Microsoft lays off team that taught employees how to make AI tools responsibly; The Verge, March 13, 2023

 ZOE SCHIFFER and CASEY NEWTON, The Verge; Microsoft lays off team that taught employees how to make AI tools responsibly

"Microsoft laid off its entire ethics and society team within the artificial intelligence organization as part of recent layoffs that affected 10,000 employees across the company, Platformer has learned. 

The move leaves Microsoft without a dedicated team to ensure its AI principles are closely tied to product design at a time when the company is leading the charge to make AI tools available to the mainstream, current and former employees said.

Microsoft still maintains an active Office of Responsible AI, which is tasked with creating rules and principles to govern the company’s AI initiatives. The company says its overall investment in responsibility work is increasing despite the recent layoffs."

Outside groups take a first stab at a Supreme Court ethics code; NPR, March 9, 2023

Nina Totenberg, NPR; Outside groups take a first stab at a Supreme Court ethics code

"The recommendations

It recommends "clear and more stringent guidelines for recusal, prohibitions against conduct that creates an appearance of partiality, rigorous obligations for disclosure, and standards for transparent decision-making."In particular, for instance, the model code would require justices to disqualify themselves from cases involving not only financial entanglements of family members, but lobbying activities of would-be litigants involved in a justice's confirmation. And it would bar close family members from engaging in political or other activity that presents the appearance of partisanship.

The proposed code would go further than the existing code for lower court judges, which bars participation in political activities. The proposal would also bar Supreme Court justices from appearing before groups with partisan or ideological agendas, groups like the conservative Federalist Society or the liberal American Constitution Society. And it would recognize that certain political activities by a spouse or other close family members would require justices to recuse themselves."

WHO kicks off deliberations on ethical framework and tools for social listening and infodemic management; World Health Organization (WHO), February 10, 2023

World Health Organization (WHO) ; WHO kicks off deliberations on ethical framework and tools for social listening and infodemic management

"WHO has convened a panel of experts to discuss ethical considerations in social listening and infodemic management. The aim of the ethics expert panel is to reach a consensus on ethical principles for social listening and other infodemic management activities and provide recommendations for health authorities and researchers.

The panel brings together experts from academia, health authorities, and civil society, with a wide range of expertise such as in biomedical ethics, data privacy, law, digital sociology, digital health, epidemiology, health communication, health promotion, and media studies.

An infodemic is an overabundance information, including misinformation, that surges during a health emergency. During a health emergency, people seek, receive, process and act on information differently than in other times, which makes it even more important to use evidence-based strategies in response. Infodemic management practice, underpinned by the science of infodemiology, has rapidly evolved in the recent years. Tools and experience that were developed during COVID-19 pandemic response have already been applied to other outbreaks, such as ebola, polio and cholera. 

Social listening in public health is the process of gathering information about people's questions, concerns, and circulating narratives and misinformation about health from online and offline data sources. Data gleaned from social media platforms are being used in a number ways to identify and understand outbreaks, geographic and demographic trends, networks, sentiment and behavioral responses to public health emergencies. Offline data collection may include rapid surveys, townhalls, or interviews with people in vulnerable groups, communities of focus and specific populations. These data are then integrated with other data sources from the health system (such as health information systems) and outside of it (mobility data) to generate infodemic insights and inform strategies to manage infodemics.

However, the collection and use of this data presents ethical challenges, such as privacy and consent, and there is currently no agreed-upon ethical framework for social listening and infodemic management. 

The panel will focus on issues such as data control, commercialization, transparency, and accountability, and will consider ethical guidelines for both online and offline data collection, analysis and reporting. The goal is to develop an ethical framework for social listening and infodemic management to guide health authorities when planning and standing up infodemic insights teams and activities, as well as for practitioners when planning and implementing social listening and infodemic management."

Rob Stein; NPR; Experts weigh medical advances in gene-editing with ethical dilemmas; NPR, March 6, 2023

Rob Stein; NPR; Experts weigh medical advances in gene-editing with ethical dilemmas

"Hundreds of scientists, doctors, bioethicists, patients, and others started gathering in London Monday for the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing. The summit this week will debate and possibly issue recommendations about the thorny issues raised by powerful new gene-editing technologies.\

The last time the world's scientists gathered to debate the pros and cons of gene-editing — in Hong Kong in late 2018 — He Jiankui, a biophysicist and researcher at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, shocked his audience with a bombshell announcement. He had created the first gene-edited babies, he told the crowd — twin girls born from embryos he had modified using the gene-editing technique CRISPR."

