Maryland lawmaker-doctor won’t face ethics violation for tuning into legislative meetings from the operating room; The Baltimore Sun, November 19, 2021

 PAMELA WOOD, The Baltimore Sun; Maryland lawmaker-doctor won’t face ethics violation for tuning into legislative meetings from the operating room

 "Hill had initially defended her decision to join video meetings while at work as a doctor, saying her patients knew about it and she wasn’t putting them in any danger.

A Board of Physicians investigation found that one patient did not know Hill tuned into a legislative meeting, while the other patient was told about 10 minutes before surgery, but no consent paperwork was on file. Both legislative meetings where she appeared on camera from the operating room were streamed on the General Assembly’s website and YouTube channels."

Spotsylvania School Board rescinds explicit book ban; The Free-Lance Star, November 16, 2021

 

AdeleUphaus

, The Free-Lance Star; Spotsylvania School Board rescinds explicit book ban

"Spotsylvania County schools will not remove “sexually explicit” books from library shelves or conduct a full audit of library holdings—but some School Board members said they will continue to take a stance against the inclusion of what they view as offensive material in school library books.

The board on Monday night rescinded last week’s directive to pull books with “explicit” content from shelves amid backlash from the public.

The 5–2 vote was not supported by Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail or Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, who last week made comments about burning books with such content.

“I think we should throw those books on the fire,” Abuismail said at the Nov. 8 school board meeting, while Twigg said many “would like to see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”

The board’s vote came shortly after midnight, following four-and-a-half hours of public comment from dozens of parents, students, teachers and librarians. Nearly all of those who made comments at the special-called meeting spoke passionately in support of libraries and books."

AMA calls for privacy guidelines governing mail-order DNA tests; American Medical Association (AMA), November 16, 2021

American Medical Association (AMA); AMA calls for privacy guidelines governing mail-order DNA tests

"Taking a cheek swab and sending it to a mail-order DNA testing company takes only a few minutes, but the information might live on forever—and become widely available.

At its Interim Special meeting, the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates expressed concern that the privacy laws governing genetic information do not apply to these over-the-counter tests. The AMA will work with federal agencies to strengthen the privacy safeguards.

“People curious about their ancestry shouldn’t be worried that the data extracted from saliva will be shared,” said Thomas J. Madejski, M.D., a member of the AMA Board of Trustees. “This can have serious consequences, and again highlights the need to demand privacy for health care records, even seemingly innocuous ones.”...

While federal law prevents health insurance companies and employers from discriminating based on genetic information, these restrictions do not apply to life, disability, or long-term care insurance companies, which can result in insurance application rejections. Users of consumer genetic testing should be advised of the potential risks of their participation.

The AMA will advocate to add long-term care, life, and disability insurance to the federal law overseeing genetic testing. The AMA also will support privacy standards that would prohibit pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, universities, and other entities with financial ties to genetic testing companies from sharing identified information without the consent of the tested individual."

Responsible AI Guidelines: Operationalizing DoD's Ethical Principles for AI; Defense Innovation Unit

Defense Innovation Unit; Responsible AI Guidelines: Operationalizing DoD's Ethical Principles for AI

"About DIU's Responsible AI Initiative

DIU launched a strategic initiative in March 2020 to implement the DoD’s Ethical Principles for Artificial Intelligence (AI) into its commercial prototyping and acquisition programs. For over a year, DIU explored methods for implementing these principles with DoD partners in several AI prototype projects that cover applications including, but not limited to, predictive health, underwater autonomy, predictive maintenance, and supply chain analysis. The result is a set of Responsible AI Guidelines that are informed by DIU’s practical experience, but also draw upon best practices from government, non-profit, academic, and industry partners. 

DIU will continue collaborating with experts and stakeholders from government, industry, academia, and civil society to further develop the RAI Guidelines. To provide feedback on the RAI Guidelines or schedule a discussion on how to implement these guidelines in your department or agency, please feel free to email: responsibleai@diu.mil."

