Adam Liptak, The New York Times; Supreme Court Keeps Ruling in Trump’s Favor, but Doesn’t Say Why
"In clearing the way for President Trump’s efforts to transform American government, the Supreme Court has issued a series of orders that often lacked a fundamental characteristic of most judicial work: an explanation of the court’s rationale."
Frank Bruni, The New York Times; I’m Watching the Sacrifice of College’s Soul
"At dinner recently with fellow professors, the conversation turned to two topics that have been unavoidable these past few years. The first was grade inflation — and the reality that getting A’s seldom requires any herculean effort and doesn’t distinguish one bright consultant-to-be from the next. Many students, accordingly, redirect their energies away from the classroom and the library. Less deep reading. More shrewd networking.gr
The second topic was A.I. Given its advancing sophistication, should we surrender to it? Accept that students will use it without detection to cull a semester’s worth of material and sculpt their paragraphs? Perhaps we just teach them how to fashion the most effective prompts for bots? Perhaps the future of college instruction lies in whatever slivers of mental endeavor can’t be outsourced to these digital know-it-alls.
And perhaps a certain idea of college — a certain ideal of college — is dying...
I’m not under the illusion that college used to be regarded principally in such high-minded terms. From the G.I. Bill onward, it has been held up rightfully as an engine of social mobility, a ladder of professional opportunity, yielding greater wealth for its graduates and society both.
But there was a concurrent sense that it contributed mightily to the civic good — that it made society culturally and morally richer. That feeling is now fighting for survival. So much over the past quarter century has transformed Americans’ relationship to higher education in ways that degrade its loftier goals. The corpus of college lumbers on, but some of its soul is missing."
Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski , ProPublica; Kristi Noem Secretly Took a Cut of Political Donations
"There is nothing remarkable about a politician raising money for nonprofits and other groups that promote their campaigns or agendas. What’s unusual, experts said, is for a politician to keep some of the money for themselves.
“If donors to these nonprofits are not just holding the keys to an elected official’s political future but also literally providing them with their income, that’s new and disturbing,” said Daniel Weiner, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who now leads the Brennan Center’s work on campaign finance."
ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
A computer science conference with a cross-disciplinary focus that brings together researchers and practitioners interested in fairness, accountability, and transparency in socio-technical systems.
"Algorithmic systems are being adopted in a growing number of contexts, fueled by big data. These systems filter, sort, score, recommend, personalize, and otherwise shape human experience, increasingly making or informing decisions with major impact on access to, e.g., credit, insurance, healthcare, parole, social security, and immigration. Although these systems may bring myriad benefits, they also contain inherent risks, such as codifying and entrenching biases; reducing accountability, and hindering due process; they also increase the information asymmetry between individuals whose data feed into these systems and big players capable of inferring potentially relevant information.
ACM FAccT is an interdisciplinary conference dedicated to bringing together a diverse community of scholars from computer science, law, social sciences, and humanities to investigate and tackle issues in this emerging area. Research challenges are not limited to technological solutions regarding potential bias, but include the question of whether decisions should be outsourced to data- and code-driven computing systems. We particularly seek to evaluate technical solutions with respect to existing problems, reflecting upon their benefits and risks; to address pivotal questions about economic incentive structures, perverse implications, distribution of power, and redistribution of welfare; and to ground research on fairness, accountability, and transparency in existing legal requirements."
Gates Cambridge; Global South voices ‘marginalised in AI Ethics’
"A Gates Cambridge Scholar is first author of a paper how AI Ethics is sidelining Global South voices, reinforcing marginalisation.
The study, Distributive Epistemic Injustice in AI Ethics: A Co-productionist Account of Global North-South Politics in Knowledge Production, was published by the Association for Computing Machinery and is based on a study of nearly 6,000 AI Ethics publications between 1960 and 2024. Its first author is Abdullah Hasan Safir [2024 – pictured above], who is doing a PhD in Interdisciplinary Design. Other co-authors include Gates Cambridge Scholars Ramit Debnath[2018] and Kerry McInerney [2017].
The findings were recently presented at the ACM’s FAccT conference, considered one of the top AI Ethics conferences in the world. They show that experts from the Global North currently legitimise their expertise in AI Ethics through dynamic citational and collaborative practices in knowledge production within the field, including co-citation and institutional of AI Ethics."
American Psychological Association; Ethical guidance for AI in the professional practice of health service psychology
"Artificial intelligence (AI) is developing rapidly and is increasingly being integrated into psychological practice. Many AI-driven tools are now available to assist with clinical decision-making, documentation, or patient engagement. These tools hold promises for improving access and efficiency, but they also raise ethical concerns that require careful consideration to safeguard patient well-being and trust.
