The Catholic Priest Who Helped Write Anthropic’s A.I. Ethics Code; Observer, March 31, 2026

 Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly , Observer; The Catholic Priest Who Helped Write Anthropic’s A.I. Ethics Code

"Father Brendan McGuire is writing a novel about a disenchanted monk and his A.I. companion. He’s doing it with Claude. That detail—a Catholic priest using Anthropic’s chatbot to explore questions of faith and artificial consciousness—tells you something about where Silicon Valley’s moral reckoning has arrived. McGuire, 60, leads St. Simon Catholic Parish in Los Altos, Calif., a congregation that counts some of the Valley’s A.I. researchers among its members. Earlier this year, he and a group of faith leaders helped Anthropic shape the Claude Constitution, the set of guiding principles governing how its A.I. behaves.

He is not, in other words, an outside critic. He is something more complicated: a true believer in both God and technology, trying to hold them in the same hand. “I left the tech industry, but it never really left me,” McGuire told Observer...

McGuire wasn’t Anthropic’s only religious collaborator. Bishop Paul Tighe of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education and Brian Patrick Green, a technology ethics director at Santa Clara University, also reviewed the Claude Constitution. Green and other Catholic scholars recently filed a federal court brief supporting Anthropic in its lawsuit against the U.S. government, which challenges the company’s effective blacklisting by the Pentagon after it refused to allow its A.I. systems to be used for autonomous warfare or domestic surveillance. The brief praised those ethical limits as “minimal standards of ethical conduct for technical progress.”...

Anthropic says its engagement with religious voices—part of a broader effort to engage a wide variety of communities to keep pace with technological acceleration—is only a beginning. The company plans to expand outreach beyond Catholic institutions to other religious leaders going forward."

The Tech Industry Tried Reducing AI’s Pervasive Bias. Now Trump Wants to End Its ‘Woke AI’ Efforts; Associated Press via Inc., April 28, 2025

 Associated Press via Inc.; The Tech Industry Tried Reducing AI’s Pervasive Bias. Now Trump Wants to End Its ‘Woke AI’ Efforts 

"In the White House and the Republican-led Congress, “woke AI” has replaced harmful algorithmic discrimination as a problem that needs fixing. Past efforts to “advance equity” in AI development and curb the production of “harmful and biased outputs” are a target of investigation, according to subpoenas sent to Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and 10 other tech companies last month by the House Judiciary Committee.

And the standard-setting branch of the U.S. Commerce Department has deleted mentions of AI fairness, safety and “responsible AI” in its appeal for collaboration with outside researchers. It is instead instructing scientists to focus on “reducing ideological bias” in a way that will “enable human flourishing and economic competitiveness,” according to a copy of the document obtained by The Associated Press.

In some ways, tech workers are used to a whiplash of Washington-driven priorities affecting their work.

But the latest shift has raised concerns among experts in the field, including Harvard University sociologist Ellis Monk, who several years ago was approached by Google to help make its AI products more inclusive."

Keyboard warriors: Ukraine’s IT army switches to war footing; The Guardian, March 12, 2022

Mark Sweney, The Guardian; Keyboard warriors: Ukraine’s IT army switches to war footing

"Sensing the threat, the IT Ukraine Association tested the sector’s readiness at the start of February with a survey question that would be unthinkable coming from a trade body in most countries: “Does your company have an emergency response plan for such cases as large-scale combat operations, lack of internet access, power outage etc?”

More than 90% said they already had, or were developing, plans to keep Ukraine’s tech sector able to continue to service domestic and international clients.

“It is about measures and actions to protect and make operations safe and able to continue,” says Konstantin Vasyuk, the association’s executive director. “Relocating vulnerable workers, ensuring data is in the cloud, alternative internet connections, transferring staff and specialists to western parts of Ukraine and countries in Europe. Things that can, and have, to be implemented very fast.”

And so far, the plans to maintain digital resilience have helped defy expectations about the level of disruption expected from the full-scale invasion by Russian forces...

“Not everyone is good with a gun,” says the IT Ukrainian Association’s Vasyuk. “People should be used as efficiently as they can. We are fighting with guns, with laptops, we will keep on going.”"