The Department of Defense is issuing AI ethics guidelines for tech contractors; MIT Technology Review, November 16, 2021

 MIT Technology Review

• archive page, MIT Technology Review; 

Will Douglas Heaven, MIT Technology Review; The Department of Defense is issuing AI ethics guidelines for tech contractors

"In a bid to promote transparency, the Defense Innovation Unit, which awards DoD contracts to companies, has released what it calls “responsible artificial intelligence” guidelines that it will require third-party developers to use when building AI for the military, whether that AI is for an HR system or target recognition.

The guidelines provide a step-by-step process for companies to follow during planning, development, and deployment. They include procedures for identifying who might use the technology, who might be harmed by it, what those harms might be, and how they might be avoided—both before the system is built and once it is up and running.

“There are no other guidelines that exist, either within the DoD or, frankly, the United States government, that go into this level of detail,” says Bryce Goodman at the Defense Innovation Unit, who coauthored the guidelines."

NY ethics commission rescinds approval for Cuomo book deal; AP, November 16, 2021

Marina Villeneuve, AP; NY ethics commission rescinds approval for Cuomo book deal

"Republican Commissioner David McNamara said state property, resources and personnel were used to prepare, write, edit and publish the book “contrary to the representations” made on Cuomo’s behalf.

Cuomo has acknowledged that state employees helped with tasks including editing the manuscript. 

But he’s claimed that those employees were “volunteering.”"

Thinking Through the Ethics of New Tech…Before There’s a Problem; Harvard Business Review, November 9, 2021

Beena Ammanath , Harvard Business Review; Thinking Through the Ethics of New Tech…Before There’s a Problem

"Appoint a Chief Tech Ethics Officer

The best methods to address the ethics of new technologies are not going to be one size fits all. A broad range of potential impacts may need to be examined and a varied collection of potential risks may have to be mitigated. But most organizations would likely benefit from placing a single individual in charge of these processes. This is why organizations should consider a chief ethics officer — or a chief technology ethics officer — who would have both the responsibility and the authority to marshal necessary resources.

Some industries have grappled with trust and ethics challenges for decades. Hospitals and research centers have long employed ethics officers to oversee questions in research projects and clinical medical practice, for instance. Technology can certainly raise new concerns, even here: Think of a medical school implementing a VR tool to help augment the competency of surgeons and the importance of examining whether the tool works equally well across race or gender. But the broader point is that trust and ethics issues can be managed effectively — as long as the proper leadership commitments are made.

With a chief technology ethics officer in place, it remains important to involve specialists from a number of different disciplines, as discussed previously. These people may come from the fields of anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and other areas. Depending on the issues presented by a specific technology or application, it may be necessary to seek out people who bring knowledge of law, politics, regulation, education, or media."

The NIH and Moderna Are Fighting Over Who Owns Their Vaccine; Intelligencer, November 10, 2021

Matt Stieb, Intelligencer; The NIH and Moderna Are Fighting Over Who Owns Their Vaccine

"While last year the government was calling the shot the “NIH-Moderna COVID-19 vaccine,” the biotech giant filed a patent made public this week in which it found that “only Moderna’s scientists” designed the vaccine. The patent, filed in July, is specific to the genetic sequence creating spike proteins, which allow vaccine recipients to build antibodies to block the virus when the body is actually exposed. As the New York Times reports, the NIH was surprised by the attempt at a solo effort. If the two parties cannot figure out a way to split the credit, the government will have to determine if it will take the expensive step of going to court. Already, the U.S. has paid $10 billion in taxpayer funds for Moderna to help create the vaccine, test its efficacy, and provide shots for the federal government."

Why Culture And Ethics Are More Important Than Ever; Forbes, October 28, 2021

Roger Trapp , Forbes; Why Culture And Ethics Are More Important Than Ever

"In an interview on the eve of the document’s publication, Ty Francis, chief advisory officer of LRN, a consultancy that advises organisations around the world on ethics and regulatory compliance, said that people working in the lower reaches of businesses often did not feel the culture in ways that middle managers and above did...