APA’s Ethical Guidance for AI in the Professional Practice of Health Service Psychology (PDF, 126KB) was developed specifically for health service psychologists who want to ethically integrate AI into their practice. This document offers practical considerations and recommendations tailored to real-world clinical settings.
Whether you’re exploring new technologies or seeking guidance on tools already in use, this resource is designed to help you navigate the evolving landscape of AI while staying aligned with ethical responsibilities in psychological care."
Jennifer Orsi, Poynter ; A lot has changed since we created AI ethics guidelines for newsrooms. Here’s what you need to know now
"More than a year ago, the Poynter Institute published a “starter kit” for newsrooms to create their own ethics policies for using artificial intelligence in their journalism. AI use in newsrooms has grown swiftly since then — and gotten more complex — and the team behind the starter kit has just published a new update,adding more information for visual journalism and for those developing products in newsrooms.
“One of the biggest things we heard over the last year was, the editorial guidelines are great, but what do you visual teams do? What is allowed there?” said Poynter faculty member and MediaWise director Alex Mahadevan, who helps lead Poynter’s AI work. “And people building these products — chatbots and such — what are their ethical obligations?”...
Much of the new material was devised and workshopped during Poynter’s second Summit on AI, Ethics and Journalism, which took place in New York City in April, this time in partnership with The Associated Press.
Poynter published its first guidelines in March 2024, and refined them further following its first AI Summit in St. Petersburg in June 2024. Much has changed in AI use in journalism since then, Poynter leaders said.
“Before we published these guidelines, most of the newsrooms that I talk to were avoiding AI, thinking that no good could come from it,” said Kelly McBride, Poynter senior vice president and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership. “Many newsrooms are now doing tiny experiments, and many more are contemplating adding AI to their workflows.”"
Naftali Bendavid, The Washington Post; Trump attacks Watergate laws in massive shift of ethics system
"Then-Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman was 32 when, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, she voted in 1974 for three articles of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon. She spent the next few years as part of a Congress that passed wave after wave of laws to rein in future presidents.
A half-century later, Holtzman, a New York Democrat, is watching as President Donald Trump takes aim at post-Watergate reforms on transparency, spending, conflicts of interest and more. By challenging and disregarding, in letter or in spirit, this slew of 1970s laws, Trump is essentially closing the 50-year post-Watergate chapter of American history — and ushering in a new era of shaky guardrails and blurred separation of powers.
“We didn’t envision this,” Holtzman said. “We saw Nixon doing it, but he hadn’t done it on this vast a scale. Trump is saying, ‘Congress cannot tell me what to do about anything.’”...
This broad rejection of the post-Watergate laws underlines the country’s shift from an era focused on clean government and strict ethics to the rise of a president whose appeal stems in part from his willingness to violate such rules and constraints.
“There has been a collapse, at least temporarily, of the kind of outrage and ethical standards that were prevalent during the days of Watergate,” said Richard Ben-Veniste, who headed the special counsel’s Watergate Task Force."
Juliette Garside, The Guardian ; Two men jailed for life for supplying car bomb that killed Daphne Caruana Galizia
[Kip Currier: It's encouraging to see that justice can occur, even in places and situations where corruption is deeply entangled and seemingly intractable. I vividly remember learning from The Guardian's reporting about the horrific car bomb murder of courageous investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta in October 2017:
The journalist who led the Panama Papers investigation into corruption in Malta was killed on Monday in a car bomb near her home.
Daphne Caruana Galizia died on Monday afternoon when her car, a Peugeot 108, was destroyed by a powerful explosive device which blew the vehicle into several pieces and threw the debris into a nearby field.
A blogger whose posts often attracted more readers than the combined circulation of the country’s newspapers, Caruana Galizia was recently described by the Politico website as a “one-woman WikiLeaks”. Her blogs were a thorn in the side of both the establishment and underworld figures that hold sway in Europe’s smallest member state.
Her most recent revelations pointed the finger at Malta’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat, and two of his closest aides, connecting offshore companies linked to the three men with the sale of Maltese passports and payments from the government of Azerbaijan.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb-kills-panama-papers-journalist
As mentioned in the 2017 article, Galizia was reporting about corruption that involved the Maltese government at the time. Journalists like Galizia risk -- and all too often lose -- their lives to expose corruption and promote public awareness and accountability for wrongdoing.
These intrepid reporters also shed important light on the ways that the wealthy, powerful, and famous are frequently able to circumvent laws and ethical standards that apply to everyone else, as was revealed by the Panama Papers investigation.
Non-profit groups like Transparency International are committed to exposing corruption and promoting democracy and accountability:
We are Transparency International U.S. (TI US), part of the world’s largest coalition against corruption. We give voices to victims and witnesses of corruption, and work with governments, businesses, and citizens to stop the abuse of entrusted power.
