiness, and responsibility that transcend other considerations and should be adhered to. This training consists of biannual computer sessions in which they must solve real-life problems based on the aforementioned ethical values.

I believe a real danger for elected officials and voters as well is the idea that certain societal values are so vital, so crucial, that they transcend normal ethical practices. This might be termed an “ends — means philosophy,” the idea that the ends justify the means. Mohandas Gandhi, former leader of India, observed that “the means are the ends in a democracy and good ends cannot come from questionable means.” 

No matter how exemplary our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, we are still relying on human beings to fulfill their promise. Ever since the Supreme Court took the power of judicial review — the power to tell us what the Constitution means and, in the process, affirm certain laws by declaring them constitutional or removing others by declaring them unconstitutional — the judgement of nine people has had a profound effect on our society. Was the Supreme Court correct in 1973 by saying the Ninth Amendment guarantees pregnant women the right to an abortion, or was it correct in 2022 by saying it didn’t?

In the final analysis we must conclude that it will be well-intentioned, ethical citizens and their elected and appointed representatives who will ensure the equitable future of what Abraham Lincoln referred to as our “ongoing experiment in self-government.”"

Korea issues first AI ethics checklist; The Korea Times, June 14, 2023

Lee Kyung-min, The Korea Times; Korea issues first AI ethics checklist

"The government has outlined the first national standard on how to use artificial intelligence (AI) ethically, in a move to bolster the emerging industry's sustainability and enhance its global presence, the industry ministry said Wednesday.

Korea Agency for Technology and Standards (KATS), an organization affiliated with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, issued a checklist of possible ethical issues and reviewed factors to be referenced and considered by service developers, providers and users.

The considerations specified for report and review include ethical issues arising in the process of collecting and processing data, the designing and development of AI, and the provision of such services to customers. 

The guidelines contain considerations such as transparency, fairness, harmlessness, responsibility, privacy protection, convenience, autonomy, reliability, sustainability and solidarity-enhancing qualities."

When a Visit to the Museum Becomes an Ethical Dilemma; The New York Times, February 14, 2023

Charly Wilder, The New York Times; When a Visit to the Museum Becomes an Ethical Dilemma

Western museums are major tourist attractions, drawing travelers from around the world. But what responsibility do we bear as spectators for patronizing institutions that display what critics say are stolen works?

"For museumgoers, the ethical dimensions of viewing plundered art have become impossible to ignore. Western museums are major tourist attractions, drawing travelers from around the world. But what responsibility do we bear as spectators for patronizing institutions that display what critics say are stolen works? Should we be asking how these museums got their treasures? Does our conception of a modern-day ethnological museum need a dramatic rethink?"

MapLab: The Case for a Cartographer’s Code of Ethics; Bloomberg, March 9, 2022

Marie Patino, Bloomberg ; MapLab: The Case for a Cartographer’s Code of Ethics

"In 2017, Kent spearheaded the drafting of the first and only known professional code of cartography ethics for the British Cartographic Society (BCS) while he was the president of the organization. The code upholds five principles: Honesty, integrity, competence, respect and responsibility. It also warns of potential sanctions that can be taken against members if they don’t follow these principles, including being banned from the BCS — though Kent says this hasn’t happened yet.

“There’s an increased sense of responsibility that goes with the idea of mapmaking.” Kent says. “I think cartographers have for too long not really grasped the idea that what they’re doing has immense power to change the way how people see the world.”

Now, momentum for ethical guidelines may be picking up...

Buckley, who created a user group at Esri to discuss best practices and ideas for mapmaking ethics, is planning ethics discussions at other map gatherings this year. “Having good examples, I think, is what we need to move towards next,” Buckley said. “After we come up with a code of ethics, the statements have to be supported by resources that people can look at to understand how to enact ethical practices.”"

No Way Home Foreshadows The Greatest Problem With The X-Men; ScreenRant, February 3, 2022

Thomas Bacon, ScreenRant; No Way Home Foreshadows The Greatest Problem With The X-Men

"Spider-Man is the only Avenger to date who has been a teenager in this shared universe. That's given his solo films a unique feel in the MCU, but it's also posed serious ethical questions about whether or not the Avengers should allow Spider-Man to join in with their superhero fights. It didn't take long for War Machine to pick up on this in Captain America: Civil War, with Tony Stark brushing the question of Spider-Man's age aside. "I don't know, I didn't carbon-date him," Iron Man defended himself. "He's on the young side." The question of Spider-Man's age surfaced again in Spider-Man: No Way Home, when Peter Parker's beloved Aunt May was accused of child endangerment because she had allowed him to act as a hero. "Child endangerment's a nasty rap," Agent Cleary accused her. "A boy was entrusted to you, and as his legal guardian - essentially his mother - you not only allowed him to endanger himself, but you actually encouraged it. Who does that?" It's true this was just a throwaway scene, and the ethical considerations weren't subsequently explored in greater depth - but the question is a chilling one nonetheless, and it has serious implications for the future of the MCU, particularly how it relates to the X-Men."