Tech predictions for 2019: It gets worse before it gets better; The Washington Post, December 27, 2018

Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post; Tech predictions for 2019: It gets worse before it gets better

"2018 is a year the tech industry wishes it could forget. But 2018’s problems aren’t going anywhere.

It was the year we came to grips with how little we can trust Facebook and how much we’re addicted to our screens. It was the year that online hate and misinformation became an unavoidable reality and Google, Microsoft and Amazon faced revolts from their own employees over ethical lapses. It was the year Apple became the first trillion-dollar company — and then lost a quarter of that when we yawned at its new iPhones.

Even YouTube’s “Rewind 2018” video is already the most-disliked video in history.

When my Post colleagues and I looked into a crystal ball to make this list of nine intentionally provocative headlines we might see in 2019, it was hard to see past the problems we’re bringing with us into the new year.

New technologies like 5G networks, alternative transportation and artificial intelligence promise to change our lives. But even these carry lots of caveats in the near term.

I’m still optimistic technology can make our world better. So here’s a glass half-full of hope for the new year: 2019 is tech’s chance to make it right."

IBM-Microsoft Spat Elevates Diversity to Tech-Secret Level; Bloomberg, February 12, 2018

Chris Dolmetsch, Bloomberg; IBM-Microsoft Spat Elevates Diversity to Tech-Secret Level

"While the lawsuit highlights the contention that can ensue when a senior employee bolts for a rival, it also shines a light on the increasing role that diversity measures play in corporate America. Technology and financial companies have reserved those fights in the past to employees who possessed key technical or strategic knowledge, not those entrusted to make decisions on hiring and the makeup of the workforce...

In its complaint, filed Monday in federal court in White Plains, New York, IBM pointed to Microsoft’s own attempts to keep details about its diversity efforts secret. In a separate lawsuit, in which Microsoft is accused of discriminating against women in technical and engineering roles, the Redmond, Washington-based company insisted that internal communications and documents about its diversity data and strategies be filed under seal because they’re so sensitive.

Non-competition clauses are common in the technology industry, covering most employees, said Evan Starr, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business."

Lee staying on as patent chief under Trump administration; Politico, 1/19/17

Ashley Gold, Nancy Scola, Li Zhou, Tony Romm, Politico; 

Lee staying on as patent chief under Trump administration

"President-elect Donald Trump has decided to keep former Google executive Michelle Lee on as director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark office, according to Rep. Darrell Issa, who informed tech industry organizations gathered in Washington Thursday for a breakfast event...

Lee, who served a dozen years as patent counsel at Google, has been seen in her years in office as walking a careful line between the two patent camps — choosing to focus less on policy than on process upgrades aimed at improving the quality of patents issued by the office.

"I hope that Director Lee expands her focus from just patent quality and lends her expertise and authority to help fix the very real problem that the U.S. has lost its "gold standard" patent system — it no longer promises stable, effective property rights to innovators," said Adam Mosoff, a law professor and co-founder of the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property at George Mason University."

Twitter faces backlash over its new diversity lead; Washington Post, 12/30/15

Hayley Tsukayama, Washington Post; Twitter faces backlash over its new diversity lead:

"To address some of those issues, Twitter announced that it has hired a new vice president for diversity and inclusion, Jeffery Siminoff. The fifty-year-old replaces Janet Van Huysse, and comes from a similar role at Apple. He is known for his extensive work with Out Leadership -- a group dedicated to demonstrating how equality in general makes for good business, with a particular focus on LGBT executives. He was also named in a TechCrunch piece identifying "10 Men Making Waves for Women in Tech."

But he's also a white man — something that hasn't been lost on those who've repeatedly criticized the tech industry at large for its lack of diversity. Many argue that Twitter's largely white and male workforce keep it from seeing community issues with its product...

But others welcomed the appointment.

“Members of underrepresented groups in tech are tired of being the only advocates of cultural change in the field,” said Lucy Sanders, co-founder of the National Center for Women in Information Technology. “We encourage those who think otherwise to become more informed and consider the complexities.” She added that the industry needs more white men in diversity and inclusion roles advocating for more underrepresented groups.

Diversity and inclusion, of course, can mean many things to many people."