Eyes in the sky: why drones are ‘beyond effective’ for animal rights campaigners around the world; The Guardian, March 26, 2024

Laura Trethewey, The Guardian ; Eyes in the sky: why drones are ‘beyond effective’ for animal rights campaigners around the world

"Over the past decade, drones have become irreplaceable tools in activist and conservation circles. In 2013, the animal rights group Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) launched a drone campaign tracking illegal bowhunting in Massachusetts.

Since then, drones have been used to record factory farm pollution in the American midwest, sea lice outbreaks in Icelandic salmon pens, and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Drones are popular because they’re relatively cheap, easy to use and extend a person’s range in difficult or inaccessible terrain. They also provide a bird’s-eye view of the scale of an issue, such as an oil spill or illegal logging...

In some cases, the drones capture the secret lives of animals hidden from view, such as Romeo the manatee in Miami...

“Conservation can be a very dangerous occupation to be in and there are more environmentalists killed every year,” says Ager. “Drones are a perfect way to study something without putting yourself in harm’s way and then decide whether it’s worth the risk.”"

‘It’s almost magical’: how robotic pets are helping UK care home residents; The Guardian, September 1, 2023

 Robert Booth, The Guardian; ‘It’s almost magical’: how robotic pets are helping UK care home residents

"It is not the first time care homes have experimented with robots. With mixed results, Japan has invested hundreds of millions of pounds in developing potential devices such as Hug, a lifting robot; Paro, a robotic seal; and Pepper, a “lovable” humanoid robot. In 2021 it was reported that production of Pepper had been halted...

With one in 10 social care jobs vacant, a temptation may be to use the pets to free up pressed staff from spending time with residents. Care workers at Oak Manor, where the pets have been used for a year, said they must not be deployed in the same way some parents pacify children with iPads. Success comes when the pets provide a familiar focus when agitation and anxiety is rising and they encourage socialisation as residents pet them together."

ChatGPT - An Ethical Nightmare Or Just Another Technology?; Forbes, July 6, 2023

 Charles Towers-Clark, Forbes; ChatGPT - An Ethical Nightmare Or Just Another Technology?

"Whilst, as mentioned above, many AI leaders are concerned about the speed of AI developments - at the end of the day ChatGPT has a lot of information, but it doesn’t have the human skill of knowledge.

Yet."

How ethics is becoming a key part of research in tech; The Stanford Daily, June 7, 2023

Cassandra Huff, The Stanford Daily; How ethics is becoming a key part of research in tech

"Building off the IRB model, in 2020 the Ethics in Society Review (ESR) board was created under the McCoy Family Center, the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) and Human-Centered AI (HAI) to make ethics a core part of research in computer science. The ESR acts similarly to the IRB by examining ethical concerns to minimize potential harm of the research before a project is approved for funding.

This process is integrated into grant proposal applications in HAI. After HAI reviews the technical merits of a proposal, it is handed off to the ESR, which assigns an interdisciplinary panel of faculty to review each of them. This panel acts as advisors on ethical issues to identify challenges and provide additional guidance on the ethical component of the research. Once completed, the panel will either release research funds, or recommend more iterations of the review process.

The ESR is not meant to determine whether the proposal should be funded, but rather to analyze the unintended consequences of the research prior to the start of the project. In discussing what ESR does, Betsy Rajala, Program Director at CASBS said, “Everytime you touch research these questions come up and [it’s better to] think about them sooner rather than later.”"

Generative AI: Ethical, Legal, and Technical Questions; Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University, Tuesday, May 16, 2023 12 Noon Pacific/3 PM Eastern

  

Join us May 16th at noon for an online panel discussion on ethical, legal, and technical questions related to generative AI.

Generative AI: Ethical, Legal, and Technical Questions   Noon to 1:00 p.m. Pacific Tuesday, May 16, 2023   "As artists, composers, and other “content creators” and intellectual property owners use generative AI tools or decry their development, many legal and ethical issues arise. In this panel discussion, a copyright law expert, an AI researcher who is also a composer and music performer, and a multi-disciplinary visual artist (all of whom teach at Santa Clara University) will address some of those questions–from training data collection to fair use, impact on creativity and creative labor, the balancing of various rights, and our ability to assess and respond to fast-moving technologies."

Register to Attend the Webinar

AI is exciting – and an ethical minefield: 4 essential reads on the risks and concerns about this technology; The Conversation, April 27, 2023

Molly Jackson, Religion and Ethics Editor , The Conversation; AI is exciting – and an ethical minefield: 4 essential reads on the risks and concerns about this technology

"If you’re like me, you’ve spent a lot of time over the past few months trying to figure out what this AI thing is all about. Large-language models, generative AI, algorithmic bias – it’s a lot for the less tech-savvy of us to sort out, trying to make sense of the myriad headlines about artificial intelligence swirling about.