In collaboration with national chapters in more than 100 countries, we are leading the fight to turn our vision of a world free from corruption into reality. Our U.S. office focuses on stemming the harms caused by illicit finance, strengthening political integrity, and promoting a positive U.S. role in global anti-corruption initiatives. Through a combination of research, advocacy, and policy, we engage with stakeholders to increase public understanding of corruption and hold institutions and individuals accountable.
My forthcoming Bloomsbury book Ethics, Information, and Technology (January 2026) examines the corrosive impacts of corruption. It also explores organizations like Transparency International that report on and educate about corrupt practices, as well as efforts to root out public trust-damaging activities and positively influence and change organizational cultures where corruption exists.
Corruption is often intertwined, too, with other ethical issues like conflicts of interest, censorship, research misconduct, misinformation and disinformation, counterfeit goods and deficits of transparency, accountability, data integrity, freedom of expression, and free and independent presses, which are critically assessed and considered in the book.]
[Excerpt]
"Two men have been sentenced to life in prison for supplying the car bomb that killed the anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta eight years ago.
The sentencing on Tuesday of Robert Agius and Jamie Vella, reported to be members of the island’s criminal underworld, marked a significant step in the long campaign to bring those charged with Caruana Galizia’s murder to justice.
Her death in October 2017 sparked outrage across Europe and embroiled Malta’s governing party in accusations of a coverup, ultimately leading to the resignation of the then prime minister, Joseph Muscat.
Prosecutors have brought charges against seven people, including a millionaire businessman who is still awaiting trial."
Zoe Kleinman , BBC; Government AI copyright plan suffers fourth House of Lords defeat
"The argument is over how best to balance the demands of two huge industries: the tech and creative sectors.
More specifically, it's about the fairest way to allow AI developers access to creative content in order to make better AI tools - without undermining the livelihoods of the people who make that content in the first place.
What's sparked it is the Data (Use and Access) Bill.
This proposed legislation was broadly expected to finish its long journey through parliament this week and sail off into the law books.
Instead, it is currently stuck in limbo, ping-ponging between the House of Lords and the House of Commons.
A government consultation proposes AI developers should have access to all content unless its individual owners choose to opt out.
But 242 members of the House of Lords disagree with the bill in its current form.
They think AI firms should be forced to disclose which copyrighted material they use to train their tools, with a view to licensing it."
Kashmir Hill , The New York Times; The Professors Are Using ChatGPT, and Some Students Aren’t Happy About It
"When ChatGPT was released at the end of 2022, it caused a panic at all levels of education because it made cheating incredibly easy. Students who were asked to write a history paper or literary analysis could have the tool do it in mere seconds. Some schools banned it while others deployed A.I. detection services, despite concerns about their accuracy.
But, oh, how the tables have turned. Now students are complaining on sites like Rate My Professors about their instructors’ overreliance on A.I. and scrutinizing course materials for words ChatGPT tends to overuse, like “crucial” and “delve.” In addition to calling out hypocrisy, they make a financial argument: They are paying, often quite a lot, to be taught by humans, not an algorithm that they, too, could consult for free."
Kate Lamb, The Guardian; ‘Fight back’: journalist taking Trump administration to court calls for media to resist attacks
"Now, she finds herself pushing against fascistic tendencies in her adopted home. “I grew up in 80s Indonesia where there was no press freedom and newspapers had to be careful what they printed to avoid government closure,” she says. “Could the US backslide that far? Not if enough people resist, and that’s why I’m fighting back.”
Her lawsuit, backed by Reporters Without Borders and four unions, argues the Trump administration, through the actions of the defendants, USAGM, and the government’s special adviser Kari Lake, are attempting to unlawfully dismantle VOA’s operations because they deem it contrary to the government’s agenda.
Widakuswara argues that Trump’s executive order is a violation of press freedom, the first amendment, and laws to prevent executive overreach, with VOA funding approved by Congress, not the president."
Eleni Courea and Dan Milmo , The Guardian; Ministers to amend data bill amid artists’ concerns over AI and copyright
"Ministers have drawn up concessions on copyright changes in an attempt to appease artists and creators before a crucial vote in parliament next week, the Guardian has learned.
The government will promise to carry out an economic impact assessment of its proposed copyright changes and to publish reports on issues including transparency, licensing and access to data for AI developers.
The concessions are designed to mollify concerns in parliament and in creative industries about the government’s proposed shake-up of copyright rules."
Gwendolyn Reece, Inside Higher Ed; We Already Have an Ethics Framework for AI
"We need to develop an ethical framework for assessing uses of new information technology—and specifically AI—that can guide individuals and institutions as they consider employing, promoting and licensing these tools for various functions. There are two main factors about AI that complicate ethical analysis. The first is that an interaction with AI frequently continues past the initial user-AI transaction; information from that transaction can become part of the system’s training set. Secondly, there is often a significant lack of transparency about what the AI model is doing under the surface, making it difficult to assess. We should demand as much transparency as possible from tool providers.
