Digital Ethics

A hearing on Wednesday suggested that opposition to facial recognition technology could be the rare issue progressives and conversatives in Congress. Several members voiced worries about the technology being used here as it is currently is in China, where it contributes to the surveillance state’s systems of public monitoring and social control.

The rare issue that unites left and right

Emotion recognition is a $20 billion industry, but a new study says the most popular method is deeply flawed.

You might know that Apple screens some of Siri's recordings to improve the assistant's accuracy, but recordings can be surprisingly long and numerous.

When I joined the artificial intelligence company Clarifai in early 2017, you could practically taste the promise in the air. My colleagues were brilliant, dedicated, and committed to making the world a better place.We founded Clarifai 4 Good where we helped students and charities, and we donated our software to researchers around the world whose projects had a socially beneficial goal. We were determined to be the one AI company that took our social responsibility seriously.I never could have predicted that two years later, I would have to quit this job on moral grounds. And I certainly ne...

A study called “Robots and Racism,” the human tendency to stereotype racial bias is expanding into the world of robotics.

Members of the progressive "Squad" join New York's Yvette Clarke to block surveillance techniques they say infringe rights and may misidentify people of color.

Australia said it would establish the world's first dedicated office to police Facebook Inc and Google as part of reforms designed to rein in the U.S. technology giants, potentially setting a pre...

Opinion: Researchers used Google's AI tool to rank the harmfulness of tweets by white nationalists and drag queens. The results were discouraging.

The e-mail startup isn’t the only company learning that a product can be powerful and elegant without being good.

Findings say it is impossible for researchers to fully protect real identities in datasets

I hear people say health data is 'special'; folks nowadays anything is health data. Scrolling & posting reveals mental illness, gait and steps your changing activity levels balance & frailty, shopping = diet, there's isolation, addiction, periods & pregnancy... all 'health' info https://t.co/PGc09Em1Gz— Lydia Nicholas (@LydNicholas) July 23, 2019

"A sweatshop in America"

Some cities are partnering with Amazon to distribute its Ring cameras at a discount to deter crime, but privacy advocates warn more surveillance will unfairly impact minorities.

It's the first time federal legislation has addressed limits on technology and tenants.

"We recently notified some parents... about a technical error," Facebook said

Its popular Ring smart doorbells mean more cameras on more doorsteps, where surveillance footage used to be rare.

The NYPD accidentally released info related to its use of facial recognition because (WAIT FOR IT) an automated system used to redact documents before release didn't work (for the second time in three months). THERE'S A MESSAGE IN HERE SOMEWHERE...🔮https://t.co/QZKVvytlpI— Meredith Whittaker (@mer__edith) July 22, 2019

By aggregating data from geotagged posts and stories, Who's in Town can paint a detailed picture of the habits and haunts of anyone with a Instagram account.

Learn more about what deepfake videos are, how you can identify them and whose job it is to verify content.

A new study has found that consumers show greater loyalty and spend more with businesses which can show they engage in ethical AI practices.

The smart watches use chips developed and designed by BeiDou, a Chinese satellite navigation system, to pinpoint a child’s position within 10 meters.The news: Seventeen thousand students at 60 elementary schools in Guangzhou received fancy new gadgets for their wrists last week, according to the Guangzhou Daily (link in Chinese).

Technology has no ethics - but we must! Futurist Gerd Leonhard at Netapp Insights #digitalethics https://t.co/7Q8DfR7BSU pic.twitter.com/nBRUNDKXKT— Gerd Leonhard (@gleonhard) July 16, 2019

The digital world can be a thorny place to navigate. We explore some of the ethical challenges posed by the digital age, and why it's down to charities to show the way forward as much as they do in the analogue world.

A new study suggests companies are employing emotion-sensing facial recognition technology that is based on flawed science.

Emotion recognition is a hot new area, with numerous companies peddling products that claim to be able to read people’s internal emotional states, and AI researchers looking to improve computers’ ability to do so. This is done through voice analysis, body language analysis, gait analysis, eye tracking, and remote measurement of physiological signs like pulse and breathing rates. Most of all, though, it’s done through analysis of facial expressions.A new study, however, strongly suggests that these products are built on a bed of intellectual quicksand.The key question is whether human emotio...

When 21-year-old Brandon Andrew Clark posted a series of graphic images on Sunday of the slain corpse of 17-year-old Bianca Devins to Instagram and Discord, users immediately began spreading the gory pictures online, often alongside brutal, misogynist commentary. Some said the victim, an ‘e-girl’ who was popular on 4Chan, deserved it, and others called for even more violence against women. Clark, who appears to have live-posted the murder itself on Instagram—a series of posts reportedly showed the body, the road near the crime scene, and an act of bloody self-harm—took the time to change hi...

Startups are importing and imposing AI systems founded on individualistic and capitalist drives

Ethics washing is unethical, but some AI companies aren't afraid to engage in the practice. Here are some ways to avoid it.

FaceApp has sparked fresh concerns for its ambiguous terms and conditions that grant the company a "perpetual" license to use uploaded photos for commercial purposes.