Below are posts associated with the “ethics” tag.
moral surrender, the environment, and generative AI
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).
two things that bug me about arguments that generative AI is inevitable or whatever
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.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber
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.
do you want to be good or to be optimized?
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.
🔗 linkblog: The Absurd One-Sidedness of the Ethics of AI Debate: A rant | Punya Mishra's Web'
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.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Ultimate Spider-Man: Vol. 18, Ultimate Knights, by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley
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: Fantasy Morality - Existential Comics'
Good joke here—and one I may share with the students in my games and learning class next semester.
new publication: Deep assumptions and data ethics in educational technology
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: Anarchist Chess - Existential Comics'
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.
is the Mistborn Adventure Game the ethics TTRPG I've been looking for?
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: Why Do Video Games Want Me to Be a War Criminal: WIRED'
Some interesting writing on a topic I’ve posted about a few times recently.
📺 tvblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for The Good Place (Season 1)
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: 4chan users embrace AI voice clone tool to generate celebrity hatespeech - The Verge'
Why… why don’t we better anticipate better misuses like this? Are technological “progress” and market opportunities more important than these side effects?
🔗 linkblog: Facial Recognition Researcher Left a Trans Database Exposed for Years After Using Images Without Permission'
I hated this project when I read about it in The Verge 5 years ago. I hate it even more now.
🔗 linkblog: Brave Sir Bentham, Utilitarian Knight - Existential Comics'
Only thing better than a critique of utilitarianism is a critique of utilitarianism in the form of a comic.
🔗 linkblog: ‘Girls Who Code’ Team Up With Tomahawk Missile Maker Raytheon'
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.
🔗 linkblog: The Tech We Won’t Build — The Internet Health Report 2022'
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.
🔗 linkblog: Axon Halts Plans to Sell Flying Taser Drones to Schools'
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.