Register for ‘Ethics, Institutional Review Boards and Scholarly Activities: Pitfalls and Parapets’; WV Mountaineer ENews, March 7, 2023

WV Mountaineer ENews; Register for ‘Ethics, Institutional Review Boards and Scholarly Activities: Pitfalls and Parapets’

"All faculty are invited to attend the WVU Health Sciences Center Faculty Development Program presentation “Ethics, Institutional Review Boards and Scholarly Activities: Pitfalls and Parapets” from noon to 1 p.m. on March 14.

The presenter is Steve Davis, associate professor in the Department of Health Policy, Management and Leadership.

To register by noon on March 13, contact HSCfacultydevelopment@hsc.wvu.edu. Make sure to include the date and title of this presentation in your email. 

Registration is required to receive the Zoom access code. Access information will be sent to participants the day prior to the session. Please do not share the Zoom code."

SAS' data ethics chief talks about keeping an ethical eye on AI; Axios, March 7, 2023

• Zachery Eanes
 , Axios; SAS' data ethics chief talks about keeping an ethical eye on AI

"The U.S. is at a crossroads when it comes to the future of artificial intelligence, as the technology takes dramatic leaps forward without much regulation in place, Reggie Townsend, director of SAS Institute's Data Ethics Practice, tells Axios.

Driving the news: Cary-based SAS is a giant in the world of data analytics, and the company and its customers are increasingly using AI to process data and make decisions. Townsend's role at the company puts him at the forefront of the conversation.

• It's why he's a member of the White House's National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee.

Why it matters: Artificial intelligence could soon impact nearly every aspect of our lives, from health care decisions to who gets loans."

A Moral Panic: ChatGPT and the Gamification of Education; Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, February 6, 2023

Susan Kennedy, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University; A Moral Panic: ChatGPT and the Gamification of Education

"Surprisingly, the panic over ChatGPT doesn’t actually seem to be about ChatGPT. It’s not all that impressive, nor is it significantly more effective than the “old ways” of cheating. Instead, the panic seems to be fueled by the expectation that students won’t be able to resist the temptation to use it and that cheating will become rampant. The release of ChatGPT is forcing educators to confront a much deeper issue that has been taking shape for quite some time; students who are becoming increasingly obsessed with grades, GPAs, and completing a degree, and who are willing to go to great, and sometimes unethical, lengths to achieve these things. 

This transformation that is taking place is best explained by the gamification of education. Gamification refers to the process of adding game-like elements, such as points, scores, rankings and badges, to make non-game activities more pleasurable. As philosopher C. Thi Nguyen has argued, part of what makes gamification so appealing is that it trades complexity for simplicity. Our values and goals become much clearer once we have quantified metrics for measuring our progress and success.

In education, gamification takes the form of metrics like exam scores, course grades, GPA, and the completion of a degree. Without these metrics in place, it would be difficult to know when one has made progress towards, or been successful in, their pursuit of the true values of education. After all, the values associated with a good education are diverse and complex, including personal transformation, the cultivation of skills, exposure to diverse worldviews, becoming a more informed citizen, etc. Gamification offers some relief from this complexity by providing unmistakable metrics for success.

The problem with gamification is that, over time, it can transform our values and the very nature of the activity such that we begin to lose sight of what really matters. When students enter college, they may be motivated by a meaningful set of values that can be realized in the context of education. For some students, their grades and GPA are just a useful means to measure their progress towards those goals. But for other students, their values wind up being replaced by these metrics such that “getting an A” or “graduating with a 4.0” becomes the end. 

For the students who get swept up by gamification, ChatGPT is unlikely to strike them as morally wrong or problematic. If a student no longer values education for its own sake, then there would seem to be nothing to lose by using ChatGPT. They won’t see it as cheating themselves out of an education, but merely an easy avenue for a passing grade in a course or completing a college degree. When framed this way, the panic over ChatGPT starts to make a lot more sense. Educators are afraid because they know that, despite their best efforts to adapt their assessments to promote learning outcomes in the face of ChatGPT, these efforts will fall short until they can loosen the grip that gamification has on their students."

What Will Ethical Space Exploration Look Like?; Wired, March 3, 2023

RAMIN SKIBBA , Wired; What Will Ethical Space Exploration Look Like?

"If you were to summarize a code of ethics for space, what main principles would you include?

One very key point is to get as many different kinds of people involved in the conversation as possible. Let’s get the social scientists involved, people who have been working on these problems, and activists in these areas. That also includes people from different cultures, because conversations about settling in space and space mining and such have been dominated by a certain subculture that’s Western and capitalistic and all of those dominant categories. But there are so many more people on the planet who should and can contribute a lot to the conversation."

