Digital Ethics

Listen to @AOC. pic.twitter.com/gVAYqeEQzW https://t.co/B4lLQGWqR1— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) September 4, 2020

If you work for Bank of America, or the US Army, you might have used technology developed by Humanyze. The company grew out of research at MIT’s cross-disciplinary Media Lab and describes its products as “science-backed analytics to drive adaptability.” If that sounds vague, it might be deliberate. Among the things Humanyze sells to businesses…

If you write code for a living, there’s a chance that at some point in your career, someone will ask you to code something a little deceitful – if not outright unethical. This happened to me back in the year 2000. And it’s something I’ll never be able to forget. I wrote my first line of code at 6 years old. I’m no prodigy though. I had a lot of help from my dad at the time. But I was hooked. I loved it. By the time I was 15, I was working part-time for my dad’s consulting firm. I built websit

Families were subjected to around-the-clock visits from deputies, who often arrived without evidence of a crime.

Edgenuity involves short answers graded by an algorithm, and students have already cracked it

Amba Kak was in law school in India when the country rolled out the Aadhaar project in 2009. The national biometric ID system, conceived as a comprehensive identity program, sought to collect the fingerprints, iris scans, and photographs of all residents. It wasn’t long, Kak remembers, before stories about its devastating consequences began to spread.…

Dispatches from Editor-in-Chief Julia Angwin

Facebook is sort of banning political ads in the week before the 2020 election and making other well-intentioned tweaks. That’s not nearly enough.

Palantir powers Ice immigration raids, the defense sector and police surveillance. It is the big tobacco of the tech world

On August 31, Airbnb launched Project Lighthouse, an initiative meant to “uncover, measure, and overcome discrimination” on the home-sharing platform. According to the company, Project Lighthouse will identify discrimination by measuring whether a renter’s perceived race correlates with differences in the rate or quality of that person’s bookings, cancellations, or reviews. This project comes amid…

The former FBI agent Peter Strzok worries that Americans will never learn the full story about Trump’s relationship with Russia.

Social media is unquestionably the vector for increasingly dangerous misinformation.

The company is surveilling dozens of private Facebook groups in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain, according to an internal web tool and reports left on the open internet.

Amazon and IBM get Covid screening systems from companies that use their technology to oppress minority groups

When Amanda Kemper found out that artificial intelligence would help monitor students during her mechanical engineering class's final exam this summer, she was worried.

Empirical studies have suggested that language-capable robots have the persuasive power to shape the shared moral norms based on how they respond to human norm violations. This persuasive power presents cause for concern, but also the opportunity to persuade humans to cultivate their own moral development. We argue that a truly socially integrated and morally competent robot must be willing to communicate its objection to humans’ proposed violations of shared norms by using strategies such as blame-laden rebukes, even if doing so may violate other standing norms, such as politeness. By draw...

Americans, frustrated they don't have more control over their data, would gladly switch to companies that prioritize privacy.

Alexa is in her element. With more of us working or staying at home, we’ve never been more in need of her wifely services. Alexa, Siri, Google Home, and other “smart wives” — feminised technologies that take on the duties and traits of stereotypical housewives reminiscent of the 1950s — are on hand to help in this emerging crisis. But “helping” might not be all they are doing.

Lincolnshire police plan to test facial recognition and behavioral tech that infers people's moods and expressions by analyzing CCTV footage.

The data set’s ripple effects are immeasurable

The company will pay Illinois users between $200 and $400 over claims that it violated the state’s facial recognition law.

An 11th-hour reprieve for Uber and Lyft.

Problems in the underlying data mean we can't leave algorithms to decide things on their own.

The immigration agency has used facial recognition in the past.

In online settings, I can make adjustments for this. I can change my account settings, make new passwords, do things in incognito mode, use a VPN, etc. But this is real life. And this is my face. I can't VPN my face or change it or even necessarily know when I'm being identified.— Calli Schroeder (@Iwillleavenow) December 15, 2018

Pop star’s reported use of software to root out stalkers may be well meant, but it fuels a disturbing trend, experts say

New ACLU test illustrates the limits of Amazon’s Rekognition system

The NYPD has previously stated that the technology is used to gather leads on suspects for crimes, such as robberies and shootings, not to identify people in crowds or at rallies

Currently, the department’s Patrol Guide allows police to run facial recognition searches on anyone suspected of a crime or anyone who may have witnessed a crime.