LRN claims the new report — The LRN Benchmark of Ethical Culture — breaks fresh ground through, in addition to setting out how a strong culture improves business performance, providing a framework for measuring it. Its ethical performance model looks at such aspects as the extent to which an organisation is purpose-driven and ethical, whether ethical behaviour is a factor in rewards, whether standards of conduct are applied consistently across the organisation, levels of trust and transparency and whether the leadership models an ethical culture. It also assesses such areas as employee loyalty, customer satisfaction, innovation, adaptability and business growth. LRN’s extensive surveys have led it to divide organisations into four groups, or archetypes, depending on their progress towards achieving ethical cultures. These range from Inspired in that they exemplify all aspects of an ethical culture, through Competent, which covers organisations that are well on the way towards Inspired through building the right structures and the like, and Requisite, which have established cultures but do not inspire employees, to Nascent, which lag behind the others and can actually be toxic, with employees unable to agree that corporate ethics, leadership support or a healthy work atmosphere are present. Those at the top outperform the others according to conventional business criteria by about 40%, thus making a strong case for investment."

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.”"

 

Learning the Art of Civil Discourse; Ole Miss University of Mississippi News, October 22, 2021

STAFF REPORT,  Ole Miss University of Mississippi News; Learning the Art of Civil Discourse

Students apply ethical theory for decision-making and policy

"The Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Mississippi is offering two events in the next few weeks exploring the ethical issues of timely topics.

Just Conversations is a fun event run by students from the Ethical Policy Debates class to explore ethical issues and think about potential solutions through low-key conversation on two hot-button issues. The event is an in-person reception from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Monday (Oct. 25) in the Bryant Hall Gallery. Register by 5 p.m. Friday (Oct. 22) at https://forms.gle/xCS1QNTpZvnvtxQv9.

The second event, The Great Debate of 2021, poses the question “Should patents be waived on COVID-19 vaccines to increase global vaccination rates?” The virtual event on Nov. 11 features presentation of a debate followed by a Q&A between the teams, expert panelists and the audience. All are welcome to attend virtually, especially members of the campus community.

“The Dialogue and Deliberation Initiative events, both Just Conversations and The Great Debate of 2021, bring people together to discuss ethical problems that involve multiple perspectives, competing interests and complex empirical issues in a civil format for productive outcomes,” said Deborah Mower, a UM associate professor of philosophy and the Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Hume Bryant Associate Professor of Ethics.

“We will be focusing on three topics from the slate of fall 2021 Regional Ethics Bowl cases.”

Ole Miss students are conducting research to prepare for discussions about rock climbing on federally protected indigenous cultural sites, the Disney company image and COVID-19 vaccine patents.

“There is no better educational model than the Ethics Bowl for teaching students how to apply ethical theory for decision-making and policy while at the same time fostering skills crucial for civil dialogue,” Mower said."

Ethics By Design: Steps To Prepare For AI Rules Changes; Forbes, October 21, 2021

Ursula Morgenstern, Forbes; Ethics By Design: Steps To Prepare For AI Rules Changes

"Ethics by design is a different way of thinking for companies. In addition to considering profit-driven outcomes, companies will now need to assess the harm and impact of their practices and provide oversight to manage AI’s risks. 

The AI Act sets the stage for change. Proposed in April, the legislation aims at mitigating the harmful use of AI. It facilitates the transparent, ethical use of AI — and keeps machine intelligence under human control. The regulations would outlaw four AI technologies that cause physical and psychological harm: social scoring, dark-pattern AI, manipulation and real-time biometric identification systems. 

Equally important to companies are the act’s proposed penalties. Fines for noncompliance are significantly higher than those for the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), ranging up to 30 million Euros, or 6% of annual revenue. In contrast, the GDPR imposesfines of up to 20 million Euros or 4% of revenue."

How Facebook neglected the rest of the world, fueling hate speech and violence in India; The Washington Post, October 24, 2021

 

Cat Zakrzewski

, 

Gerrit De Vynck

, 

Niha Masih

 and 

Shibani Mahtani

 ,

The Washington Post; How Facebook neglected the rest of the world, fueling hate speech and violence in India

A trove of internal documents show Facebook didn’t invest in key safety protocols in the company’s largest market.

"In February 2019, not long before India’s general election, a pair of Facebook employees set up a dummy account to better understand the experience of a new user in the company’s largest market. They made a profile of a 21-year-old woman, a resident of North India, and began to track what Facebook showed her.

