Americans’ perceptions about unethical behavior shape how they think about people in powerful roles; Pew Research Center, September 19, 2019

Claire Gecewicz and Lee Rainie, Pew Research Center; Americans’ perceptions about unethical behavior shape how they think about people in powerful roles

"Americans have mixed views of the job performance of those who hold positions of power and responsibility in eight major U.S. groups and institutions. A key element in shaping these views is their sense of whether members of these groups act ethically and hold themselves accountable for their mistakes, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

The groups studied included members of Congress, local elected officials, leaders of technology companies, journalists, religious leaders, police officers, principals at public K-12 schools and military leaders."

People Are Looking At Your LinkedIn Profile. They Might Be Chinese Spies; NPR, September 19, 2019

Ryan Lucas, NPR; People Are Looking At Your LinkedIn Profile. They Might Be Chinese Spies

"Demers took over leadership of the National Security Division in February 2018 after being confirmed by the Senate. Since taking the helm, he has spent a considerable amount of time on China and what he calls its prolific espionage efforts against the United States.

They're vast in scale, he said, and they span the spectrum from traditional espionage targeting government secrets to economic espionage going after intellectual property and American trade secrets...

It's a play that has also been used to target folks in the business world and academia, where China is hungry for cutting-edge technology and trade secrets. For years, the Chinese intelligence services have hacked into U.S. companies and made off with intellectual property.

Now, U.S. officials say China's spies are increasingly turning to what is known as "nontraditional collectors" — students, researchers and business insiders — to scoop up secrets."

What to Do When You’re Losing Your Audience During a Presentation; Harvard Business Review, September 19, 2019

Dorie Clark, Harvard Business Review; What to Do When You’re Losing Your Audience During a Presentation

"As a professional speaker who has given more than 300 talks over the past half-decade, I’ve addressed plenty of audiences under adverse conditions, from the serious (employees smarting from news of an impending reorg) to the banal (fighting to be heard over the clank of silverware during a lunchtime speaking slot). Here are four strategies that have helped me regain control of the room."

Updating the Academic Library Code of Conduct for Modern Times | From the Bell Tower; Library Journal, September 12, 2019

Steven Bell, Library Journal; Updating the Academic Library Code of Conduct for Modern Times | From the Bell Tower

"Once the new community standards are complete, consider posting them in a visible public space to communicate transparency about the policy. Be thoughtful in establishing standards that truly reflect the needs and interests of community members, but are equally well designed to provide the secure learning, research, and innovation spaces that students, faculty, staff, alumni, and nonaffiliated library guests expect and deserve from the campus library."

UVA receives approval to form School of Data Science with $120M gift; WDBJ7, September 19, 2019

Taia White, WDBJ7; UVA receives approval to form School of Data Science with $120M gift

"Philip E. Bourne, Professor and Data Science Institute Director, was appointed dean of the School of Data Science by Provost Magill immediately after the vote conferred official status upon the school...

“We envision the new School of Data Science at UVA as a ‘school without walls,’” Bourne said. “In its very structure and foundation, we will build collaborative and interdisciplinary opportunities through partnerships and physical spaces for shared research and education programs. The new school will combine a focus on research, education, and service to build bridges across academic, geographic, commercial and cultural boundaries using responsible, open data science.”

The school also will focus on ethics and the practice of responsible data science, building upon the Data Science Institute’s existing Center for Data Ethics and Justice.

“Data science offers incredible, revolutionary opportunities to understand and make an impact on our world and our future,” Bourne said. “Now it is more important than ever that everyone using those skills and tools – from students just beginning to learn statistics and programming, to leaders working at the cutting edge of the field – understands the importance of using data ethically and responsibly, and putting their skills to work to make a positive impact on society and our world.”"

Northeastern researchers team up with Accenture to offer a road map for artificial intelligence ethics oversight; Northeastern University, August 29, 2019

Khalida Sarwari, Northeastern University; Northeastern researchers team up with Accenture to offer a road map for artificial intelligence ethics oversight

"Now, Northeastern professors John Basl and Ron Sandler are offering organizations guidance for how to create a well-designed and effective committee based on similar models used in biomedical research. 

Maintaining that an ethics committee that is adequately resourced and thoughtfully designed can play an important role in mitigating digital risks and maintaining trust between an organization and the public, the researchers provide a framework for such a system in a new report produced in collaboration with global professional services company Accenture...

“If you want to build a committee that works effectively and if you really want to build ethical capacity within an organization, it’s a significant undertaking where you can’t just throw together a few people with ethical expertise,” says Sandler.

