Category: Ethics | Page 12

Senior Woman Giving Credit Card Details On The Phone

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News
Date
December 16, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance, Economics, Ethics

Tagged
Bernard Fickser, Expensivity, financial fraud}

How Do We Know Financial Transactions Are Honest?

_{Let’s look at the steps we can take to find out} _{News
December 16, 2020

4

Business and Finance, Economics, Ethics}

Recently, we’ve been asking readers to think about Alice and Bob, the famous pair in physics used to demonstrate propositions, for example, as if as if they were running for office. At Expensivity, a blog about that expensive and unpleasant subject, money, Bernard Fickser asks about better ways of preventing financial fraud: We focus on financial Alice (the situation with financial Bob is parallel). Alice wants the record of deposits and disbursements in her ledger to reflect deposits that she has knowingly and willingly received as well as disbursements that she has authorized to go to the intended parties. If this is the case, the record of deposits and disbursements in her ledger as well as the running totals will Read More ›

Bottom view close-up of four white surveillance cameras

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Jonathan Bartlett
Date
December 14, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Economics, Ethics

Tagged
Algorithms, bias, Coded Bias (film), Featured, George Montañez, Robert J. Marks}

How Toxic Bias Infiltrates Computer Code

_{A look at the dark underbelly of modern algorithms} _{Jonathan Bartlett
December 14, 2020

4

Artificial Intelligence, Economics, Ethics}

The newly released documentary Coded Bias from Shalini Kantayya takes the viewer on a tour of the way modern algorithms can undermine justice and society and are actively subverting justice at the present moment. Coded Bias highlights many under-discussed issues regarding data and its usage by governments and corporations. While its prescriptions for government usage of data are well considered, the issue of corporate use of data involves many additional issues that the film skirts entirely. As the film points out, we are presented these algorithms as if they were a form of intelligence. But they are actually just math—and this math can be used to, intentionally or unintentionally, encode biases. In fact, as Bradley Center fellows Robert J. Marks Read More ›

lego figurines in front of circuits with other figurines

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News
Date
December 11, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics

Tagged
Artificial Artificial Intelligence (AAI), High Tech Jobs, workers}

How Do You Know That Your “AI” Isn’t a Human Being?

_{AI often depends not on geniuses, but on thousands of anonymous, toiling human workers} _{News
December 11, 2020

2

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics}

Many people think that AI happens without human intervention. In reality, many toiling workers help make it possible. In a piece at Medium on ethical dangers of AI, Dorothea Baur (pictured) lists four concerns but one stands out. And it’s not science fiction: 4. AI hype downplays human contribution AI hype is also part of stories that exaggerate the capabilities of AI in the present when effectively humans are still doing most of the work — we have all heard about the thousands of ghost workers who are manually labeling data to feed algorithms under dire working conditions. So, presenting something as machine intelligence when it’s actually human intelligence, is also dishonest and it deprecates the humans doing the real Read More ›

Bangkok, Thailand 25 AUG 2020. Men hand using digital tablet for search information on Google. Wireless Smartphone technology with intelligence search engine.

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Denyse O'Leary
Date
December 8, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Work

Tagged
Culture, Emily M. Bender, fake news, Google, large language models, Timnit Gebru, Whistleblowers}

Google’s Leading AI Ethics Researcher Fired, Amid Controversy

_{Her research team targeted Google’s “cash cow”: advertising} _{Denyse O'Leary
December 8, 2020

6

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Work}

Timnit Gebru, a leading AI ethics researcher, was fired from Google early this month under circumstances that have raised suspicions across the industry: On December 2, the AI research community was shocked to learn that Timnit Gebru had been fired from her post at Google. Gebru, one of the leading voices in responsible AI research, is known among other things for coauthoring groundbreaking work that revealed the discriminatory nature of facial recognition, cofounding the Black in AI affinity group, and relentlessly advocating for diversity in the tech industry. But on Wednesday evening, she announced on Twitter that she had been terminated from her position as Google’s ethical AI co-lead. “Apparently my manager’s manager sent an email [to] my direct reports Read More ›

collection of alien planets in front of the Milky Way galaxy, nearby exoplanets

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News
Date
November 22, 2020

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Ethics, Science

Tagged
Extraterrestrial life, Louis Pasteur, Origin of life, Prime Directive, Purpose, Self-organization, Terraforming}

Why Search for Extraterrestrial Life? Why Not Make It Ourselves?