History May Wonder Why Microsoft Let Its Principles Go for a Creepy, Clingy Bot; The New York Times, February 23, 2023

 Reid Blackman, The New York Times; History May Wonder Why Microsoft Let Its Principles Go for a Creepy, Clingy Bot

"Microsoft’s “responsible A.I.” program started in 2017 with six principles by which it pledged to conduct business. Suddenly, it is on the precipice of violating all but one of those principles. (Though the company says it is still adhering to all six of them.)"

Science Fiction Magazines Battle a Flood of Chatbot-Generated Stories; The New York Times, February 23, 2023

 Michael Levenson , The New York Times; Science Fiction Magazines Battle a Flood of Chatbot-Generated Stories

"Elaborating on his concerns in the interview, Mr. Clarke said that chatbot-generated fiction could raise ethical and legal questions, if it ever passed literary muster. He said he did not want to pay “for the work the algorithm did” on stories generated by someone who had entered prompts into an algorithm.

“Who owns that, technically?” Mr. Clarke said. “Right now, we’re still in the early days of this technology, and there are a lot of unanswered questions.”"

Changes to new editions of Roald Dahl books have readers up in arms; NPR, February 21, 2023

Jaclyn Diaz, NPR ; Changes to new editions of Roald Dahl books have readers up in arms

"New editions of legendary works by British author Roald Dahl are being edited to remove words that could be deemed offensive to some readers, according to the late writer's company.

Dahl wrote such books as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach and Fantastic Mr. Fox...

Puffin and The Roald Dahl Story Company, which manages the copyrights of Dahl's books and works with publishers, didn't respond to NPR's requests for comment."

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?"

American Bar Association Urges Ethics Code for US Supreme Court; Bloomberg Law, February 7, 2023

Lydia Wheeler, Bloomberg Law; American Bar Association Urges Ethics Code for US Supreme Court

"The American Bar Association wants the US Supreme Court to adopt a judicial ethics code.

Meeting in New Orleans on Monday, the group’s 591-member policy-making body passed a resolution urging the high court to adopt ethics rules similar to the code of conduct all other federal judges must follow.

Concern over public perception of the court seemed to prompt the ABA action. The resolution said the absence of a clearly articulated, binding code of ethics for the justices threatens the legitimacy of the court.

“If the legitimacy of the Court is diminished, the legitimacy of all our courts and our entire judicial system is imperiled,” the resolution said.

Federal judges on lower courts across the country are bound by the Code of Judicial Conduct, which maps out rules for how judges should conduct themselves on and off the bench. The code says judges should avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities, refrain from political activity, and recuse themselves from a case when their impartiality might be reasonably questioned because of financial interests or personal bias."

In AI arms race, ethics may be the first casualty; Axios, January 31, 2023

• Scott Rosenberg
, Axios; In AI arms race, ethics may be the first casualty

"As the tech world embraces ChatGPT and other generative AI programs, the industry's longstanding pledges to deploy AI responsibly could quickly be swamped by beat-the-competition pressures. 

Why it matters: Once again, tech's leaders are playing a game of "build fast and ask questions later" with a new technology that's likely to spark profound changes in society.

• Social media started two decades ago with a similar rush to market. First came the excitement — later, the damage and regrets.

Catch up quick: While machine learning and related AI techniques hatched in labs over the last decade, scholars and critics sounded alarms about potential harms the technology could promote, including misinformation, bias, hate speech and harassment, loss of privacy and fraud...

Our thought bubble: The innovator's dilemma accurately maps how the tech business has worked for decades. But the AI debate is more than a business issue. The risks could be nation- or planet-wide, and humanity itself is the incumbent with much to lose."

How Barnes & Noble Came Back From Near Dead; The New York Times, January 28, 2023

Ezra Klein, The New York Times; How Barnes & Noble Came Back From Near Dead

[Kip Currier] Bookstores and libraries have their own distinctive communities and cultures. In 2004, during my doctoral studies at the University of Pittsburgh, I took a still-resonant ethnographic studies course taught by the phenomenal Dr. Maureen Porter in Pitt's School of Education. For my term-long ethnographic study that term, I sat in, observed, and became an unwitting participant in the culture and community of the cafe in a strip plaza location of the now (sadly!) defunct Borders book store chain in the South Hills of Pittsburgh. In a wistful, encomiastic New York Times OpEd this week, frequent tech culture commentator Ezra Klein opines on the sense of community and "third place" that brick-and-mortar bookstores and libraries can continue to provide in the digital age...

FYI: "How Barnes & Noble Came Back From Near Dead". (1/28/23). The New York Times.

