The ethics behind machine learning and AI – surveillance, and governance

Today think about AI and try to think through some of the ethics behind it.

Before we jump in let’s really understand AI – it is after all just an algorithm.

Introduction to Generative AI Learning Path

Google Video

Wired Magazine:

Gab’s Racist AI Chatbots Have Been Instructed to Deny the Holocaust

Algorithmic Bias / surveillance

Bias in AI: Origins and Solutions feat. Dr. Joy Buolamwini | ASK MORE OF AI with Clara Shih

Coded Bias

AI and the paperclip problem

Brookings – Comparison EU/US to AI

Here are some topics being discussed:

  • Copyright, Opensource, Scraping
  • Algorithmic Bias / surveillance
  • Competitive advantage – Regularity capture
  • Security and Safety (Planet)
  • Singularity
  • Unintended Consequences/Paperclip problem AI and the paperclip problem
  • Labor/Employment
  • Governance

Last year Biden issued a non binding Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights

A European approach to artificial intelligence

Midterm Project: The Life Span of a Technological Object  

Loosely based on Kate Crawford’s Anatomy of an AI System , your midterm is a research project in which you create a multi-modular project such as a web site, video essay or podcast that provides a “map of a technological object” of your choice. Trace its production and development as you consider its environmental sustainability, the physical labor and digital labor practices involved in its development, and its ethical relationship to the end user and society at large.

Deliverables include: the media project and a written component 

Consider the three major parts of the objects life span:

  • Production/materials/labor/
  • User experience/ethical relationship to user and society/digital rights/historical roots/evolution of object/etc.
  • Sustainability/recycling/right to repair/
  1. Please come up with an idea for your midterm project: The Life Span of a Technological Object. Write a paragraph about your idea and why you are choosing and what the media modular you plan on making.

Anatomy of an AI System

Ai Anatomy Map

The Amazon Echo as an anatomical map of human labor, data and planetary resources

By Kate Crawford 1 and Vladan Joler 2

(2018)