Added Basl: “We lay out the kinds of experts an organization will need—someone who knows local laws, someone who knows ethics, a variety of technical experts, and members of an affected community. Who those individuals are, or what their particular expertise is, depends on the kind of technology being developed and deployed.”"

Building data and AI ethics committees; Accenture.com, August 20, 2019

Accenture.com; Building data and AI ethics committees

"In brief

• Organizations face a difficult challenge when it comes to ethically-informed data collection, sharing and use.
• There is growing demand for incorporating ethical considerations into products and services involving big data, AI and machine learning.
• Outside of mere legal compliance, there is little guidance on how to incorporate this ethical consideration.
• To fill this gap, Northeastern University and Accenture explore the development of effective and well-functioning data and AI ethics committees."

Pitt Tells Student Groups Not to Use Pitt in Their Names; Inside Higher Ed, September 13, 2019

Elin Johnson, Inside Higher Ed; Pitt Tells Student Groups Not to Use Pitt in Their Names

"An emailed statement from communications manager Kevin Zwick read, "Many student organizations already comply with the 10-year-old guidelines, which allow the use of the Pitt and Panther names in ways that don't imply that the organizations are official university entities. Pitt's Office of Student Life and the Student Organization Resource Center continue to discuss concerns with our Student Government Board leadership to work toward a potential resolution."

Zwick maintained that the current guidelines for Pitt student clubs were as follows: "Independent student organizations are voluntary associations led by Pitt students, which are legally separate entities from the university. Because they are voluntary associations, independent student organizations may not use 'University of Pittsburgh,' 'Pitt' or any other University of Pittsburgh trademark/wordmark (i.e., Panther/Panthers) in their names other than to identify that the organization is located at Pitt (i.e., 'at Pitt' or 'at the University of Pittsburgh')."

Currently listed on the university's student organization page are dozens of club names that are in apparent violation of these guidelines."

'Ethics slam' packs pizzeria; The Herald Journal, September 10, 2019

 Ashtyn Asay, The Herald Journal; 'Ethics slam' packs pizzeria

"The ethics slam was sponsored by the Weber State University Richard Richards Institute for Ethics, the USU Philosophy Club, and the Society for Women in Philosophy. It was organized by Robison-Greene and her husband, Richard Greene, a professor of philosophy and director of the Richard Richards Institute for Ethics.

This is the seventh ethics slam put together by Greene and Robison-Greene, whose collective goal is to encourage civil discourse and generate rich conversations within a respectful community.

This goal appeared to be met on Monday evening, as ethics slam participants engaged in polite conversation and debate for almost two hours. Opinions were challenged and controversial points were made, but Greene and Robison-Greene kept the conversation on track...

"The next ethics slam will be at 7 p.m. Sept. 23 at the Pleasant Valley Branch of the Weber County Library. The topic of discussion will be: “Is censorship ever appropriate?”"

How an Élite University Research Center Concealed Its Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein; The New Yorker, September 6, 2019

Ronan Farrow, The New Yorker;

How an Élite University Research Center Concealed Its Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein

New documents show that the M.I.T. Media Lab was aware of Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender, and that Epstein directed contributions to the lab far exceeding the amounts M.I.T. has publicly admitted.

 

"Current and former faculty and staff of the media lab described a pattern of concealing Epstein’s involvement with the institution. Signe Swenson, a former development associate and alumni coordinator at the lab, told me that she resigned in 2016 in part because of her discomfort about the lab’s work with Epstein. She said that the lab’s leadership made it explicit, even in her earliest conversations with them, that Epstein’s donations had to be kept secret...

Swenson said that, even though she resigned over the lab’s relationship with Epstein, her participation in what she took to be a coverup of his contributions has weighed heavily on her since. Her feelings of guilt were revived when she learned of recent statements from Ito and M.I.T. leadership that she believed to be lies. “I was a participant in covering up for Epstein in 2014,” she told me. “Listening to what comments are coming out of the lab or M.I.T. about the relationship—I just see exactly the same thing happening again.”"

He Who Must Not Be Tolerated; The New York Times, September 8, 2019

Kara Swisher, The New York Times;

He Who Must Not Be Tolerated

Joi Ito’s fall from grace for his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was much deserved. But his style of corner-cutting ethics is all too common in tech. 

"Voldemort? 

Of all the terrible details of the gross fraud that the former head of the M.I.T. Media Lab, Joichi Ito, and his minions perpetrated in trying to cover up donations by Jeffrey Epstein to the high-profile tech research lab, perhaps giving a pedophile a nickname of a character in a book aimed at children was the most awful.