_{A NASA astrobiologist’s bold suggestion is likely to spark debate} _{News
November 22, 2020

4

Arts & Culture, Ethics, Science}

Recently, we have been looking at the question of why we don’t see aliens, with as many as 75 hypotheses offered. But one astrobiologist has a bold suggestion: Why not just seed life on various suitable exoplanets, once we have the means to do it? We need not search for extraterrestrial life if we can learn how to create it ourselves. There are a lot of reasons to think very carefully about doing something like that, as Betül Kaçar (pictured), director of the NASA Astrobiology Consortium MUSE, acknowledges: Rather than regarding the overwhelming majority of planets and moons as failures unworthy of further study, we should instead recognise them for what they are: they’re not empty. In fact, a very Read More ›

Asian doctor wearing face shield and PPE suit to check elder woman patient protect safety infection Covid-19 Coronavirus outbreak at quarantine nursing hospital ward.

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Michael Egnor
Date
November 13, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Medicine and Health

Tagged
COVID-19, COVID-19 fatalities, Featured, Howard Zucker}

Why Did New York Have COVID Policy That Killed Elderly Patients?

_{For all practical purposes, the government directive was essentially an order to spread COVID to people in nursing homes} _{Michael Egnor
November 13, 2020

16

Ethics, Medicine and Health}

This is a difficult post to write, and a difficult post to read. I’ve thought about it for months, and what I’m going to say must be said. I see no way around the conclusions I’ll draw. So here goes. On March 25, 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York State, the New York State Department of Health, under the signatures of Governor Andrew Cuomo, DOH Commissioner Howard Zucker, and Executive Deputy Commissioner Sally Dreslin, issued a directive to New York State nursing homes requiring nursing homes to accept patients for re-admission or admission regardless of their COVID-19 status. The salient paragraph is: No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based Read More ›

Blue hydraulic Clow Crane used for picking up scrap metal at recycling yard

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News
Date
November 7, 2020

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Ethics

Tagged
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), Lovelace test, Science fiction, Star Trek, Turing Test}

Is It Ethical To Scrap Star Trek’s Commander Data for Research?

_{A philosopher offers a thoughtful review of the case} _{News
November 7, 2020

4

Arts & Culture, Ethics}

In a thought-provoking essay, San José State University philosopher Anand Vaidya asks, should it be okay to dismantle Star Trek‘s robotic crew member Data for research purposes, as proposed in the “The Measure of a Man” episode in Star Trek: The Next Generation? Some of the Trek brass seemed to think so: Vaidya disagrees: As real artificial intelligence technology advances toward Hollywood’s imagined versions, the question of moral standing grows more important. If AIs have moral standing, philosophers like me reason, it could follow that they have a right to life. That means you cannot simply dismantle them, and might also mean that people shouldn’t interfere with their pursuing their goals. Anand Vaidya, “If a robot is conscious, is it Read More ›

Ai identify person technology for recognize, classify and predict human behavior for safety. Futuristic artificial intelligence. Surveillance and data collection of citizens through city cameras.