At first, her feed filled with soft-core porn and other, more harmless, fare. Then violence flared in Kashmir, the site of a long-running territorial dispute between India and Pakistan. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, campaigning for reelection as a nationalist strongman, unleashed retaliatory airstrikes that India claimed hit a terrorist training camp.

Soon, without any direction from the user, the Facebook account was flooded with pro-Modi propaganda and anti-Muslim hate speech. “300 dogs died now say long live India, death to Pakistan,” one post said, over a background of laughing emoji faces. “These are pakistani dogs,” said the translated caption of one photo of dead bodies lined-up on stretchers, hosted in the News Feed.

An internal Facebook memo, reviewed by The Washington Post, called the dummy account test an “integrity nightmare” that underscored the vast difference between the experience of Facebook in India and what U.S. users typically encounter. One Facebook worker noted the staggering number of dead bodies."

EXPLAINER: Just what are ‘The Facebook Papers,’ anyway?; Associated Press, October 25, 2021

Associated Press ; EXPLAINER: Just what are ‘The Facebook Papers,’ anyway?

"The Facebook Papers project represents a unique collaboration among 17 American news organizations, including The Associated Press. Journalists from a variety of newsrooms, large and small, worked together to gain access to thousands of pages of internal company documents obtained by Frances Haugen, the former Facebook product manager-turned-whistleblower. 

A separate consortium of European news outlets had access to the same set of documents, and members of both groups began publishing content related to their analysis of the materials at 7 a.m. EDT on Monday, Oct. 25. That date and time was set by the partner news organizations to give everyone in the consortium an opportunity to fully analyze the documents, report out relevant details, and to give Facebook’s public relations staff ample time to respond to questions and inquiries raised by that reporting.

Each member of the consortium pursued its own independent reporting on the document contents and their significance. Every member also had the opportunity to attend group briefings to gain information and context about the documents.

The launch of The Facebook Papers project follows similar reporting by The Wall Street Journal, sourced from the same documents, as well as Haugen’s appearance on the CBS television show “60 Minutes” and her Oct. 5 Capitol Hill testimony before a U.S. Senate subcommittee."

Copyright Law and Machine Learning for AI: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?; Co-Sponsored by the United States Copyright Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Tuesday, October 26, 2021 10 AM - 3 PM EDT

 Copyright Law and Machine Learning for AI: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?

Co-Sponsored by the United States Copyright Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office

"The U.S. Copyright Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office are hosting an October 26, 2021, conference that will explore machine learning in practice, how existing copyright laws apply to the training of artificial intelligence, and what the future may hold in this fast-moving policy space. The event will comprise three one-hour sessions, with a lunch break, and is expected to run from 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. eastern time. 

Due to the state of the COVID-19 pandemic, the on-site portion of the program initially scheduled to take place at the Library of Congress's Montpelier Room has been canceled. All sessions will still take place online as planned. Participants must register to attend this free, public event.

Download the agenda here."

AI-ethics pioneer Margaret Mitchell on her five-year plan at open-source AI startup Hugging Face; Emerging Tech Brew, October 4, 2021

Hayden Field, Emerging Tech Brew ; AI-ethics pioneer Margaret Mitchell on her five-year plan at open-source AI startup Hugging Face

"Hugging Face wants to bring these powerful tools to more people. Its mission: Help companies build, train, and deploy AI models—specifically natural language processing (NLP) systems—via its open-source tools, like Transformers and Datasets. It also offers pretrained models available for download and customization.

So what does it mean to play a part in “democratizing” these powerful NLP tools? We chatted with Mitchell about the split from Google, her plans for her new role, and her near-future predictions for responsible AI."

FACEBOOK EXEC: WE'RE NOT LIKE BIG TOBACCO BECAUSE SO MANY PEOPLE USE OUR PRODUCT; Vanity Fair, October 4, 2021

Eric Lutz, Vanity Fair; FACEBOOK EXEC: WE'RE NOT LIKE BIG TOBACCO BECAUSE SO MANY PEOPLE USE OUR PRODUCT

"“No one at Facebook is malevolent,” Haugen added, “but the incentives are misaligned.”