“The effort to conceal the lab’s contact with Epstein was so widely known that some staff in the office of the lab’s director, Joi Ito, referred to Epstein as Voldemort or ‘he who must not be named,’ ” wrote Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker, in his eviscerating account of the moral and leadership failings of one of the digital industry’s top figures."

The Moral Rot of the MIT Media Lab; Slate, September 8, 2019

Justin Peters, Slate; The Moral Rot of the MIT Media Lab

"Over the course of the past century, MIT became one of the best brands in the world, a name that confers instant credibility and stature on all who are associated with it. Rather than protect the inherent specialness of this brand, the Media Lab soiled it again and again by selling its prestige to banks, drug companies, petroleum companies, carmakers, multinational retailers, at least one serial sexual predator, and others who hoped to camouflage their avarice with the sheen of innovation. There is a big difference between taking money from someone like Epstein and taking it from Nike or the Department of Defense, but the latter choices pave the way for the former."

AI Ethics Guidelines Every CIO Should Read; Information Week, August 7, 2019

John McClurg, Information Week; AI Ethics Guidelines Every CIO Should Read

"Technology experts predict the rate of adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning will skyrocket in the next two years. These advanced technologies will spark unprecedented business gains, but along the way enterprise leaders will be called to quickly grapple with a smorgasbord of new ethical dilemmas. These include everything from AI algorithmic bias and data privacy issues to public safety concerns from autonomous machines running on AI.

Because AI technology and use cases are changing so rapidly, chief information officers and other executives are going to find it difficult to keep ahead of these ethical concerns without a roadmap. To guide both deep thinking and rapid decision-making about emerging AI technologies, organizations should consider developing an internal AI ethics framework."

Does the data industry need a code of ethics?; The Scotsman, August 29, 2019

David Lee, The Scotsman; Does the data industry need a code of ethics?

"Docherty says the whole area of data ethics is still emerging: “It’s where all the hype is now – it used to be big data that everyone talked about, now it’s data ethics. It’s fundamental, and embedding it across an organisation will give competitive advantage.”

So what is The Data Lab, set up in 2015, doing itself in this ethical space? “We’re ensuring data ethics training is baked in to the core technology training of all Masters students, so they are asking all the right questions,” says Docherty."

Teaching ethics in computer science the right way with Georgia Tech's Charles Isbell; TechCrunch, September 5, 2019

Greg Epstein, TechCrunch; Teaching ethics in computer science the right way with Georgia Tech's Charles Isbell

"The new fall semester is upon us, and at elite private colleges and universities, it’s hard to find a trendier major than Computer Science. It’s also becoming more common for such institutions to prioritize integrating ethics into their CS studies, so students don’t just learn about how to build software, but whether or not they should build it in the first place. Of course, this begs questions about how much the ethics lessons such prestigious schools are teaching are actually making a positive impression on students.

But at a time when demand for qualified computer scientists is skyrocketing around the world and far exceeds supply, another kind of question might be even more important: Can computer science be transformed from a field largely led by elites into a profession that empowers vastly more working people, and one that trains them in a way that promotes ethics and an awareness of their impact on the world around them?

Enter Charles Isbell of Georgia Tech, a humble and unassuming star of inclusive and ethical computer science. Isbell, a longtime CS professor at Georgia Tech, enters this fall as the new Dean and John P. Imlay Chair of Georgia Tech’s rapidly expanding College of Computing."

What's The Difference Between Compliance And Ethics?; Forbes, May 9, 2019

Bruce Weinstein, Forbes; What's The Difference Between Compliance And Ethics?

 "As important as both compliance and ethics are, ethics holds us to a higher standard, in my view. It's crucial to respect your institution's rules and policies, as well as the relevant laws and regulations, but your duties don't stop there.

High-character leaders ask, "What is required of me?" but they don't leave it at that. Ethical leaders also ask, "What is the right thing to do? How would an honorable person behave in this situation?"

A Youth Camp Where No Issue Is Off Limits: Arts and crafts, water sports and roaring bonfires have been replaced by exercises in decision-making.; The New York Times, August 29, 2019

Audra D. S. Burch, The New York Times; 

A Youth Camp Where No Issue Is Off Limits

Arts and crafts, water sports and roaring bonfires have been replaced by exercises in decision-making.

"Etgar 36 is a summer camp meets road trip, and campers are exposed to opposing arguments about hotly debated issues at a time when many Americans are not used to talking to people with whom they disagree. The arts and crafts, sports and roaring bonfires of traditional sleepaway summer camps have been replaced by cultural journeys and exercises in critical thinking and civic engagement.