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News
Date
November 6, 2020

Categorized
Data Privacy, Ethics, Global Technology, Surveillance

Tagged
Alexa, Amazon, COVID-19, Deanonymizing data, Freedom House}

The Information We Just Give Away Obliterates Privacy

_{Privacy may turn out to be one of the biggest political issues of the new decade} _{News
November 6, 2020

6

Data Privacy, Ethics, Global Technology, Surveillance}

A story came to light at VICE in 2017, that the CIA spied on people through their smart TVs. Without getting into those weeds, note this conventional warning offered by manufacturers: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.” An old birdwatcher’s tip: If you can see them, assume they can see you. If the internet is wide open to us, we are potentially wide open to the internet. Here are three surveillance issues worth pondering, about the systems we take for granted: ➤ Alexa employees listen in: Amazon.com Inc. employs thousands of people Read More ›

With the global spread of the new coronavirus pneumonia, an automated line of disposable medical masks makes the masks ready for an epidemic 24 hours a day, COVID-19 outbreak

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Heather Zeiger
Date
November 5, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Global Technology, Medicine and Health, Surveillance

Tagged
Africa, China, COVID-19, Featured, Racism}

COVID-19 Response Exposes Racism in China, amid Harmony Claims

_{The lid blew off when African leaders broke the accustomed silence imposed by their dependence on Chinese high-tech loans} _{Heather Zeiger
November 5, 2020

8

Ethics, Global Technology, Medicine and Health, Surveillance}

The coronavirus COVID-19 epidemic has exposed two longstanding ugly problems: underlying racist views of Africans living in China and the burden debt to China lays on several African countries. The key flashpoints creating tension between China and Africa are 1) Mistreatment of citizens of African countries living in China, particularly in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province (pictured) and 2) Beijing’s position on granting debt relief to countries in Africa so they can direct resources to dealing with the coronavirus. In one incident, Nigeria’s speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, posted a video of himself summoning Chinese Ambassador Zhou Pingjian to his office where he expressed his displeasure about a Nigerian man being evicted from his home. While nobody Read More ›

Smart car, Autonomous self-driving concept.

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Jonathan Bartlett
Date
November 2, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Ethics

Tagged
Autonomous cars, Daimler, driverless cars, Featured, Levels of autonomy (self-driving cars), self-driving cars, Waymo}

Daimler, Waymo, and GM Make Big Gains in Level 4 Self-Driving

_{GM has been given a permit to test five driverless cars on streets in San Francisco later this year} _{Jonathan Bartlett
November 2, 2020

4

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Ethics}

The Society for Automotive Engineering (SAE) has identified five levels of self-driving which describe how much a particular vehicle is able to handle its own driving tasks. Level 1 means that the vehicle handles either the speed or the steering, but not both, and it requires supervision. While ordinary cruise control technically falls into this level, most people associate cruise control with adaptive cruise control, which slows down or speeds up with traffic. A Level 2 car can control the speed and the steering but the driver must still maintain full vigilance. At Level 3, the driver need not maintain total vigilance but must still be able to take control upon request. Level 4 is “full self-driving” but limited to Read More ›

Liquid Nitrogen bank containing suspension of stem cells. Cell culture for the biomedical diagnostic

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Heather Zeiger
Date
November 1, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
brain, Brain organoids, Consciousness, Featured, Materialism, mind, Naturalism, Sentience}

Can We Make Brains in a Dish? Can We Make MINDS in a Dish?

_{Experiments with brain organoids have left many wondering whether we should be concerned about creating brains-in-a-dish} _{Heather Zeiger
November 1, 2020

8

Ethics, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

In a recent report, Nature addressed several studies on disembodied brains grown in the lab. One of those studies, published last year by Alysson Muotri of the University of California, San Diego, showed that brain organoids (organized clusters of brain cells) displayed electrical signals reminiscent of a twenty-five-week-old pre-term baby. the electrical activity continued for several months until the experiment was eventually stopped. Experiments with such brain organoids have left many wondering whether we should be concerned about creating brains-in-a-dish. Organoids, such as those made of kidney or liver cells, have been used to study drug development and disease. They are made either from embryonic stem cells—an ethically problematic source because they involve the destruction of an embryo—or induced pluripotent Read More ›

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News
Date
October 16, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Social Media, Technocracy

Tagged
Deepfake detection methods, Deepfakes, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)}

Are Deepfakes Too Deep for Us? Or Can We Fight Back?

