Yesterday, I blogged (en français) on Jacques Ellul’s emphasis on the need for a technology-responsive ethic that emphasizes (among other values) tension and conflict. Ellul explores this ethic—one of non-power—in a few different writings that feel like different drafts of the same thing, and so I’ve seen that emphasis come up a few times as I’ve tried reading his work. Every time, it surprises me a little bit. Why, in articulating an ethical framework, would you emphasize tension and conflict?

Last week, I blogged about how the purported inevitability of generative AI gets used to sidestep moral concerns about it. Earlier this morning, I shared a link to a story from The Verge that illustrates that perfectly, and so I wanted to write just a little bit more about it.

First, let’s quote some more from Jacques Ellul, whom I referenced in the last post (and whom I’ve just been referencing a lot in general recently). Right before the passage I quoted in last week’s post—a passage from his 1980 essay The Power of Technique and the Ethics of Non-Power, he had this to say:

I don’t know that “inevitable” is the right word to use in the title of this post. What I’m trying to evoke is that specific argument about generative AI that now that it’s here, there’s no going back, so the only real/responsible/whatever choice is to learn to use it properly, teach others to use it, accept it as part of life, etc. These are the arguments that the world is forever changed and that there’s no going back—that the genie is out of the bottle so we might as well harness it.

Look, I don’t have experience running an academic publishing company, but I don’t know if I’d activate the experimental AI summarizer on an article exploring the ethics of generative AI.

Like everything I’ve read from Graeber, I appreciate the overall argument that he’s making and I find the evidence he marshalls compelling. At the same time, there’s a density to the latter that I admit having trouble following, so I don’t always see how it leads to the overall argument.

Even with those caveats, I’m happy to endorse this read. I’m interested in how Graeber explores the relationship between moral thinking and economic modeling—as I posted earlier, I also find his thoughts on the moral dangers posed by abstracting interpersonal obligations into quantifiable debt with the help of money.

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. If my department started to use generative AI as a note-taking tool in faculty meetings (the specific focus of this survey), we would probably benefit from it!

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.

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.

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.

Good joke here—and one I may share with the students in my games and learning class next semester.

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.

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.

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.

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?” I’ve been continuing to think about these questions since writing both posts.

Some interesting writing on a topic I’ve posted about a few times recently.

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. I enjoyed the first season the most the first time through, and upon rewatch, I have trouble imagining that will change in any way.

Why… why don’t we better anticipate better misuses like this? Are technological “progress” and market opportunities more important than these side effects?

I hated this project when I read about it in The Verge 5 years ago. I hate it even more now.

Only thing better than a critique of utilitarianism is a critique of utilitarianism in the form of a comic.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.