Why your local library might be hiring a social worker; NPR, January 3, 2021

DARIAN BENSON, NPR; Why your local library might be hiring a social worker

"For years, libraries have been a place people turn to for information to help them solve problems. But the challenges patrons are dealing with are increasingly beyond the scope of what most librarians are trained to handle — and that's where social workers can fill in the gaps."

This Program Can Give AI a Sense of Ethics—Sometimes; Wired, October 28, 2021

 WILL KNIGHT,Wired; This Program Can Give AI a Sense of Ethics—Sometimes

"Frost says the debate around Delphi reflects a broader question that the tech industry is wrestling with—how to build technology responsibly. Too often, he says, when it comes to content moderation, misinformation, and algorithmic bias, companies try to wash their hands of the problem by arguing that all technology can be used for good and bad.

When it comes to ethics, “there’s no ground truth, and sometimes tech companies abdicate responsibility because there’s no ground truth,” Frost says. “The better approach is to try.”"

 

Michael Schur On Ethics And Morality In A Crisis; WBUR, April 9, 2020

Meghna Chakrabarti and Brittany Knotts, WBUR; Michael Schur On Ethics And Morality In A Crisis

"How do you think "The Good Place" characters Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason would have responded to the coronavirus in their Earth lives?...

MICHAEL SCHUR, ON HOW JASON WOULD RESPOND TO THE CORONAVIRUS...

Jason: “Then there's Jason, who is just an idiot. And Jason, I don't know if you saw one of the craziest photos to me of all of the photos we've all been looking at, it was that county line in Florida. ... Where one county had shut down its beaches, and the other county had not. And so as a result, the beach was entirely empty. And there was just like suddenly just a wall of people extending further out, down the beach, because that county's beaches were open. Whatever county that is, that's where Jason would be. … So he and Eleanor probably wouldn't have been dissimilar in terms of the way they approached this, but for different reasons. Eleanor was selfish, and Jason was just sort of impulsive and didn't really think anything through.”...

What do we owe each other? 

Michael Schur: “I said before that there's a certain sort of minimum that is required of everyone, to the best of our abilities. The basics, right. Staying inside, staying away from people, trying to kind of stop the spread of the disease. But then beyond that, there's an enormous sliding scale, I think. If you have the ability to, for example, pay your dog walker, if you have the financial means to continue to pay your dog walker who can't walk your dog anymore, or someone who helps you clean your house, or anybody who works for you in any capacity. If you have that ability, I think you need to do that. And then, you know, you keep sliding up the scale. If you have the ability to keep people on the payroll at your business who are working for you, even if it means you lose money, I think you have to do that, too. And it just keeps going up and up and up."

Developers - it's time to brush up on your philosophy: Ethical AI is the big new thing in tech; ZDNet, April 1, 2020

 Daphne Leprince-Ringuet , ZDNet; Developers - it's time to brush up on your philosophy: Ethical AI is the big new thing in tech

The transformative potential of algorithms means that developers are now expected to think about the ethics of technology -- and that wasn't part of the job description.

"Crucially, most guidelines also insist that thought be given to the ethical implications of the technology from the very first stage of conceptualising a new tool, and all the way through its implementation and commercialisation. 

This principle of 'ethics by design' goes hand in hand with that of responsibility and can be translated, roughly, as: 'coders be warned'. In other words, it's now on developers and their teams to make sure that their program doesn't harm users. And the only way to make sure it doesn't is to make the AI ethical from day one.

The trouble with the concept of ethics by design, is that tech wasn't necessarily designed for ethics."

Technology Can't Fix Algorithmic Injustice; Boston Review, January 9, 2020

Annette Zimmermann, Elena Di Rosa, Hochan Kim, Boston Review; Technology Can't Fix Algorithmic Injustice

We need greater democratic oversight of AI not just from developers and designers, but from all members of society.

"In the end, the responsible development and deployment of weak AI will involve not just developers and designers, but the public at large. This means that we need, among other things, to scrutinize current narratives about AI’s potential costs and benefits. As we have argued, AI’s alleged neutrality and inevitability are harmful, yet pervasive, myths. Debunking them will require an ongoing process of public, democratic contestation about the social, political, and moral dimensions of algorithmic decision making.

This is not an unprecedented proposal: similar suggestions have been made by philosophers and activists seeking to address other complex, collective moral problems, such as climate change and sweatshop labor. Just as their efforts have helped raise public awareness and spark political debate about those issues, it is high time for us as a public to take seriously our responsibilities for the present and looming social consequences of AI. Algorithmic bias is not a purely technical problem for researchers and tech practitioners; we must recognize it as a moral and political problem in which all of us—as democratic citizens—have a stake. Responsibility cannot simply be offloaded and outsourced to tech developers and private corporations."

