'Bias deep inside the code': the problem with AI 'ethics' in Silicon Valley; The Guardian, March 29, 2019

Sam Levin, The Guardian; 'Bias deep inside the code': the problem with AI 'ethics' in Silicon Valley

"“Algorithms determine who gets housing loans and who doesn’t, who goes to jail and who doesn’t, who gets to go to what school,” said Malkia Devich Cyril, the executive director of the Center for Media Justice. “There is a real risk and real danger to people’s lives and people’s freedom.”

Universities and ethics boards could play a vital role in counteracting these trends. But they rarely work with people who are affected by the tech, said Laura Montoya, the cofounder and president of the Latinx in AI Coalition: “It’s one thing to really observe bias and recognize it, but it’s a completely different thing to really understand it from a personal perspective and to have experienced it yourself throughout your life.”

It’s not hard to find AI ethics groups that replicate power structures and inequality in society – and altogether exclude marginalized groups.

The Partnership on AI, an ethics-focused industry group launched by Google, Facebook, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft, does not appear to have black board members or staff listed on its site, and has a board dominated by men. A separate Microsoft research group dedicated to “fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics in AI” also excludes black voices."

With Vaccine Misinformation, Libraries Walk a Fine Line; Undark, March 22, 2019

Jane Roberts, Undark; 

With Vaccine Misinformation, Libraries Walk a Fine Line

As vanguards of intellectual freedom, public libraries face difficult questions regarding what vaccine materials to make available. How to decide?

"The decision on what to make available to library patrons — and what not to — would seem perilous territory for America’s foundational repositories of ideas, though debates over library collections are not new. Still, in an era beset by “fake news” and other artifacts of the disinformation age, libraries (and librarians) may once again find themselves facing difficult choices. One of the core values of librarianship, said Andrea Jamison, a lecturer in library science at Valparaiso University in Indiana, is upholding the principles of intellectual freedom — which include challenging censorship. “We do want to make sure we are presenting information that is accurate,” Jamison said. “But then the question becomes, who becomes the determining factor?”"

Facebook's privacy meltdown after Cambridge Analytica is far from over; The Guardian, March 18, 2019

Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Guardian; Facebook's privacy meltdown after Cambridge Analytica is far from over

"Facebook might not be run by Bond villains. But it’s run by people who have little knowledge of or concern for democracy or the dignity of the company’s 2.3 billion users.

The privacy meltdown story should be about how one wealthy and powerful company gave our data without our permission to hundreds of companies with no transparency, oversight, or even concern about abuse. Fortunately, the story does not end with Cambridge Analytica. The United States government revealed on Wednesday that it had opened a criminal investigation into Facebook over just these practices."

Myspace loses all content uploaded before 2016; The Guardian, March 18, 2019

Alex Hern, The Guardian; Myspace loses all content uploaded before 2016 

Faulty server migration blamed for mass deletion of songs, photos and video

"Myspace, the once mighty social network, has lost every single piece of content uploaded to its site before 2016, including millions of songs, photos and videos with no other home on the internet.
 

The company is blaming a faulty server migration for the mass deletion, which appears to have happened more than a year ago, when the first reports appeared of users unable to access older content. The company has confirmed to online archivists that music has been lost permanently, dashing hopes that a backup could be used to permanently protect the collection for future generations...

Some have questioned how the embattled company, which was purchased by Time Inc in 2016, could make such a blunder."

Department of Defense discusses the ethics of AI use at Carnegie Mellon; Pittsburgh Business Times, March 15, 2019

Julia Mericle, Pittsburgh Business Times;

Department of Defense discusses the ethics of AI use at Carnegie Mellon

"As artificial intelligence looms closer and closer to inevitable integration into nearly every aspect of national security, the U.S. Department of Defense tasked the Defense Innovation Board with drafting a set of guiding principles for the ethical use of AI in such cases. 

That DIB wants to know what the public thinks.