For Billy Planer, the camp’s founder, arming young people with information and ideas is the best way to prepare them for the emerging challenges of the world. Perhaps more quickly than ever before, teenagers are pressured to take a side and have an opinion amid an unending sea of status updates on social media.

“Success for us is finding humanity in discussions with people who have opposing views,” Mr. Planer, 52, said. “We want our kids to ask questions” and “gut-check their own positions,” he said."

A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics; Los Angeles Times, April 30, 2019

Mike Godwin, The Los Angeles Times; A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics

"The question isn’t just what rules should a reformed Facebook follow. The bigger question is what all the big tech companies’ relationships with users should look like. The framework needed can’t be created out of whole cloth just by new government regulation; it has to be grounded in professional ethics.

Doctors and lawyers, as they became increasingly professionalized in the 19th century, developed formal ethical codes that became the seeds of modern-day professional practice. Tech-company professionals should follow their example. An industry-wide code of ethics could guide companies through the big questions of privacy and harmful content.

Drawing on Yale law professor Jack Balkin’s concept of “information fiduciaries,” I have proposed that the tech companies develop an industry-wide code of ethics that they can unite behind in implementing their censorship and privacy policies — as well as any other information policies that may affect individuals."

The Legal and Ethical Implications of Using AI in Hiring; Harvard Business Review, April 25, 2019

Ben Dattner, 

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, 

Richard Buchband, 

Lucinda Schettler

, Harvard Business Review; 

The Legal and Ethical Implications of Using AI in Hiring

"Using AI, big data, social media, and machine learning, employers will have ever-greater access to candidates’ private lives, private attributes, and private challenges and states of mind. There are no easy answers to many of the new questions about privacy we have raised here, but we believe that they are all worthy of public discussion and debate."

Enron, Ethics And The Slow Death Of American Democracy; Forbes, April 24, 2019

Ken Silverstein, Forbes; Enron, Ethics And The Slow Death Of American Democracy

"“Ask not whether it is lawful but whether it is ethical and moral,” says Todd Haugh, professor of business ethics at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, in a conversation with this reporter. “What is the right thing to do and how do we foster this? We are trying to create values and trust in the market and there are rules and obligations that extend beyond what is merely legal. In the end, organizational interests are about long-term collective success and not about short-term personal gain.”...

The Moral of the Mueller Report

The corollary to this familiar downfall is that of the U.S. presidency in context of the newly-released redacted version of the Mueller report. The same moral questions, in fact, have surfaced today that did so when Enron reigned: While Enron had a scripted code of conduct, it couldn’t transcend its own arrogance — that all was fair in the name of profits. Similarly, Trump has deluded himself and portions of the public that is all is fair in the name of winning.

“One of the most disturbing things, is the idea you can do whatever you need to do so long as you don’t get punished by the legal system,” says Professor Haugh. “We have seen echoes of that ever since the 2016 election. It is how this president is said to have acted in his business and many of us consider this conduct morally wrong. It is difficult to have an ethical culture when the leader does not follow what most people consider to be moral actions.”...

Just as Enron caused the nation to evaluate the balance between people and profits, the U.S president has forced American citizens to re-examine the boundaries between legality and morality. Good leadership isn’t about enriching the self but about bettering society and setting the tone for how organizations act. Debasing those standards is always a loser. And what’s past is prologue — a roadmap that the president is probably ignoring at democracy’s peril."

Tech giants are seeking help on AI ethics. Where they seek it matters; Quartz, March 30, 2019

Dave Gershgorn, Quartz; Tech giants are seeking help on AI ethics. Where they seek it matters

"Meanwhile, as Quartz reported last week, Stanford’s new Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence excluded from its faculty any significant number of people of color, some of whom have played key roles in creating the field of AI ethics and algorithmic accountability.

Other tech companies are also seeking input on AI ethics, including Amazon, which this week announced a $10 million grant in partnership with the National Science Foundation. The funding will support research into fairness in AI."

A New Model For AI Ethics In R&D; Forbes, March 27, 2019

Cansu Canca, Forbes; 

A New Model For AI Ethics In R&D

"The ethical framework that evolved for biomedical research—namely, the ethics oversight and compliance model—was developed in reaction to the horrors arising from biomedical research during World War II and which continued all the way into the ’70s.

In response, bioethics principles and ethics review boards guided by these principles were established to prevent unethical research. In the process, these boards were given a heavy hand to regulate research without checks and balances to control them. Despite deep theoretical weaknesses in its framework and massive practical problems in its implementation, this became the default ethics governance model, perhaps due to the lack of competition.