Roboethics: The Human Ethics Applied to Robots; Interesting Engineering, September 22, 2019

Susan Fourtané , Interesting Engineering; Roboethics: The Human Ethics Applied to Robots 

Who or what is going to be held responsible when or if an autonomous system malfunctions or harms humans?
"On ethics and roboethics 

Ethics is the branch of philosophy which studies human conduct, moral assessments, the concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice. The concept of roboethics brings up a fundamental ethical reflection that is related to particular issues and moral dilemmas generated by the development of robotic applications. 

Roboethics --also called machine ethics-- deals with the code of conduct that robotic designer engineers must implement in the Artificial Intelligence of a robot. Through this kind of artificial ethics, roboticists must guarantee that autonomous systems are going to be able to exhibit ethically acceptable behavior in situations where robots or any other autonomous systems such as autonomous vehicles interact with humans.

Ethical issues are going to continue to be on the rise as long as more advanced robotics come into the picture. In The Ethical Landscape of Robotics (PDF) by Pawel Lichocki et al., published by IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, the researchers list various ethical issues emerging in two sets of robotic applications: Service robots and lethal robots."

I Almost Died Riding an E-Scooter Like 99 percent of users, I wasn’t wearing a helmet.; Slate, March 14, 2019

Rachel Withers, Slate;

I Almost Died Riding an E-Scooter

Like 99 percent of users, I wasn’t wearing a helmet.

"I’ve been rather flippant with friends about what happened because it’s the only way I know how to deal. It’s laughable that you’d get seriously injured scooting. But this isn’t particularly funny. People are always going to be idiots, yes, but idiot people are currently getting seriously injured, in ways that might have been prevented, because tech companies flippantly dumped their product all over cities, without an adequate helmet solution. Facebook’s “move fast and break things” mantra can be applied to many tech companies, but in the case of e-scooters, it might just be “move fast and break skulls.”"

The Top Three Considerations For Designing Ethical AI; Forbes, February 19, 2019

Adam Rogers, Forbes; The Top Three Considerations For Designing Ethical AI

"Great Power, Even Greater Responsibility

AI has already drastically improved the lives of millions — paving the way for more accurate and affordable health care, improving food-production capacity and building fundamentally stronger organizations. This technology could very well be the most influential innovation in human history, but with major promise comes major potential pitfalls. As a society, we must proactively address transparency, ethical considerations and policy issues to ensure we’re applying AI to put people first and fundamentally make the world a better place."

The AI Arms Race Means We Need AI Ethics; Forbes, January 22, 2019

Kasia Borowska, Forbes; The AI Arms Race Means We Need AI Ethics

"In an AI world, the currency is data. Consumers and citizens trade data for convenience and cheaper services. The likes of Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix and others process this data to make decisions that influence likes, the adverts we see, purchasing decisions or even who we vote for. There are questions to ask on the implications of everything we access, view or read being controlled by a few global elite. There are also major implications if small companies or emerging markets are unable to compete from being priced out of the data pool. This is why access to AI is so important: not only does it enable more positives from AI to come to the fore, but it also helps to prevent monopolies forming. Despite industry-led efforts, there are no internationally agreed ethical rules to regulate the AI market."

Inside Facebook's 'cult-like' workplace, where dissent is discouraged and employees pretend to be happy all the time; CNBC, January 8, 2019

Salvador Rodriguez, CNBC; Inside Facebook's 'cult-like' workplace, where dissent is discouraged and employees pretend to be happy all the time

"Former employees describe a top-down approach where major decisions are made by the company's leadership, and employees are discouraged from voicing dissent — in direct contradiction to one of Sandberg's mantras, "authentic self."...

"All the things we were preaching, we weren't doing enough of them. We weren't having enough hard conversations. They need to realize that. They need to reflect and ask if they're having hard conversations or just being echo chambers of themselves.""

Stan Lee Unleashed the Heroic Power of the Outcast; Wired, December 13, 2018

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."

Facebook: A Case Study in Ethics ; CMS Wire, December 20, 2018

Laurence Hart, CMS Wire; Facebook: A Case Study in Ethics 

"It feels like every week, a news item emerges that could serve as a case study in ethics. A company's poor decision when exposed to the light of day (provided by the press) seems shockingly bad. The ethical choice in most cases should have been obvious, but it clearly wasn’t the one made.

This week, as in many weeks in 2018, the case study comes from Facebook."

Digital Ethics: Data is the new forklift; Internet of Business, December 17, 2018

Joanna Goodman, Internet of Business; Digital Ethics: Data is the new forklift

"Joanna Goodman reports from last week’s Digital ethics summit.

Governments, national and international institutions and businesses must join forces to make sure that AI and emerging technology are deployed successfully and responsibly. This was the central message from TechUK’s second Digital Ethics Summit in London.

Antony Walker, TechUK’s deputy CEO set out the purpose of the summit: “How to deliver on the promise of tech that can provide benefits for people and society in a way that minimises harm”.

This sentiment was echoed throughout the day. Kate Rosenshine, data architect at Microsoft reminded us that data is not unbiased and inclusivity and fairness are critical to data-driven decision-making. She quoted Cathy Bessant, CTO of Bank of America:

Technologists cannot lose sight of how algorithms affect real people."