The DIB’s subcommittee on science and technology hosted a public listening session Thursday at Carnegie Mellon University focused on “The Ethical and Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence for the Department of Defense.” 

It’s one of three DIB listening sessions scheduled for across the U.S. to collect public thoughts and concerns. Using the ideas collected, the DIB will put together its guidelines in the coming months and announce a full recommendation for the DoD later this year."

Review: 'The Inventor' is a coolly appalling portrait of Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos scandal; The Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2019

Justin Chang, The Los Angeles Times;

Review: 'The Inventor' is a coolly appalling portrait of Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos scandal

"As a quick glance at this week’s headlines will remind you — a staggering college admissions scandal, a wave of indictments in the cases of Paul Manafort and Jussie Smollett — we are living in deeply fraudulent times. But if there are few people or institutions worthy of our trust anymore, perhaps we can still trust that, eventually, Alex Gibney will get around to making sense of it all. Over the course of his unflagging, indispensable career he has churned out documentaries on Scientology and Enron, Lance Armstrong and Casino Jack — individual case studies in a rich and fascinating investigation of the American hustler at work.

Gibney approaches his subjects with the air of an appalled moralist and, increasingly, a grudging connoisseur. His clean, straightforward style, which usually combines smart talking heads, slick graphics and reams of meticulous data, is clearly galvanized by these charismatic individuals, who are pathological in their dishonesty and riveting in their chutzpah. And he is equally fascinated by the reactions, ranging from unquestioning belief to conflicted loyalty, that they foster among their followers and associates, who in many cases shielded them, at least for a while, from public discovery and censure.

“The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” Gibney’s latest exercise in coolly measured outrage, is an engrossing companion piece to his other works in this vein. The subject of this HBO documentary is Elizabeth Holmes, the self-styled biotech visionary who dropped out of Stanford at age 19 and founded a company called Theranos, which promised to bring about a revolution in preventive medicine and personal healthcare. Its top-secret weapon was a compact machine called the Edison, which could purportedly run more than 200 individual tests from just a few drops of blood, obtained with just a prick of the finger.

Holmes’ vision of a brave new world — one in which anyone could stop by Walgreens and obtain a comprehensive, potentially life-saving snapshot of their health — proved tantalizing enough to raise more than $400 million and earned her a reputation as possibly the greatest inventor since, well, Thomas Edison. Her investors included Betsy DeVos, Rupert Murdoch and the Waltons; Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and James Mattis sat on her board of directors. But that was all before the Wall Street Journal’s John Carreyrou and other investigative journalists exposed glaring faults in the Edison’s design and sent the company’s $10-billion valuation spiraling down to nothing. Theranos dissolved in 2018, and Holmes and former company president Sunny Balwani were charged with conspiracy and fraud.

Full disclosure: As the son of a retired medical technologist who spent more than 30 years testing blood the traditional way, I approached “The Inventor” with great fascination and more than a little schadenfreude. The movie, for its part, seems both magnetized and repelled by its subject, a reaction that it will likely share with its audience. Gibney is perhaps overly fond of deploying intense, lingering close-ups of Holmes’ face and peering deep into her unnerving blue eyes (“She didn’t blink,” a former employee recalls). If the eyes are the windows to the soul, “The Inventor” just keeps looking and looking, as though uncertain whether or not its subject has one."

I Almost Died Riding an E-Scooter Like 99 percent of users, I wasn’t wearing a helmet.; Slate, March 14, 2019

Rachel Withers, Slate;

I Almost Died Riding an E-Scooter

Like 99 percent of users, I wasn’t wearing a helmet.

"I’ve been rather flippant with friends about what happened because it’s the only way I know how to deal. It’s laughable that you’d get seriously injured scooting. But this isn’t particularly funny. People are always going to be idiots, yes, but idiot people are currently getting seriously injured, in ways that might have been prevented, because tech companies flippantly dumped their product all over cities, without an adequate helmet solution. Facebook’s “move fast and break things” mantra can be applied to many tech companies, but in the case of e-scooters, it might just be “move fast and break skulls.”"