That, of course, speaks to the big issue facing Mark Zuckerberg: Though he insists that his platform is a force for good that is occasionally corrupted by the uglier parts of humanity, it may in fact be the case that the platform is corrupt by its very nature—and that talk of a safer Facebook, as Clegg suggested the company was working to deliver, is a bit like the “safer cigarettes” tobacco companies began marketing in response to health concerns more than half a century ago. That comparison, between Big Tech and Big Tobacco, has been made a lot recently, including by yours truly. But, asked by CNN’s Brian Stelter Sunday about the parallels, Clegg dismissed them out of hand as “misleading.”

“A part of me feels like I’m interviewing the head of a tobacco company right now,” Stelter said. “Part of me feels like I’m interviewing the head of a giant casino that gets rich by tricking its customers and making them addicted.”

“I think they’re profoundly false,” Clegg said of the analogies. “I don’t think it’s remotely like tobacco. I mean, social media apps, they’re apps. People download them on their phones, and why do they do that? I mean, there has to be a reason why a third of the world’s population enjoys using these apps.” 

His point about free will is well-taken; Zuckerberg obviously isn’t forcing anyone to scroll. But rejecting comparisons to an addictive product by pointing out how many people around the world use it hardly seems like a great defense; in fact, as NPR’s David Gura pointed out, the line actually made the parallels more pronounced."

Facebook runs the coward’s playbook to smear the whistleblower; The Verge, October 5, 2021

Elizabeth Lopatto, The Verge; Facebook runs the coward’s playbook to smear the whistleblower

 

"Facebook has chosen to respond to whistleblower Frances Haugen in the most cowardly way possible: by hiding Mark Zuckerberg, the man ultimately responsible for Facebook’s decisions, and beginning the process of trying to smear and discredit Haugen.

This is some Big Tobacco bullshit — precisely what sleazeball PR guru John Scanlon was hired to do when Jeffrey Wigand blew the whistle on tobacco company Brown and Williamson. Scanlon’s task was to change “the story of B&W to a narrative about Wigand’s personality.”

Of course, that strategy “backfired completely,” Vanity Fair reported in 2004. It probably won’t work here, either. One senator, Edward Markey of Massachusetts, has already called Haugen “a 21st-century American hero,” adding that “our nation owes you a huge debt of gratitude.”...

But the funniest part is the absence of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO and the only shareholder with the power to replace himself. Zuckerberg started Facebook as a Hot-or-Not clone — which almost certainly would negatively affect teen girls’ self-esteem. (At least he is consistent, I guess.) The decisions Haugen alleges, which put profits ahead of morals, have also enriched him more than anyone else. The buck stops, quite literally, with him. So where is he?"

Facebook whistleblower: The company knows it’s harming people and the buck stops with Zuckerberg; CNBC, October 5, 2021

Lauren Feiner, CNBC; Facebook whistleblower: The company knows it’s harming people and the buck stops with Zuckerberg

[Frances Haugen] also said she believes a healthy social media platform is possible to achieve and that Facebook presents “false choices ... between connecting with those you love online and your personal privacy.”...

‘Big Tobacco moment’

Opening the hearing Tuesday, Blumenthal called on Zuckerberg to come before the committee to explain the company’s actions. He called the company “morally bankrupt” for rejecting reforms offered by its own researchers.

Haugen said Zuckerberg’s unique position as CEO and founder with a majority of voting shares in the company makes him accountable only to himself.'

There are “no similarly powerful companies that are as unilaterally controlled,” Haugen said.

Blumenthal said the disclosures by Haugen ushered in a “Big Tobacco moment,” a comparison Haugen echoed in her own testimony. Blumenthal recalled his own work suing tobacco companies as Connecticut’s attorney general, remembering a similar time when enforcers learned those companies had conducted research that showed the harmful effects of their products.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Commerce Committee, called the hearing “part of the process of demystifying Big Tech.”"

Here are 4 key points from the Facebook whistleblower's testimony on Capitol Hill; NPR, October 5, 2021

Bobby Allyn, NPR; Here are 4 key points from the Facebook whistleblower's testimony on Capitol Hill

"Research shows Facebook coveted young users, despite health concerns.

Of particular concern to lawmakers on Tuesday was Instagram's impact on young children.