But understanding how AI works is just part of the dilemma. As a society, we’re also confronting concerns about its social, psychological and ethical effects. Here we spotlight articles about the deeper questions the AI revolution raises about bias and inequality, the learning process, its impact on jobs, and even the artistic process."

The Signal App and the Danger of Privacy at All Costs; The New York Times, December 28, 2022

Reid Blackman, The New York Times; The Signal App and the Danger of Privacy at All Costs

"Two weeks ago, the Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey passionately advocated in a blog post the view that neither Twitter nor the government nor any other company should exert control over what participants post. “It’s critical,” he said, “that the people have tools to resist this, and that those tools are ultimately owned by the people.”

Mr. Dorsey is promoting one of the most potent and fashionable notions in Silicon Valley: that a technology free of corporate and government control is in the best interest of society. To that end, he announced he would give $1 million a year to Signal, a text-messaging app...

So I am not convinced we are really getting more freedom and “for the people by the people” by way of our technology overlords. Instead, we have a technologically driven shift of power to ideological individuals and organizations whose lack of appreciation for moral nuance and good governance puts us all at risk."

David Boggs, Co-Inventor of Ethernet, Dies at 71; The New York Times, February 28, 2022

Cade Metz, The New York Times; David Boggs, Co-Inventor of Ethernet, Dies at 71

Thanks to the invention he helped create in the 1970s, people can send email over an office network or visit a website through a coffee shop hot spot.

"David Boggs, an electrical engineer and computer scientist who helped create Ethernet, the computer networking technology that connects PCs to printers, other devices and the internet in offices and homes, died on Feb. 19 in Palo Alto, Calif...

Before becoming the dominant networking protocol, Ethernet was challenged by several other technologies. In the early 1980s, Mr. Metcalfe said, when Mr. Boggs took the stage at a California computing conference, at the San Jose Convention Center, to discuss the future of networking, a rival technologist questioned the mathematical theory behind Ethernet, telling Mr. Boggs that it would never work with large numbers of machines.

His response was unequivocal. “Seems Ethernet does not work in theory,” he said, “only in practice.”"

Frustrated by vaccine inequity, a South African lab rushes to replicate Moderna’s shot; The Washington Post, November 28, 2021

Lesley Wroughton, The Washington Post ; Frustrated by vaccine inequity, a South African lab rushes to replicate Moderna’s shot

"At the World Trade Organization (WTO), trade ministers had been scheduled to begin meetings Tuesday over a contentious proposal by South Africa and India to temporarily waive intellectual property rights on coronavirus vaccines and therapies or find a way to allow developing countries to access the technologies. The meeting has been postponed because of the omicron variant. No new date has been set...

African countries have historically depended on Western donors and United Nations-backed programs such as the vaccine alliance known as Gavi, a partnership of donors and pharmaceutical companies that buys vaccines at lower prices and makes them available to countries that need them. Covax, a vaccine marketplace that was meant to secure coronavirus inoculations for developing countries, has struggled to access enough supplies during the pandemic...

Moderna has said it will not prosecute those found to be infringing on its covid-related patents during the pandemic, which amounts to an informal waiver, said Marie-Paule Kieny, a French virologist who chairs the U.N.-backed Medicine Patent Pool, which is part of the WHO’s efforts in Africa.

The concern with a waiver, Kieny said, is what happens once the pandemic ends. Any broader waiver agreed on at the WTO talks would likely have a time limit, she said, without a commitment from the drugmakers to enter into licensing agreements.

She said companies should negotiate now with drugmakers such as Moderna to reach formal licensing agreements before the pandemic is over."

Stop talking about AI ethics. It’s time to talk about power.; MIT Technology Review, April 23, 2021

 Karen Hao, MIT Technology Review;

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Stop talking about AI ethics. It’s time to talk about power.

"If there’s been a real trap in the tech sector for the last decade, it’s that the theory of change has always centered engineering. It’s always been, “If there’s a problem, there’s a tech fix for it.” And only recently are we starting to see that broaden out to “Oh, well, if there’s a problem, then regulation can fix it. Policymakers have a role.”

But I think we need to broaden that out even further. We have to say also: Where are the civil society groups, where are the activists, where are the advocates who are addressing issues of climate justice, labor rights, data protection? How do we include them in these discussions? How do we include affected communities?

In other words, how do we make this a far deeper democratic conversation around how these systems are already influencing the lives of billions of people in primarily unaccountable ways that live outside of regulation and democratic oversight?

In that sense, this book is trying to de-center tech and starting to ask bigger questions around: What sort of world do we want to live in?""

4 Ways AI Education and Ethics Will Disrupt Society in 2019; EdSurge, January 28, 2019

Tara Chklovski, EdSurge; 4 Ways AI Education and Ethics Will Disrupt Society in 2019

 "I see four AI use and ethics trends set to disrupt classrooms and conference rooms. Education focused on deeper learning and understanding of this transformative technology will be critical to furthering the debate and ensuring positive progress that protects social good."