Where is William H. Macy in the college admissions scandal?; The Washington Post, March 14, 2019

Monica Hesse, The Washington Post;

Where is William H. Macy in the college admissions scandal?

"The most vomitous line in the whole indictment comes from a dad — New York attorney Gordon Caplan — who tells a witness on the phone, “To be honest, I’m not worried about the moral issue.”"

We Are! Not happy! U.S. Patent office frowns on Penn State trademark request; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 14, 2019

Bill Schackner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; We Are! Not happy! U.S. Patent office frowns on Penn State trademark request 

"Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney in Washington, D.C., offered an analysis via twitter of the geographic issue raised by the Patent Office and another reason the agency refused the application: the trademark as submitted was deemed "ornamental.''

He said both issues are correctable...

Of the ornamental issue, he said, "I believe this is trademarks 101 and it shocks me every time a large institution or organization gets it wrong.""

One of Silicon Valley’s most prominent voices for ethical investing is implicated in a college admissions bribery scandal; Recode, March 12, 2019

Theodore Schleifer, Recode; One of Silicon Valley’s most prominent voices for ethical investing is implicated in a college admissions bribery scandal

"What is particularly damaging for TPG is that McGlashan has positioned himself as a leading voice in Silicon Valley for social responsibility...

McGlashan also allegedly made a $250,000 donation to USC in order for his son to enter through the school’s “side door,” according to the charges, by creating the impression that he was a potential recruited kicker or punter for the school’s football team — all thanks to Photoshop. This was all accomplished through mail fraud, prosecutors say.

“I’m gonna make him a kicker/punter and they’re gonna walk him through with football, and I’ll get a picture and figure out how to Photoshop,” William Rick Singer, the college prep adviser at the heart of the scandal, allegedly told McGlashan in August 2018.

“He does have really strong legs,” McGlashan told Singer. “Maybe he’ll become a kicker. You never know.”

“Pretty funny,” McGlashan would later add. “The way the world works these days is unbelievable.”"

Famed Investor Named In Elite College Scandal, Raising Critical Ethics Questions for All; Forbes, March 13, 2019

Morgan Simon, Forbes; Famed Investor Named In Elite College Scandal, Raising Critical Ethics Questions for All

"Yesterday, William E. “Bill” McGlashan Jr., Founder and Managing Partner of the $13B TPG Growth fund, was indicted in the elite college scandal. He was particularly noted for his candor in recorded phone calls about his efforts to buy a slot at USC for his child for $250,000. The tactic, employed by ringleader William Singer, was to photoshop McGlashan’s son to look like a recruitment-worthy football kicker — despite the fact that his son’s high school did not have a football team.

McGlashan has recently gained notoriety as a proponent of impact investing. The Rise Fund, an initiative he co-founded under the TPG umbrella, has raised over $2B for interventions seeking to address global poverty and climate change.

The fact that McGlashan was a proponent of ethical investment has raised several deep questions for the sector, and for the general public. Does exercising your unchecked privilege in the world make you less ethical - separate from whether or not your actions are illegal? Should promoters of ethical investments be held to a higher standard when it comes to their personal ethics? Do you need to have impeccable ethics to be a good impact investor?...

Ethics is also about acknowledging the ways that those of us with privilege — whether it be due to social class, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, or the intersections between — can be complicit in exploiting others through fully legal means."

Top Universities Join to Push ‘Public Interest Technology’; The New York Times, March 11, 2019

Natasha Singer, The New York Times;

Top Universities Join to Push ‘Public Interest Technology’

"As technology becomes increasingly pervasive in American life, universities across the United States have been devising ways to teach students how to grapple with the consequences on society.

Now, 21 leading universities are banding together to promote their various programs. On Monday, the schools announced that they had formed a new organization called the Public Interest Technology University Network.

