Digital Ethics

The media and the academic world are filled with stories and analyses of how AI will impact our economy. Yet with few exceptions, this work is focused on the impacts that might occur through...

ABA Journal

“"Algorithms are racist because we are racist." Data scientist @mathbabedotorg warns that, despite the appearance of fairness and objectivity, most algorithms reinforce the old biases we hoped they'd eliminate https://t.co/gZKvkLFNSN”

Over 1,500 mathematicians have signed a letter urging the community to stop working with police.

Facebook has been ordered to curb its data collection practices in Germany after a landmark ruling on Thursday that the world's largest social network abused its market dominance to gather information about users without their consent.

“BREAKING: We're filing a complaint against Detroit police for wrongfully arresting Robert Williams, an innocent Black man — all because face recognition technology can't tell Black people apart. Officers hauled him away in front of his kids and locked him up for 30 hours. https://t.co/84XJs0XWq...

The careful wording of public pledges leaves plenty of room for oppressive uses of the technology, critics say.

Robert Williams says his driver's license photo was incorrectly matched with a wanted suspect. He says he was arrested and detained. Though the case was dropped, Williams says its effect is lasting.

Crime-prediction technology reproduces injustices & causes real harm

The news: An open letter from a growing coalition of AI researchers is calling out scientific publisher Springer Nature for a conference paper it reportedly planned to include in its forthcoming book Transactions on Computational Science & Computational Intelligence. The paper, titled “A Deep Neural Network Model to Predict Criminality Using Image Processing,” presents a…

An image of @BarackObama getting upsampled into a white guy is floating around because it illustrates racial bias in #MachineLearning. Just in case you think it isn't real, it is, I got the code working locally. Here is me, and here is @AOC. pic.twitter.com/kvL3pwwWe1— Robert Osazuwa Ness (@osazuwa) June 20, 2020

Feds charged six with launching an "aggressive cyberstalking campaign" over articles critical of eBay.

Police forces across the country now have access to surveillance technologies that were recently available only to national intelligence services. The digitization of bias and abuse of power followed.

Amazon’s Rekognition platform has come under fire over the years

IBM is also advocating for police reform.

A few weeks ago, Zoom admitted that they literally NEVER CONSIDERED how their product would be used to harm vulnerable populations, but now they see us, so that’s progress ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://t.co/2bRk3IFFi4— All I don't wanna do is zoom-a-zoom-zoom-zoom (@hypervisible) June 1, 2020

In the midst of a pandemic, your voice assistant might need some tweaks.

You’d get basically the same results if you mounted a thermal camera on a pole next to the grocery store.

You want to replace books with laptops? You might be doing more harm that good unless you have these contingent issues covered in advance. #edtech #edtechknow #Broussard pic.twitter.com/3bdyNZESfG— Abeba Birhane (@Abebab) April 11, 2020

One well-liked diversity training program at Google called Sojourn was cut entirely, according to seven former and current employees.

The personal details of 3.68 million MobiFriends users have been posted online in April 2020.

It seems Tesla isn't taking full care of its customers' personal data when replacing infotainment and Autopilot hardware in some of its vehicles.

Twitter has launched a new, limited test which will provide warnings on tweet replies that use potentially harmful language.

A group of Harrisburg University professors and a Ph.D. student have developed automated computer facial recognition software capable of predicting whether someone is likely going to be a criminal. With 80 percent accuracy and with no racial bias, the software can predict if someone is a criminal based solely on a picture of their face. The software is intended to help law enforcement prevent crime. Ph.D. student and NYPD veteran Jonathan W. Korn, Prof. Nathaniel J.S. Ashby, and Prof. Roozbeh Sadeghian titled their research "A Deep Neural Network Model to Predict Criminality Using Image Pro...

Over the past few weeks, Apple & Google have floated the idea of developing and distributing a digital contact-tracing app that will inform people when they’ve been exposed to someone who’s contracted COVID-19, and communicate to people that they’ve been exposed to you if you later test positive yourself (edit: since writing this, Apple has released a beta of iOS 13 that includes the SDK necessary to begin using this system). Writing this in late April and early May, it feels like we’re desperate for information and weary from not knowing who’s caught COVID-19, who’s still vulnerable, who g...

Making the user agree to legalese they haven't yet probably isn't great #UX, @Ferrari. #DarkPatterns #design pic.twitter.com/0SrmPr6biN— Doug Collins (@DougCollinsUX) May 1, 2020

Students described their experiences as "uncomfortable," "intrusive," and "sketchy"

On building ethical products

Former FTC chief technologist Ashkan Soltani argues it's time for Silicon Valley companies to formalize and test not just their products' security, but its "abusability."

If AI is really going to make a difference to patients we need to know how it works when real humans get their hands on it, in real situations.

While vowing to police COVID-19 misinformation on its platform, Facebook let advertisers target users interested in “pseudoscience”

One of our classes has been the victim of some really intense zoombombing, and all I can think about is that this is exactly why ethical speculation around unintended consequences and bad actors is a CRITICAL part of the design process for any new technology. [Thread]— Casey Fiesler, PhD, JD, geekD (@cfiesler) April 8, 2020

Chief Moore says, due to financial constraints caused by the pandemic, the LAPD will end a program that predicts where property crimes could occur.

Amidst the Corona crisis, the video communications service Zoom gained enormous popularity. The rate of daily Zoom users skyrocketed from 10 Mio in December 2019 to 200 Mio in March 2020. As it outshined many of its competitors, Zoom labels itself as “the leader in modern enterprise video communications”. However, the company has been facing […]

From protecting privacy to saving the free press, it may be the single best way to fix the internet.

Hundreds of researchers attempted to predict children’s and families’ outcomes, using 15 years of data. None were able to do so with meaningful accuracy.

This article explains the ethical situation societies face in the context of a transition from user-centric to self-sovereign identity.

Zoom's privacy policy isn't explicit about the data transfer to Facebook at all.

How we went from B.F. Skinner to China's social credit system.

Amazon pushes Ring as a crime-fighting tool. Data from three of Ring's earliest police partnerships doesn't back up that claim.

This is why UX writing matters! @PichinteKevin fixed the original message from @seattletimes so it wouldn’t ask its users if they “wanted coronavirus” 🙄🤦🏻‍♀️#UXwriting #microcopy #UX pic.twitter.com/8L9xgFv0rg— Mar (@brightspaceux) March 7, 2020

Guy uses RunKeeper to track his workouts. He passes 1 house often. RunKeeper sends info to Google. House gets burglarized. 👮issue geofence warrant. Google tells guy unless he blocks warrant, in 7 days they will give all his info to 👮. 🤯🤯🤯https://t.co/oa2LmY9QEh— One Ring (doorbell) to surveil them all... (@hypervisible) March 7, 2020

The World Economic Forum’s Framework for the Responsible use of facial recognition technology seeks to address the need for a set of concrete guidelines to ensure the trustworthy and safe use of this technology. This framework enables Governments to protect citizens from various harms potentially caused by facial recognition technology while supporting beneficial applications. It also enables industry actors to demonstrate that they have implemented robust risk mitigation processes through an independent audit of their systems.

The 5 Principles of #AI Weirdness, from the Intro of @JanelleCShane “You Look Like a Thing and I Love You.” #yllataily #sketchnotes pic.twitter.com/3m5IBYqVca— Chris Noessel 🏳️‍🌈🤖 (@chrisnoessel) March 5, 2020

We follow faulty automated instructions because ‘the computer can’t be wrong’