Haugen has leaked one Facebook study that found that 13.5 percent of U.K. teen girls in one survey say their suicidal thoughts became more frequent.

Another leaked study found 17% of teen girls say their eating disorders got worse after using Instagram.

About 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse, Facebook's researchers found, which was first reported by the Journal. 

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., accused Facebook of intentionally targeting children under age 13 with an "addictive" product — despite the app requiring users be 13 years or older. 

"It is clear that Facebook prioritizes profit over the well-being of children and all users," she said. 

Blumenthal echoed this concern. 

"Facebook exploited teens using powerful algorithms that amplified their insecurities," Blumenthal said. "I hope we will discuss as to whether there is such a thing as a safe algorithm.""

Whistleblower says Facebook is a US 'national security issue'; Fox News, October 5, 2021

Caitlin McFall |, Fox News; Whistleblower says Facebook is a US 'national security issue'

"Haugen said her testimony was not an attempt to shut down Facebook, but rather to push Congress to dive into the complex arena of regulating social media giants.

Democrats and Republicans applauded her testimony and in rare bipartisan fashion agreed more is needed to be done to address growing concerns surrounding the social media network." 

Facebook whistleblower revealed on '60 Minutes,' says the company prioritized profit over public good; CNN, October 4, 2021

Clare Duffy , CNN; Facebook whistleblower revealed on '60 Minutes,' says the company prioritized profit over public good

"The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook, and Facebook over and over again chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money," Haugen told "60 Minutes." 

"60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelly quoted one internal Facebook (FB) document as saying: "We have evidence from a variety of sources that hate speech, divisive political speech and misinformation on Facebook and the family of apps are affecting societies around the world.""

Whistleblower: Facebook is misleading the public on progress against hate speech, violence, misinformation; 60 Minutes, October 4, 2021

Scott Pelley, 60 Minutes ; Whistleblower: Facebook is misleading the public on progress against hate speech, violence, misinformation

"Her name is Frances Haugen. That is a fact that Facebook has been anxious to know since last month when an anonymous former employee filed complaints with federal law enforcement. The complaints say Facebook's own research shows that it amplifies hate, misinformation and political unrest—but the company hides what it knows. One complaint alleges that Facebook's Instagram harms teenage girls. What makes Haugen's complaints unprecedented is the trove of private Facebook research she took when she quit in May. The documents appeared first, last month, in the Wall Street Journal. But tonight, Frances Haugen is revealing her identity to explain why she became the Facebook whistleblower.

• Facebook's response to 60 Minutes' report, "The Facebook Whistleblower"
• Facebook whistleblower says company incentivizes "angry, polarizing, divisive content"
  
• Watch Live: Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testifies before Senate committee
  

Frances Haugen: The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money. 

Frances Haugen is 37, a data scientist from Iowa with a degree in computer engineering and a Harvard master's degree in business. For 15 years she's worked for companies including Google and Pinterest.

Frances Haugen: I've seen a bunch of social networks and it was substantially worse at Facebook than anything I'd seen before."

Is A.I. the problem? Or are we?; The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times, June 4, 2021

The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times; Is A.I. the problem? Or are we?

"One of my projects this year is to get a better handle on this debate. A.I., after all, isn’t some force only future human beings will face. It’s here now, deciding what advertisements are served to us online, how bail is set after we commit crimes and whether our jobs will exist in a couple of years. It is both shaped by and reshaping politics, economics and society. It’s worth understanding.

Brian Christian’s recent book “The Alignment Problem” is the best book on the key technical and moral questions of A.I. that I’ve read. At its center is the term from which the book gets its name. “Alignment problem” originated in economics as a way to describe the fact that the systems and incentives we create often fail to align with our goals. And that’s a central worry with A.I., too: that we will create something to help us that will instead harm us, in part because we didn’t understand how it really worked or what we had actually asked it to do.

So this conversation is about the various alignment problems associated with A.I. We discuss what machine learning is and how it works, how governments and corporations are using it right now, what it has taught us about human learning, the ethics of how humans should treat sentient robots, the all-important question of how A.I. developers plan to make profits, what kinds of regulatory structures are possible when we’re dealing with algorithms we don’t really understand, the way A.I. reflects and then supercharges the inequities that exist in our society, the saddest Super Mario Bros. game I’ve ever heard of, why the problem of automation isn’t so much job loss as dignity loss and much more."

