IT body proposes that AI pros get leashed and licensed to uphold ethics; The Register, February 15, 2024

 Paul Kunert, The Register; IT body proposes that AI pros get leashed and licensed to uphold ethics

"Creating a register of licensed AI professionals to uphold ethical standards and securing whistleblowing channels to call out bad management are two policies that could prevent a Post Office-style scandal.

So says industry body BCS – formerly the British Computer Society – which reckons licenses based on an independent framework of ethics would promote transparency among software engineers and their bosses.

"We have a register of doctors who can be struck off," said Rashik Parmar MBE, CEO at BCS. "AI professionals already have a big role in our life chances, so why shouldn't they be licensed and registered too?"...

The importance of AI ethics was amplified by the Post Office scandal, says the BCS boss, "where computer generated evidence was used by non-IT specialists to prosecute sub postmasters with tragic results."

For anyone not aware of the outrageous wrongdoing committed by the Post Office, it bought the bug-ridden Horizon accounting system in 1999 from ICL, a company that was subsequently bought by Fujitsu. Hundreds of local Post Office branch managers were subsequently wrongfully convicted of fraud when Horizon was to blame."

Life during lockdown might be much better if technophobia hadn’t held back innovation; The Washington Post, April 30, 2020

Jason Feifer , The Washington Post; Life during lockdown might be much better if technophobia hadn’t held back innovation

"Now that much of the world is in lockdown, relying on technology that many viewed with worry and suspicion mere months ago, the consequences of that fearfulness are coming into focus...

Too bad so many bosses once resisted allowing employees to work from home — even though research has found that remote workers are more productive, take shorter breaks, take less time off and stay with their companies longer. That resistance inevitably limited the marketplace for video tools, leaving only a few options available when the pandemic crisis struck.

Unfortunately, that’s how things tend to go with new technologies. Fear leads to smaller markets, reducing investment by innovators.

This story has repeated itself across time and culture...

How will we handle the next wave of innovation? That will be our greatest collective challenge. The pessimists will surely have something to say. It would be good to think back to this moment, recalling the many ways that feared technologies came to be seen as a blessing. Then we can encourage something that really does improve lives. It isn’t resistance to change. It’s change."

No bosses, no managers: the truth behind the ‘flat hierarchy’ facade ; The Guardian, July 30, 2018

Andre Spicer, The Guardian; No bosses, no managers: the truth behind the ‘flat hierarchy’ facade

"Getting rid of formal hierarchies has also proved dangerous in social movements. After spending years in the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s, the American political scientist Jo Freeman warned of the “tyranny of structurelessness”. Although egalitarian and democratic structures have many benefits, she pointed out, structurelessness easily “becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others”. By putting rules and structures in place, you make it clear and transparent how the group or organisation works. The lesson Freeman learned in the early 1970s has been forgotten over and over again.

Fantasies of no rules, no bosses and no hierarchies are seductive. Hierarchies can be repressive, rules can be absurd, and bosses can be toxic. But not having these things can be worse."