[Excerpt]

"Barnes & Noble’s resurgence is a reminder that there is nothing inevitable about its (or any bookstore’s) demise. Great bookstores and libraries still provide something the digital world cannot: a place not just to buy or borrow books, but to be among them."

Why US libraries are on the frontlines of the homelessness crisis; The Guardian, January 24, 2023

 MacKenzie Ryan, The Guardian; Why US libraries are on the frontlines of the homelessness crisis

"“Many libraries have added social workers to their staff,” said Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada, the American Library Association president, citing a trend that started in the past decade...

When Dowd trains library staff on de-escalation tactics, he hears a lot of comments like, “They didn’t teach me this stuff in library school,” he said. He says he teaches library staff to focus on the behavior they’re seeing. If someone is unhoused and caused a problem, then they have to deal with it. If a multimillionaire is in the library causing a problem, they also have to deal with it.""

Generative AI ChatGPT Is Going To Be Everywhere Once The API Portal Gets Soon Opened, Stupefying AI Ethics And AI Law; Forbes, January 22, 2023

Lance Eliot, Forbes ; Generative AI ChatGPT Is Going To Be Everywhere Once The API Portal Gets Soon Opened, Stupefying AI Ethics And AI Law

"Some adamantly believe that this will be akin to letting loose the Kraken, namely that all kinds of bad things are going to arise. Others see this as making available a crucial resource that can boost tons of other apps by leveraging the grand capabilities of ChatGPT. It is either the worst of times or the best of times. We will herein consider both sides of the debate and you can decide for yourself which camp you land in.

Into all of this comes a slew of AI Ethics and AI Law considerations.

Please be aware that there are ongoing efforts to imbue Ethical AI principles into the development and fielding of AI apps. A growing contingent of concerned and erstwhile AI ethicists are trying to ensure that efforts to devise and adopt AI takes into account a view of doing AI For Good and averting AI For Bad. Likewise, there are proposed new AI laws that are being bandied around as potential solutions to keep AI endeavors from going amok on human rights and the like. For my ongoing and extensive coverage of AI Ethics and AI Law, see the link here and the link here, just to name a few.

There have been growing qualms that ChatGPT and other similar AI apps have an ugly underbelly that maybe we aren’t ready to handle. For example, you might have heard that students in schools are potentially able to cheat when it comes to writing assigned essays via using ChatGPT. The AI does all the writing for them. Meanwhile, the student is able to seemingly scot-free turn in the essay as though they did the writing from their own noggin. Not what we presumably want AI to do for humankind."

AI experts on whether you should be "terrified" of ChatGPT; CBS News , January 22, 2023

DAVID POGUE, CBS News; AI experts on whether you should be "terrified" of ChatGPT

"Timnit Gebru, an AI researcher who specializes in ethics of artificial intelligence, said, "I think that we should be really terrified of this whole thing."

ChatGPT learned how to write by examining millions of pieces of writing on the Internet. Unfortunately, believe it or not, not everything on the internet is true! "It wasn't taught to understand what is fact, what is fiction, or anything like that," Gebru said. "It'll just sort of parrot back what was on the Internet."

Gutting Congress’ Ethics Office Was a Disaster – and an Opportunity; Just Security, January 19, 2023

Gabe Lezra, Just Security; Gutting Congress’ Ethics Office Was a Disaster – and an Opportunity

"The new House Republican majority, finally seated after days of embarrassing negotiations that resulted in Representative Kevin McCarthy being sworn in as Speaker, made their priorities clear on Jan. 9. With their first official vote, they approved a House rules package that effectively gutted the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), the independent body that helps ensure that members of the House don’t abuse their positions. It was a striking decision that sent a clear message: the new far-right majority will demand that the other branches of government live up to ethical standards and practices that they themselves have no intention of following.

McCarthy’s attack on OCE consisted of two components: first, the resolution forcedthree of the four Democrats who currently sit on the OCE Board to vacate their positions immediately. This move, which was facially based on a decision to implement term limits, undermined the bipartisan nature of OCE’s leadership and left the Board in an extremely difficult and partisan position to hire staff. Second, the new rules require OCE to hire all of its staff within 30 days – and it would likely only be able to do that after it has hired sufficient Board members. This absurd requirement fails to recognize that OCE relies on employees with a detailed and relatively rare legal skillset, making hiring a complex and time-intensive process. On top of the impossibly rushed hiring process, the provision appears written to prevent OCE from hiring any new staff after the 30-day window closes – meaning that the agency wouldn’t be able to replace staff who retire or change jobs for the entirety of the 118th Congress.