Members of the group include Arizona State University, the City University of New York, Harvard University, Howard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. Their goal is to train the next generation of software engineers, policymakers, civic leaders and social justice advocates to develop, regulate and use technology for the public good.

In other words, the group aims to both humanize technologists and technologize humanists.

“We think about two halves of the pipeline,” said Alexandra Givens, executive director of the Institute for Technology Law and Policy at Georgetown Law School. “One is helping technologists think about the social, ethical, legal and policy implications of their work.”

 

The other, she said, is helping students interested in law, government and nonprofit careers to learn computational and technology skills to serve the public."

Mark Zuckerberg And The Tech World Still Do Not Understand Ethics; Forbes, March 11, 2019

Derek Lidow, Forbes;

Mark Zuckerberg And The Tech World Still Do Not Understand Ethics

 

"Why the widespread blindness to the ethical and social dangers of tech startups specifically? Here are five of the principal causes: 

Tech startups see themselves as saviors of the world...

Complex technology and tech business models deflect investor due diligence...

Expectations for technology startups encourage expedient, not ethical, decision making...

We’ve fetishized disruption...

Tech promises founders and investors vast—vast—amounts of money."  

Colleges Build Network for Ethical Tech; Inside Higher Ed, March 12, 2019

Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed;

Colleges Build Network for Ethical Tech

"Twenty-one U.S. colleges and universities are working together to train a new generation of civic-minded technologists and tech-savvy policy makers.

The Public Interest Technology University Network, announced yesterday, is supported by the Ford Foundation, New America and the Hewlett Foundation. (Read an opinion piece by the leaders of these organizations about the new network today.)

The network will support curriculum development and faculty hiring in the nascent field of public interest technology. It will also explore how to support graduates who pursue careers in this field and create new internships and fellowships."

Cudd preaches diversity in meeting with Staff Council; The University Times, March 4, 2019

Marty Levine, The University Times; Cudd preaches diversity in meeting with Staff Council

"Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor Ann Cudd, here just six months, told Staff Council on Feb. 20 that she “will be giving deans an incentive to widen their pools” for hiring more diverse faculty, especially African-Americans, Latinx and Native Americans.

“I’m really interested in diversity hiring,” she said in response to member questions about low levels of black students and faculty, as well as general diversity, on campuses.  “If we don’t have a diverse faculty and staff here, it doesn’t feel like it’s such a welcoming place.”"

IP 101: Intellectual Property Management In The Digital Age; Forbes, March 4, 2019

Danae Vara Borrell, Forbes; IP 101: Intellectual Property Management In The Digital Age

"So, how do brands facing a high number of counterfeits leverage classic IP rights and technology to implement an effective online IP strategy and prevent brand erosion?

Many brands are streamlining processes by enforcing their IP rights, using technology-based solutions that rely on artificial intelligence (AI) and detect potential incidents on behalf of right owners. However, to be effective, the best AI-driven systems should take a holistic approach to brand protection by consolidating tools and actions on a single platform, providing full visibility on all the different types of infringements negatively impacting a company’s reputation such as black, grey and white market goods."

Medical students wanted: Only the ethical need apply; The Boston Globe, February 28, 2019

Inderveer Mahal, The Boston Globe; Medical students wanted: Only the ethical need apply

"Acceptance to medical school is notoriously difficult. You need to have an exceptional GPA and high Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) scores just to get an interview. Now, it’s getting even harder. Admissions officers have added a new kind of test to their screening arsenal, one that could change the face of medicine.

Since 2015, more than two dozen medical schools across the United States have embraced a test of interpersonal skills known as the CASPer (Computer Based Assessment for Sampling Personal Characteristics) test. The exam determines students’ levels of compassion and ethics — two qualities that many believe are critical to a physician’s success.

“As a society,” says Dore, “we know that strong academic skills aren’t the only trait we value in our doctors. We want them to be excellent communicators, have a strong moral sense, and be able to be empathetic across a variety of situations.”"