Academia already has an agreed-upon set of ethical principles and processes for assessing potential interventions. The principles in “The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research” govern our approach to research with humans and can fruitfully be applied if we think of potential uses of AI as interventions. These principles not only benefit academia in making assessments about using AI but also provide a framework for technology developers thinking through their design requirements."
TyLisa Johnson, Poynter ; When was the last time AI made you laugh? Scenes from the 2025 Summit on AI, Ethics and Journalism
"This year’s Summit on AI, Ethics and Journalism, led by Poynter and The Associated Press, unfolded over two days in New York City’s financial district at the AP’s headquarters.
Here’s a brief summit recap through images:"
Stephen Losey, Navy Times; Pentagon cuts off Hegseth town hall webcast after transparency pledge
"The Pentagon cut off a webcast of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s first town hall with troops and department employees Friday as soon as questions began, and shortly after Hegseth promised to be transparent with service members and the public.
Hegseth delivered about 15 minutes of opening remarks, which touched on issues such as grooming standards, readiness, border security and the administration’s desire to root out diversity, equity and inclusion programs from the military, before opening the floor to questions...
The broadcast ended less than two minutes after Hegseth pledged to be open with service members and the public.
“I appreciate the service so many of you give,” Hegseth said. “I know so many people watching. It’s the honor of a lifetime to come alongside you. No one will work harder. No one’s going to be more — attempt to be more transparent with the American people and with you.”
When asked a follow-up question about why the department stopped broadcasting when questions began, the Pentagon’s press office said, “The [defense secretary’s] opening remarks were televised to allow a larger audience. The Q&A portion was open to in-person participants only.”
It does not appear the Pentagon broadcast any portion of town halls held by Hegseth’s predecessor, Lloyd Austin.
However, the Pentagon did not indicate in its Friday morning email announcing Hegseth’s town hall that the questioning portion would not be broadcast. The webpage with the town hall feed originally indicated the broadcast was scheduled to run for about an hour and a half...
Hegseth said one of his top priorities is “restoring the warrior ethos,” before harshly criticizing the Pentagon’s previous focus on improving diversity in the ranks.
“I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is, ‘Our diversity is our strength,’” Hegseth said. “I think our strength is our unity. Our strength is our shared purpose, regardless of our background, regardless of how we grew up, regardless of our gender, regardless of our race. In this department, we will treat everyone equally, we will treat everyone with respect and we will judge you as an individual by your merit and by your commitment to the team and the mission.”
The Trump administration views diversity, equity and inclusion programs — referred to as DEI — as efforts to divide the military instead of uniting it, Hegseth said.
But the Pentagon’s initial efforts to comply with the administration’s DEI orders have been rocky."
Danielle Wallace Fox News; Rubio named acting director of another US government agency: report
"Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was tapped as the acting director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) just days ago, is taking on another new role in President Donald Trump's new administration.
Rubio is now also serving as the acting director of the U.S. Archives, ABC News reported,citing a high-level official. Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department for comment, but they did not immediately respond.
Trump signaled last month his intention of replacing the now-former national archivist Colleen Shogan, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, during a brief phone interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt. The National Archives notified the Justice Department in early 2022 over classified documents Trump allegedly took with him to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after leaving office. That would later result in an FBI raid, and Trump being indicted by former special counsel Jack Smith. However, Biden nominated Shogan to run the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) later in 2022, and the Senate confirmed her the following year.
The source told ABC News that Rubio has been the acting archivist since shortly after Trump was sworn in as the 47th president last month."
Laura Barrón-López , Shrai Popat, PBS News; Trump’s firing of independent watchdogs raises concerns about government fraud and ethics
"In another sweeping move of his second term, President Trump fired more than a dozen inspectors general, the non-partisan watchdogs appointed to protect against abuses of power, waste and mismanagement across federal agencies. White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López discussed the impact with Glenn Fine, former inspector general for the Department of Justice."
David Smith, The Guardian ; Ethics watchdog issues conflict of interest warning to Musk’s Doge agency
"A leading ethics watchdog has issued warnings to Donald Trump’s billionaire ally Elon Musk and the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), an agency Trump has stated he will create, claiming its use of encrypted messaging apps potentially violates the Federal Records Act (FRA).
American Oversight, which uses litigation to obtain public records and expose government misconduct, argues that Musk’s leadership of Doge raises “significant ethical concerns about potential conflicts of interest”, given his business empire and the substantial impact that Doge could have on federal agencies.
The warnings stem from reports that members of Doge, which aims to carry out dramatic cuts to the US government, are using the encrypted messaging app Signal with an auto-delete feature, which could hinder the preservation of official records."