The framework now emerging for AI ethics resembles this model closely. In fact, the latest set of AI principles—drafted by AI4People and forming the basis for the Draft Ethics Guidelines of the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on AI—evaluates 47 proposed principles and condenses them into just five.

Four of these are exactly the same as traditional bioethics principles: respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice, as defined in the Belmont Report of 1979. There is just one new principle added—explicability. But even that is not really a principle itself, but rather a means of realizing the other principles. In other words, the emerging default model for AI ethics is a direct transplant of bioethics principles and ethics boards to AI ethics. Unfortunately, it leaves much to be desired for effective and meaningful integration of ethics into the field of AI."

'Disastrous' lack of diversity in AI industry perpetuates bias, study finds; The Guardian, April 16, 2019

Kari Paul, The Guardian;

'Disastrous' lack of diversity in AI industry perpetuates bias, study finds

"Lack of diversity in the artificial intelligence field has reached “a moment of reckoning”, according to new findings published by a New York University research center. A “diversity disaster” has contributed to flawed systems that perpetuate gender and racial biases found the survey, published by the AI Now Institute, of more than 150 studies and reports.

The AI field, which is overwhelmingly white and male, is at risk of replicating or perpetuating historical biases and power imbalances, the report said. Examples cited include image recognition services making offensive classifications of minorities, chatbots adopting hate speech, and Amazon technology failing to recognize users with darker skin colors. The biases of systems built by the AI industry can be largely attributed to the lack of diversity within the field itself, the report said...

The report released on Tuesday cautioned against addressing diversity in the tech industry by fixing the “pipeline” problem, or the makeup of who is hired, alone. Men currently make up 71% of the applicant pool for AI jobs in the US, according to the 2018 AI Index, an independent report on the industry released annually. The AI institute suggested additional measures, including publishing compensation levels for workers publicly, sharing harassment and discrimination transparency reports, and changing hiring practices to increase the number of underrepresented groups at all levels."

Ethics Alone Can’t Fix Big Tech Ethics can provide blueprints for good tech, but it can’t implement them.; Slate, April 17, 2019

Daniel Susser, Slate;

Ethics Alone Can’t Fix Big Tech

Ethics can provide blueprints for good tech, but it can’t implement them.

"Ethics requires more than rote compliance. And it’s important to remember that industry can reduce any strategy to theater. Simply focusing on law and policy won’t solve these problems, since they are equally (if not more) susceptible to watering down. Many are rightly excited about new proposals for state and federal privacy legislation, and for laws constraining facial recognition technology, but we’re already seeing industry lobbying to strip them of their most meaningful provisions. More importantly, law and policy evolve too slowly to keep up with the latest challenges technology throws at us, as is evident from the fact that most existing federal privacy legislation is older than the internet.

The way forward is to see these strategies as complementary, each offering distinctive and necessary tools for steering new and emerging technologies toward shared ends. The task is fitting them together.

By its very nature ethics is idealistic. The purpose of ethical reflection is to understand how we ought to live—which principles should drive us and which rules should constrain us. However, it is more or less indifferent to the vagaries of market forces and political winds. To oversimplify: Ethics can provide blueprints for good tech, but it can’t implement them. In contrast, law and policy are creatures of the here and now. They aim to shape the future, but they are subject to the brute realities—social, political, economic, historical—from which they emerge. What they lack in idealism, though, is made up for in effectiveness. Unlike ethics, law and policy are backed by the coercive force of the state."

Europe's Quest For Ethics In Artificial Intelligence; Forbes, April 11, 2019

Andrea Renda, Forbes; Europe's Quest For Ethics In Artificial Intelligence

"This week a group of 52 experts appointed by the European Commission published extensive Ethics Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence (AI), which seek to promote the development of “Trustworthy AI” (full disclosure: I am one of the 52 experts). This is an extremely ambitious document. For the first time, ethical principles will not simply be listed, but will be put to the test in a large-scale piloting exercise. The pilot is fully supported by the EC, which endorsed the Guidelines and called on the private sector to start using it, with the hope of making it a global standard.

Europe is not alone in the quest for ethics in AI. Over the past few years, countries like Canada and Japan have published AI strategies that contain ethical principles, and the OECD is adopting a recommendation in this domain. Private initiatives such as the Partnership on AI, which groups more than 80 corporations and civil society organizations, have developed ethical principles. AI developers agreed on the Asilomar Principles and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) worked hard on an ethics framework. Most high-tech giants already have their own principles, and civil society has worked on documents, including the Toronto Declaration focused on human rights. A study led by Oxford Professor Luciano Floridi found significant alignment between many of the existing declarations, despite varying terminologies. They also share a distinctive feature: they are not binding, and not meant to be enforced."