Given that Facebook’s Community Standards Enforcement Report (CSER) is considered the industry gold standard, it may seem counterproductive to criticize it. But for outsiders wishing to assess Facebook’s enforcement of its rules the CSER provides little value. (1) https://t.co/4A7CayDcU9— Rafiq Copeland (@RafiqCopeland) September 28, 2020
From Stone to Phone: Modern Day Cobalt Slavery in Congo
James Melville explains why slavery isn't just a historic issue of statues and how your mobile phone contributes to the modern enslavement of 40 million people
The second annual CyFyAfrica 2019, The Conference on Technology, Innovation, and Society [1] took place in Tangier, Morocco, 7 – 9 June 2019. It was a vibrant, diverse and dynamic gathering …
Click to agree with what? No one reads terms of service, studies confirm
Apparently losing rights to data and legal recourse is not enough of a reason to inspect online contracts. So how can websites get users to read the fine print?
"I Have Blood On My Hands": A Whistleblower Says Facebook Ignored Global Political Manipulation
A 6,600-word internal memo from a fired Facebook data scientist details how the social network knew about specific examples of global political manipulation — and failed to act.
AI ethics - why teaching ethics and "ethics training" is problematic
We've been trying to teach "ethics" for years. Teaching AI ethics to organizations is proving to be just as problematic. Yet as the urgency of ethical AI increases, we need a way forward. What are the options?
Faulty Facial Recognition Led to His Arrest—Now He’s Suing
Michael Oliver is the second Black man found to be wrongfully arrested by Detroit police because of the technology—and his lawyers suspect there are many more.
The long, complicated history of “people analytics”
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
Eight case studies on regulating biometric technology show us a path forward
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.…
What’s missing from corporate statements on racial injustice? The real cause of racism.
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…
Amazon Is Spying on Its Workers in Closed Facebook Groups, Internal Reports Show
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.
Online school means online tests, along with computerized surveillance
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.
Blame-Laden Moral Rebukes and the Morally Competent Robot: A Confucian Ethical Perspective
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...
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.