The Opportunity for an Ethical Fire Service; Firehouse, June 2, 2021

Kris Blume , Firehouse; The Opportunity for an Ethical Fire Service

Ethics are an integral part of today’s fire departments, and Kris Blume argues that without a consistent and modern ethical framework, departments will decline.

"Inclusivity

Ethics are an integral part of a 21st century fire department and can help to lessen the negative effects that many departments face today. With a consistent ethical framework, departments can become coalescent and create an inclusive working environment for everyone, from probationary firefighter to fire chief. The reciprocal benefit will be demonstrated by each member of the department and the community that’s served. Without this approach to ethics, departments throughout the nation will continue to decline amid higher urban populations that stress outdated ethical frameworks."

Privacy laws need updating after Google deal with HCA Healthcare, medical ethics professor says; CNBC, May 26, 2021

Emily DeCiccio, CNBC; Privacy laws need updating after Google deal with HCA Healthcare, medical ethics professor says

"Privacy laws in the U.S. need to be updated, especially after Google struck a deal with a major hospital chain, medical ethics expert Arthur Kaplan said Wednesday.

“Now we’ve got electronic medical records, huge volumes of data, and this is like asking a navigation system from a World War I airplane to navigate us up to the space shuttle,” Kaplan, a professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, told “The News with Shepard Smith.” “We’ve got to update our privacy protection and our informed consent requirements.”

On Wednesday, Google’s cloud unit and hospital chain HCA Healthcare announced a deal that — according to The Wall Street Journal — gives Google access to patient records. The tech giant said it will use that to make algorithms to monitor patients and help doctors make better decisions."

International media ethics teaching award for UH Mānoa professor; University of Hawai'i News, May 19, 2021

University of Hawai'i News; International media ethics teaching award for UH Mānoa professor

"A University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa journalism professor with more than 30 years of teaching experience has been internationally recognized for outstanding classroom teaching in media ethics. Professor Ann Auman is the winner of the 2021 Teaching Excellence Award in the Media Ethics Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The award will be formally presented to Auman at the Media Ethics Division members’ meeting on July 28.

The award committee was impressed by Auman’s work, “incorporating Indigenous values and ethics in a cross-cultural media ethics course and classroom.” Auman’s ethics courses are Communications/Journalism 460: Media Ethics and Communications 691: Emergent Media Ethics Across Cultures: Truth-Seeking in the Global, Digital Age.

“I believe that journalism can be improved if we honor Indigenous values, culture and language in storytelling. Western-based ethics codes and practices need to be reformed, and more Indigenous people should tell their own stories,” Auman said. “Everyone should practice media ethics, not just journalists. In this disinformation age we are empowered if we learn how to distinguish the truth from falsehood and deception, and be ethical producers and consumers of news and information.”

Auman also teaches courses in news literacy and multimedia journalism. Her research is in cross-cultural media ethics with a focus on Indigenous media ethics. Auman’s recent published works include, “Traditional Knowledge for Ethical Reporting on Indigenous Communities: A Cultural Compass for Social Justice” in Ethical Space: The International Journal of Media Ethics; “The Hawaiian Way: How Kuleana can Improve Journalism” in the Handbook of Global Media Ethics; and “Ethics Without Borders in a Digital Age” in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator."

Who Is The Media For? Journalist Sarah Jones On Ethics In The Industry; NPR, May 23, 2021

NPR; Who Is The Media For? Journalist Sarah Jones On Ethics In The Industry

"NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with Sarah Jones about her recent essay in The Intelligencer. It's about ethics violations CNN and the AP and the two different outcomes for journalists involved."

Belarus’s dictator isn’t winning. He’s desperate.; The Washington Post, May 25, 2021

David Ignatius, The Washington Post; Belarus’s dictator isn’t winning. He’s desperate.

"Dissident journalist Ihar Losik had been arrested in June 2020, but Protasevich continued a blog called Nexta on the encrypted social media app Telegram. The KGB beat and arrested people, but the young journalists and their followers continued to share the truth...

