Digital Ethics

A little question is a big deal when it comes to shaping people’s experience with your product. How do we ask people for their gender in a…

The voter journey can be a happy path or a burdened one. Let's make voting more rational.

The most famous entrepreneur of his generation is facing a public reckoning with the power of Big Tech.

Attendees at last month’s Adobe Symposium, in Sydney, were treated to insights from some of the world’s most eminent experience makers. Among them was brand reinvention consultant Cindy Gallop, who has 30 years of experience in branding, marketing, and entrepreneurialism.

Learning about the cyber security concept of threat hunting, i.e. not waiting for threats to appear but to proactively hunt them down before they reach your systems.Thinking that this is what #designethics needs as well: harm hunting. Let's not wait for people to complain.— Per Axbom (@axbom) September 12, 2018

I've often said that every two-dimensional map is a lie; a perfect map would be able to show a city in three dimensions. (Or four, to show how they've changed over time.) Height tells you so much; the steepness of stre

Amygdala hijack refers to the fight-or-flight response that takes place when you are faced with a perceived threat.

This is a crib of a talk that Data & Society Founder and President danah boyd gave at the Online News Association conference in Austin…

Exclusive: Use of algorithms to identify families for attention raises stereotyping and privacy fears

This is quietly a major milestone in tech culture. Linus Torvalds, the leader behind Linux, git, and much of open source culture, reflects on how he’s been hostile to community members. I hope he follows through — that would be his biggest commit ever. https://t.co/1DzeWVRvLe pic.twitter.com/lY5AMxNuPd— Anil Dash 🥭 (@anildash) September 16, 2018

New research shows that curiosity is vital to an organization’s performance—as are the particular ways in which people are curious and the experiences they are exposed to. This package examines how leaders can nurture curiosity throughout their organizations and ensure that it translates to success.

In 1967, the newly formed National Organization for Women staged a weeklong protest of The New York Times and other newspapers. Their demonstration targeted the long-standing practice of printing classified listings in two separate columns: “Help wanted: Male” and “Help wanted: Female,” which of course resulted in the exclusion of women from high-paying jobs and industries. As a result of NOW’s advocacy campaign, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency charged with enforcing Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibiting race and sex discrimination in employment,...

What happened when Boston Public Schools tried for equity with an algorithm.

Doing poor stats and presenting misleading results is not just sloppy, it's unethical. h/t @CarlMoons @deeksj pic.twitter.com/8vzu2zku2g— Cecile Janssens (@cecilejanssens) September 21, 2018

Rarely has society’s tendency to sympathize with powerful men been so thoroughly on display.

If we want to overcome the systemic issues behind today’s problems, then we need to change the thinking that led to them to begin with.

History is just one long timeline of fails.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is not just a new technology that requires regulation. It is a powerful force that is reshaping daily practices, personal and professional interactions, and environments. For the well-being of humanity it is crucial that this power is used as a force of good. Ethics plays a key role in this process by ensuring that regulations of AI harness its potential while mitigating its risks. AI may be defined in many ways. Get its definition wrong, and any assessment of the ethical challenges of AI becomes science fiction at best or an irresponsible distraction at worst, ...

A progressive Canadian university recently approached me for input on a proposed certificate program in ethics education. I was glad to provide my two-cents worth. This is an area of increasing concern, even alarm, in business and public life. The scandals that have rocked Wall Street, the Church,

As part of Disability Awareness Month, we speak to one of the Fathers of the Internet about his own disability, abandoning the cello for computers and how a squealing hearing aid can spoil a romantic moment.

The problem of theorizing privacy moves on two levels, the first consisting of an inadequate conceptual vocabulary and the second consisting of an inadequate in

Amazon.com Inc's machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women.

Advances in technology pose difficult moral questions for humanity — and it is not clear who is responsible for providing answers

Harassment on the platform can be uniquely cruel, and for many it feels like there’s no escape.

People who feel powerful are quicker to change jobs or point out inequity directed at them than are people with less power, a study finds. This may help explain how hierarchies are maintained.

In a thought-provoking new paper, three Yale scientists argue it’s not inequality in life that really bothers us, but unfairness

Amazon is right to reject its sexist AI recruitment system. It was built on a false premise

Once you’ve reached the top, do you have to care what anyone thinks?

The nonprofit’s founder and chairwoman explains her latest initiative: a $3.5M competition in partnership with the Omidyar Network to explore new ways to teach ethics to computer science students.

Large-scale misconduct starts small, so prevention should focus on how employees make decisions.

Wholeness requires personal development of emotional intelligence so we will risk the personal authenticity needed for survival in complexity.

Bristol workshop on 19th February on Eventbrite at Learning To Listen

The bereaved mother still saw the ads after sharing news of her loss on the site and changing her settings.

Automated systems take into account thousands of variables to make decisions that affect our lives. People are calling for more transparency in AI, but not everyone agrees on what constitutes a fair explanation.

Historian Yuval Noah Harari explains why prepping for our future has nothing to do with learning code or building a bunker.

Netflix says it does not track users' race or ethnicity. But in customizing promotions based on users' past viewing history, it can achieve a similar effect.

This is the first of three parts of the Innovation Initiative’s special series on digital rights. To illustrate the complexity of digital…

Humans have evolved a number of strategies to help us cope with the constant overload of information. Understanding these strategies can help us conduct better UX research resulting in more accurate observations, and design User Interfaces that are easier to use and require less mental effort

Silicon Valley was built on job-hopping. But when a leader of Google’s self-driving-car unit joined Uber, Google filed suit. Now the Feds are on the case.

My home computer in 1998 had a 56K modem connected to our telephone line; we were allowed a maximum of thirty minutes of computer usage a day, because my parents — quite reasonably — did not want to have their telephone shut off for an evening at a time. I remember webpages loading slowly: ten […]

Some think chief ethics officers could help technology companies navigate political and social questions.

This is what the internet has come to: thugs like Mohammed bin Salman funding tech companies to host the vitriol of thugs like Cesar Sayoc and Robert Bowers.

In World War II, Britain invented the electronic computer. By the 1970s, its computing industry had collapsed—thanks to a labor shortage produced by sexism.

With these five tips couched in cutting-edge science, you can finally go toe-to-toe with crazy Uncle Bob.