_{Keeping up with the fakers is becoming more of a challenge} _{News
October 16, 2020

9

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Social Media, Technocracy}

Since 2014, there has been a new twist to misrepresentation in politics: deepfakes—computer-generated images that seem quite real. Adam Garfinkle of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University explains how the technology, generative adversarial networks (GANs), works: A GAN operator pits a generator (G) against a discriminator (D) in a gamelike environment in which G tries to fool D into incorrectly discriminating between fake and real data. The technology works by means of a series of incremental but rapid adjustments that allows D to discriminate data while G tries to fool it. Adam Garfinkle, ““Disinformed”” at Inference Review Once the problem is reduced to a giant calculation, a giant computer learns much more quickly than the rest of us. And it can then Read More ›

Analysis of a sample of water from a river or sea, ocean. The scientist in the glove took water in a test tube.

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James C. Patterson II
Date
October 14, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Information Theory, Medicine and Health, Social Media

Tagged
bias, Bias (in evaluating information), Communication, Featured, Freedom of speech, Polarization, truth}

Information Today Is Like Water in the Ocean. How Do We Test It?

_{Often, we must sort through many layers of bias in information to get at the facts that matter} _{James C. Patterson II
October 14, 2020

9

Ethics, Information Theory, Medicine and Health, Social Media}

Examining specific types of bias in our thinking will help us evaluate the information on key issues that inundates us today. Read More ›

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News
Date
September 20, 2020

Categorized
Ethics

Tagged
children, free will, Moral choice, Naturalism, reason}

Psychologist: Children Use Reason, not Gut, for Moral Problems

_{Audun Dahlis thinks that the case against moral reasoning has begun to unravel} _{News
September 20, 2020

4

Ethics}

A psychology prof (pictured) at University of California, Santa Cruz offers us a surprising message about children: They do not rely merely on feelings, but rather reason, when making moral choices: For decades, research on children – unlike research on adults – has overwhelmingly concluded that participants do reason about moral issues. (Strangely, psychological research often portrays children more favourably than it does adults.) In one classic study from the 1980s, researchers interviewed six- to 10-year-old children in the United States. They asked about several fictional moral violations: for instance, a child who pushed another child off the top of a slide. When asked why pushing was wrong, children typically explained that it could hurt the victim. Accordingly, most children Read More ›

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Heather Zeiger
Date
September 19, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Global Technology, Technocracy

Tagged
___longform, censorship, China, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Disney, Featured, Uyghurs}

Mulan: Disney Talks Freedom at Home, Toes the Line in China

_{Films we see get altered in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to conform to the requirements of CCP propaganda} _{Heather Zeiger
September 19, 2020

10

Ethics, Global Technology, Technocracy}

China’s government allows only about thirty-four Hollywood movies to be shown in Chinese theaters. As a result, entertainment companies like Disney go out of their way to make sure a film appeals to both North American crowds and Chinese Communist Party’s censors. Of course, what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) allows and doesn’t allow in films is vague and subject to change, which keeps foreign film-makers guessing. Mulan, Disney’s latest attempt to please both the North American and the Chinese market, has failed to do either, for a number of reasons. Financially, Disney is already hurting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Theaters in the U.S. either remain closed or permit only limited-capacity seating. In response, Disney released Mulan on its streaming Read More ›

Ethics Integrity Fairness Ideals Behavior Values Concept

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Robert J. Marks
Date
September 15, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics

Tagged
Autonomous weapons, bias, Featured, HARPY missile, self-driving cars, The Case for Killer Robots}

AI: Design Ethics vs. End User Ethics — the Difference Is Important

_{Robert J. Marks
September 15, 2020

5

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics}

The major ethical challenge in AI design is unintended consequences. It’s up to end users to debate which consequences SHOULD be intended. Read More ›

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News
Date
September 13, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Religion, Social Media

Tagged
BlessU-2, Buddhism, Facebook, Japan, Mark Zuckerberg, Robots}

Will We Outsource Religion and Spirituality to AI ?