One American who has met with Protasevich recently explained: “What I took away is that he is committed to the integrity of the journalistic profession. He’s willing to work in the most dire situation. This isn’t just a hobby for him. It’s a mission to provide information direct to the people.”"

‘Inconceivable’: why has Australia’s history been left to rot?; The Guardian, May 22, 2021

Elias Visontay The Guardian; ‘Inconceivable’: why has Australia’s history been left to rot?

Historians are aghast that the National Archives have had to resort to crowdfunding to protect irreplaceable historical records

[Kip Currier: This report on the deplorable state of archival management and preservation by Australia's National Archives is a call-to-arms case study exemplar of abject information preservation dereliction of duty and responsibility. Kudos to those who are mobilizing to endeavor to avert this archival dis-management catastrophe.]

"The Guardian requested an interview with director-general David Fricker or another member of the National Archives. A spokeswoman said no one was available."

Belarus Forces Down Plane to Seize Dissident; Europe Sees ‘State Hijacking’; The New York Times, May 23, 2021

Anton Troianovski and Ivan Nechepurenko, The New York Times ; Belarus Forces Down Plane to Seize Dissident; Europe Sees ‘State Hijacking’

The dissident, Roman Protasevich, co-founded a Telegram channel that is a popular opposition outlet in Belarus. The plane was flying from Athens to Lithuania when it was forced down.

"It underscored that with the support of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Lukashenko is prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to repress dissent."

A matter of ethics; BC News, April 2021

Phil Gloudemans , BC News; 

A matter of ethics

BC undergraduates advanced to the finals at the 25th annual Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl

"“The format of the Ethics Bowl is unique from other debate-style competitions in that teams are scored based on how well they consider the merit of all sides of an argument,” said team member Angela McCarthy ’21, president of the student-organized Bioethics Society of Boston College. “The spirit of the Ethics Bowl encourages respectful deliberation over some of the most controversial issues of our time. Instead of encouraging an ‘us versus them mentality,’ it promotes productive conversations about controversial issues.”

“I was so proud to see their preparation pay off in their performance at nationals,” said BC team coach Katie Rapier, an assistant professor of philosophy. “The students responded to their opponents and the judges with both professionalism and finesse, and a robust understanding of the material through clear explanations and compelling arguments.  I was thrilled to see such a rich display of learning and skill from our students.”

In advance of competition, each team receives a set of APPE-written cases that explore a variety of topics within practical and professional ethics that could range from cheating and plagiarism, dating and friendships, to free speech, gun control or professional principles in medicine, engineering, or law.  

Teams prepare an analysis of each case, and during a match, a case is randomly selected from the set, and teams have three minutes to huddle before giving a 10-minute presentation.  A moderator poses questions designed to delve deeper into the case’s multiple ethical dimensions.

A panel of judges then probes the teams for further justifications and evaluates their answers. Rating criteria are based on intelligibility, focus on ethically relevant considerations, avoidance of ethical irrelevance, and deliberative thoughtfulness. Teams cannot bring notes or confer with coaches...

Senior philosophy major Caroline Gillette focused on two cases that dealt with the ethics of moderating content on social media, both offensive speech and misinformation."

The Soviet era’s leading dissident is still a provocation for today’s Kremlin; The Washington Post, May 21, 2021

Vladimir Kara-Murza, The Washington Post; The Soviet era’s leading dissident is still a provocation for today’s Kremlin

 

"“Freedom of thought requires the defense of all thinking and honest people,” Sakharov wrote in his first major political essay in 1968. “[It] is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship.” It was at the end of the 1960s when Sakharov the scientist finally gave way to Sakharov the dissident as he began to focus almost exclusively on defending prisoners of conscience, displaced peoples (notably Crimean Tatars), those seeking to emigrate and others who came under attack from the repressive state...

 

Although it has been more than three decades since his passing, Sakharov’s time has not yet come in Russia. But today’s young people, who may know little about him, unwittingly continue his work as they risk arrests and beatings to demonstrate their solidarity with prisoners of conscience. “Today as always I believe in the power of reason and the human spirit,” Sakharov wrote in the darkest days of his Gorky exile. His own spirit of optimism and hope is very much needed in today’s Russia."