Digital Ethics

Virginia Dignum is a professor and member of the EU’s High-Level Expert Group on AI who has been looking into the many questions that come up across society…

I had the honor of co-organising a meeting of leading EU networks, organisations and researchers with the European Parliament on 25 May to discuss…

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to expand its reach, the demand for human control and the development of AI systems that adhere to our legal, ethical, and social values also grows. Many (international and national) institutions have taken steps in this direction and published guidelines for the development and deployment of responsible AI systems. These guidelines, however, rely heavily on high-level statements that provide no clear criteria for system assessment, making the effective control over systems a challenge. “Human oversight” is one of the requirements being put forward as a means to support human autonomy and agency. In this paper, we argue that human presence alone does not meet this requirement and that such a misconception may limit the use of automation where it can otherwise provide so much benefit across industries. We therefore propose the development of systems with variable autonomy—dynamically adjustable levels of autonomy—as a means of ensuring meaningful human control over an artefact by satisfying all three core values commonly advocated in ethical guidelines: accountability, responsibility, and transparency.

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Popular large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are energy-intensive, requiring massive server farms to provide enough data to train the powerful programs. Cooling those same data centers also makes the AI chatbots incredibly thirsty. New research suggests training for GPT-3 alone consumed 185,000 gallons (700,000 liters) of water. An average user’s conversational exchange with ChatGPT basically amounts to dumping a large bottle of fresh water out on the ground, acco

Claiming wisdom based on the Bhagavad Gita, the bots frequently go way off script.

Opinion | The latest technology exploits people’s reflexive assumptions. It's time to recalibrate how authenticity is judged.

Think you can tell a dark pattern from an ethically designed prompt? Take our quiz to find out

The 10 blue links aren’t gone, but AI is pushing them down the page.

More and more prominent tech figures are voicing concerns about superintelligent AI and risks to the future of humanity. But as leading AI ethicist Timnit Gebru and researcher Émile P Torres point out, these ideologies have deeply racist foundations. TESCREAL “So another “godfather” of AI, Turing Award Winner Yoshua Bengio has decided to FULLY align […]

We blame technology for decisions really made by governments and corporations

Hundreds of AI scientists, academics, tech CEOs and public figures have added their names to a statement urging global attention on existential AI risk.

A new study suggests racial bias built into a common medical test for lung function is likely leading to fewer Black patients getting care for breathing problems. The study released Thursday in JAMA Network Open found that as many as 40% more Black men might be diagnosed with breathing problems if current diagnosis-assisting computer software was changed.

Novel usages of brain stimulation combined with artificially intelligent (AI) systems promise to address a large range of diseases. These new conjoined technologies, such as brain-computer interfaces (BCI), are increasingly used in experimental and clinical settings to predict and alleviate symptoms of various neurological and psychiatric disorders. Due to their reliance on AI algorithms for feature extraction and classification, these BCI systems enable a novel, unprecedented, and direct connection between human cognition and artificial information processing.

archived 10 Jun 2023 00:19:13 UTC

Government alone cannot regulate artificial intelligence; the responsibility is everyone's, including those who develop AI in the first place.

Inside the soul-crushing world of content moderation, where low-wage workers soak up the worst of humanity and keep it off your screens.

We may be at risk of ‘extinction’ from artificial intelligence – but that warning is very convenient to the people making it

Powerful tech figures ask us to look to the future — but they forget that the future belongs to us all, says Data & Society's Jenna Burrell.

Will our society's progressive values lead us to embrace a new romantic paradigm?

Google "Johannes Vermeer," and you'll be met with an AI-generated rendition of "Girl with a Pearl Earring" as the top search result.

The sheer expense of operating AI chatbots could throttle the AI boom.

More and more prominent tech figures are voicing concerns about superintelligent AI and risks to the future of humanity. But as eading AI ethicist Timnit Gebru and researcher Émile P Torres point out, these ideologies have explicitly racist foundations. TESCREAL “So another “godfather” of AI, Turing Award Winner Yoshua Bengio has decided to FULLY align […]

Stability AI became a $1 billion company with the help of a viral AI text-to-image generator and some misleading claims from founder Emad Mostaque.