_{A philosopher makes the case. But he worries, are we really outsourcing caring about others?} _{News
September 13, 2020

6

Ethics, Religion, Social Media}

Last Sunday, we looked at the question raised by Professor David O’Hara of Augustana University (South Dakota) as to whether AI could someday have mystical experiences. Of course, a lot depends on whether AI can have any experiences at all. An agnostic himself, O’Hara has also asked us to consider how robot priests will “change human spirituality”: What matters is not whether we have invented true artificial intelligence, but whether we believe we have invented it. If we trust the machine, we might let it function as a mystic or a priest, even if it isn’t one. This raises the interesting question of what to do when someone makes a machine that is actually intended to play the role of Read More ›

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News
Date
September 12, 2020

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Ethics

Tagged
Extraterrestrials (ET), Matt Williams, Prime Directive, Science fiction, Star Trek, Technosignatures}

Are the Aliens We Never See Obeying Star Trek’s Prime Directive?

_{The Directive is, don’t interfere in the evolution of alien societies, even if you have good intentions} _{News
September 12, 2020

7

Arts & Culture, Ethics}

Using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope, astronomers recently scoured a part of the sky known to contain at least 10 million star systems for evidence of alien technology (“techno signatures”). And the result? “With this dataset, we found no technosignatures — no sign of intelligent life.” Professor Tingay said even though this was the broadest search yet, he was not shocked by the result. “As Douglas Adams noted in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, ‘space is big, really big’.” International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, “Australian telescope finds no signs of alien technology in 10 million star systems” at ScienceDaily The paper is open access. Various sources offer explanations for the absent aliens; the most popular is that Read More ›

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Robert J. Marks
Date
September 7, 2020

Categorized
Education, Ethics

Tagged
Cell phone, COVID-19, Featured}

What’s To Be Done About Cheating with Chegg in the COVID era?

_{College-level solutions to specific problems can be texted, for a fee, to students writing exams} _{Robert J. Marks
September 7, 2020

3

Education, Ethics}

Academic dishonesty is a fancy term for cheating. With profit-motivated websites like Chegg.com, cheating is now easier than ever. When taking an exam, take a photo of a problem that stumps you and send it to Chegg. In literally minutes, you’ll be sent the answer over your cell phone. How do they do it? Often they employ smart nerds from poor countries who, by local standards, are paid big bucks for their efforts.Chegg, which charges $14.95 per month for its service, does not see itself as a site for cheaters but as a resource to help with homework. It advertises: With over 21 million homework solutions, you can also search our library to find similar homework problems & solutions. Browsing Read More ›

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News
Date
August 18, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
___longform, Empathy, Molly Crockett, Oxytocin, Patricia Churchland}

The “Morality Pill” Hormone Does Not Make People “Nicer”

_{After an initial buzz as a “love hormone” we should all be dosed with, oxytocin started to reveal a big down side} _{News
August 18, 2020

8

Ethics, Philosophy of Mind}

Recently, we looked at the revival of enthusiasm for a morality pill on the grounds that it could make people do what authorities say with respect to COVID-19. Many of these proposals focus on the neuropeptide oxytocin. As a current advocate explains, These substances interact directly with the psychological underpinnings of moral behavior; others that make you more rational could also help. Then, perhaps, the people who choose to go maskless or flout social distancing guidelines would better understand that everyone, including them, is better off when they contribute, and rationalize that the best thing to do is cooperate. Paul Crutchfield, The Conversation, “‘Morality pills’ may be the US’s best shot at ending the coronavirus pandemic, according to one ethicist” Read More ›