This is not the first time Republicans have attempted to destroy OCE. In 2017, Republicans voted behind closed doors to strip OCE of its independence and place it under the control of the House Ethics Committee, a move they only abandoned when former President Donald Trump denounced it on Twitter. House Republicans’ bizarre obsession with OCE ignores the fact that OCE is not a powerful institution. It is, at base, a screen to save Congressional resources. OCE prevents members and their staff from using their limited time and resources to sift through allegations of members’ potential ethics violations, determine if any are credible, and conduct preliminary investigations. OCE is supposed to save Congress time.

Despite the plethora of serious allegations that the Ethics Committee considers, the Committee itself is incredibly weak and generally unwilling to punish members. This failure is not OCE’s fault. OCE does not levy punishments, nor does it recommend them. One of its first chairs, David Skaggs, famously explained that OCE’s function is to “supplement but not supplant” the Ethics Committee. OCE’s subservient relationship to the dysfunctional Ethics Committee means that OCE’s power goes only as far as the members of the Ethics Committee will allow it. Which, in most cases, is not far at all.

This begs the question: Why was gutting OCE the new majority’s first vote in the 118th Congress? The answer is simple. They wanted to dismantle one of the key ways that members of Congress can be held accountable when they abuse their positions of trust – and they succeeded. It could not have come at a worse time."

Governor Shapiro announces ethics rules, training for employees; WABC27, January 20, 2023

George Stockburger, Sarah Willson, WABC27; Governor Shapiro announces ethics rules, training for employees

"Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro says approximately 3,500 Commonwealth employees will be required to sign an integrity pledge and participate in ethics training.

Shapiro also announced an executive order regarding the solicitation or acceptance of gifts for executive branch employees. The rule includes “a total prohibition on gifts, discounts, services or any other items or other benefits of any value received from a lobbyist or lobbying firm.”...

The moves were part of a three-part ethics package announced by the Governor’s office on Friday."

Alarmed by A.I. Chatbots, Universities Start Revamping How They Teach; The New York Times, January 16, 2023

Kalley Huang, The New York Times ; Alarmed by A.I. Chatbots, Universities Start Revamping How They Teach

"In higher education, colleges and universities have been reluctant to ban the A.I. tool because administrators doubt the move would be effective and they don’t want to infringe on academic freedom. That means the way people teach is changing instead."

Monstrous maestro: why is Cate Blanchett’s cancel culture film Tár angering so many people?; The Guardian, January 16, 2023

 Xan Brooks, The Guardian; Monstrous maestro: why is Cate Blanchett’s cancel culture film Tár angering so many people?

"Great art asks us questions. Confounding heroes do too. It’s not a film’s job to pander to our preconceptions, parrot back our opinions and reassure us that we’re right. Nor, for that matter, is a film obliged to stay in its lane and give us clearcut goodies and baddies; that simple, bogus moral structure. Fictional characters don’t have to be exemplars of anything. Cinemas, like colleges and libraries, should be physical safe spaces, but intellectual and emotional danger zones.

Books aren’t mirrors, they’re doors, as the critic Fran Lebowitz likes to say – and the same goes for films. Doors can be scary: we don’t know what’s behind them. But without opening a door, we all remain in our own silos. We miss out on a life of adventure and a world of interesting people we haven’t yet met. Some of them will appal us. Some we might quite like."

How Republicans are overhauling the Congressional Ethics Office; NPR, All Things Considered, January 10, 2023

Ari Shapiro, Lee Hale, William Troop, NPR, All Things Considered; How Republicans are overhauling the Congressional Ethics Office

"NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with David Skaggs, former congressman and chair of the Office of Congressional Ethics, about new House rules that could weaken that office's influence on Congress."

Nurses Retain Top Ethics Rating in U.S., but Below 2020 High; Gallup, January 10, 2023

 MEGAN BRENAN, Gallup; Nurses Retain Top Ethics Rating in U.S., but Below 2020 High

"Nurses continue to garner the highest ethics rating from Americans among a diverse list of professions, a distinction they have held for more than two decades. The 79% of U.S. adults who now say nurses have “very high” or “high” honesty and ethical standards is far more than any of the other 17 professions rated. Still, the current rating is 10 percentage points lower than the highest rating for nurses, recorded in 2020, when they were on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic and their ethics ratings soared.

Two other health-related professions that enjoyed similar bumps in their ethics ratings in 2020 -- medical doctors and pharmacists -- now rank second and third behind nurses, with 62% and 58% of Americans, respectively, rating them highly. And like nurses, both of these professions’ ethics ratings dropped significantly in 2021 and edged down further this year. All three are now below their prepandemic levels."