Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “ethics”
do you want to be good or to be optimized?
- kudos:This Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic from yesterday spoke to me at a deep level: My first thoughts went to generative AI, an area in which I feel like a fetishization of optimization is crowding out really important questions of what is good. As I put it in a university survey earlier today, there are undeniable benefits to the use of AI tools, but there are important questions as to who benefits.
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I think what bothers me about “improving learning” approaches to educational technology is that it tends to prioritize utilitarianism at the expense of everything else. Ethical concerns about AI don’t matter if grades go up, what students should learn about is largely shoved aside, and so forth.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Absurd One-Sidedness of the Ethics of AI Debate: A rant | Punya Mishra's Web'
- kudos:Punya is a bit warmer on AI than I am, so I wasn’t sure what I would be reading based off of the title, but this is one of the best things I’ve read on generative AI in education. These companies have so much power and could use a little more Parkerian responsibility. link to “The Absurd One-Sidedness of the Ethics of AI Debate: A rant | Punya Mishra’s Web”
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Ultimate Spider-Man: Vol. 18, Ultimate Knights, by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley
- kudos:I’ve complained a lot about comic book nonsense in recent volumes, and there’s plenty of it here, too, but this pulled a lot together in a way that just plain works. Interesting crossover action, classic Spider-Man morality of superheroes, good art, interesting stakes. I guess this is why I keep reading this series.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Fantasy Morality - Existential Comics'
- kudos:Good joke here—and one I may share with the students in my games and learning class next semester. link to “Fantasy Morality - Existential Comics”
new publication: Deep assumptions and data ethics in educational technology
- kudos:When I learned that Stephanie Moore and Tonia Dousay were editing a volume on ethics in educational technology, I jumped at the chance to write something on data ethics. Stephanie and Tonia’s book is now published on Royce Kimmons’s open access EdTechBooks platform as Applied Ethics for Instructional Design and Technology, and my chapter is available alongside six others on other subjects related to ethics and educational technology. Here’s a link to the online version, and I have a PDF archived on my website.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Anarchist Chess - Existential Comics'
- kudos:What I like about this comic is the way it shows that we build values we don’t agree with into games because games are more fun with conflict. link to “Anarchist Chess - Existential Comics”
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The narrator in my current audiobook just wondered (critically) if a character found an ethically dodgy situation “too useful to have a conscience about,” and I think it’s one of the best lines I’ve ever heard.
📝 writeblog: spent 1:38:11 on 'publish data ethics in educational technology chapter'
- kudos:Family is out of town this weekend, so I’m catching up with work, including going over the proofs for this long-in-the-making chapter.
is the Mistborn Adventure Game the ethics TTRPG I've been looking for?
- kudos:Twice this month already I’ve written about whether and how to try to play according to one’s values in games. Both posts have been inspired by Lotus Dimension, a TTRPG that explicitly encourages finding nonviolent solutions to in-game problems. In my first post, I expressed interest in the game because it “allow[s] and encourage[s] other paths to vidtory.” In my second, though, I wondered whether that were good enough: “Is ethical behavior in a game because the system of the game rewards that behavior truly ethical?
🔗linkblog: my thoughts on 'Why Do Video Games Want Me to Be a War Criminal: WIRED'
- kudos:Some interesting writing on a topic I’ve posted about a few times recently. link to ‘Why Do Video Games Want Me to Be a War Criminal
📺 tvblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for The Good Place (Season 1)
- kudos:My spouse and I watched all four seasons of this show more or less as they came out. The past few months have seen some pretty big changes to our family schedule, and we haven’t has as much time to watch TV together, so we recently decided to rewatch The Good Place (since episodes are short). It’s a very rewatchable show; you can get a lot out of it once you know what’s yet to come.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on '4chan users embrace AI voice clone tool to generate celebrity hatespeech - The Verge'
- kudos:Why… why don’t we better anticipate better misuses like this? Are technological “progress” and market opportunities more important than these side effects? link to ‘4chan users embrace AI voice clone tool to generate celebrity hatespeech - The Verge’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Facial Recognition Researcher Left a Trans Database Exposed for Years After Using Images Without Permission'
- kudos:I hated this project when I read about it in The Verge 5 years ago. I hate it even more now. link to ‘Facial Recognition Researcher Left a Trans Database Exposed for Years After Using Images Without Permission’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Brave Sir Bentham, Utilitarian Knight - Existential Comics'
- kudos:Only thing better than a critique of utilitarianism is a critique of utilitarianism in the form of a comic. link to ‘Brave Sir Bentham, Utilitarian Knight - Existential Comics’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on '‘Girls Who Code’ Team Up With Tomahawk Missile Maker Raytheon'
- kudos:This is my issue with CS education efforts, especially ’teaching people to code.’ It’s narrowly focused on technical skills and not broader social and ethical reflection. I’d never argue that programmers shouldn’t work for defense contractors, but I’m uncomfortable with associating them so closely with CS education. link to ‘‘Girls Who Code’ Team Up With Tomahawk Missile Maker Raytheon’
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Really leaning into ethics and justice elements of data science in my fall class, and I’m wondering how much pushback I’m going to get. I’ve taught about racism, sexism, and colonization in games in another class with very few complaints, but this feels different somehow.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Tech We Won’t Build — The Internet Health Report 2022'
- kudos:Compelling podcast episode from Mozilla highlighting morally dubious uses of AI. It’s really important that we be more reflective about this instead of trying things and seeing where they lead. link to ‘The Tech We Won’t Build — The Internet Health Report 2022’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Axon Halts Plans to Sell Flying Taser Drones to Schools'
- kudos:What’s the point in having an ethics board if you’re going to so flagrantly ignore them? Good on members for responding with resignations, and thank goodness Axon woke up to how dunb their decision was. link to ‘Axon Halts Plans to Sell Flying Taser Drones to Schools’
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The focus on student learning in this year’s AECT reviews is good, but I worry that it blinds us to other important ed tech questions. I’d struggle to describe how surveillance, ethics, privacy impact student learning, but we desperately need that research too-or more!
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Preparing a talk on social media and ethics for tomorrow night, and I believe I’ve found a way to sneak in a reference to one of my favorite bands.