Jack Carson Compares Jewish and Cherokee Ethics

 

Photo: Aimee Yu

Jack Carson, an MIT second-year undergraduate and EECS major, is the recent winner of the Elie Wiesel Ethics Essay Contest. His entry, “We Know Only Men: Reading Emmanuel Levinas On The Rez,” compares Jewish and Cherokee ethical thought. 

The essay links Carson’s hometown in Adair County, Oklahoma, to the village of Le Chambon sur Lignon, France. Both were places where the people went to extremes to help the "other". Carson attempts to answer the question: “What is to be done after catastrophe?” 

Carson explains in this interview that he wanted to explore how a culture that has been completely displaced can be preserved. Read the full interview here: Q&A: On the ethics of catastrophe | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Carson believes that the fast pace of technology highlights the importance of philosophy, literature, history, and the liberal arts. He plans to have a career at the intersection of machine learning, chemistry and biology. 

He said, "When I was younger, I just happened across a discussion of CP Snow’s famous essay on the “Two Cultures.” In it, he talks about his scientist friends who had never read Shakespeare, and his literary friends who couldn’t explain thermodynamics. In a modest way, I’ve always thought that I’d like my education to be one that allowed me to participate in the two cultures. The essay on Levinas is my attempt to pursue this type of education."

Perhaps he will wander down the path of cultural anthropology. Were he to do so, the discipline would be the better for it.

Facial Recognition and Your Privacy

There is no anonymity in a world where the individual's face is catalogued using facial recognition technologies. Privacy is not guaranteed and is hard to define. In an 1890 Harvard Law Review article it is defined as "the right to be let alone." The authors of the article, Samuel D. Warren, Jr. and Louis D. Brandeis, wanted the right to privacy to be protected by law, along with those other enshrined rights.

"Concerns about facial recognition had been building for decades. And now the nebulous bogeyman had finally found its form: a small company with mysterious founders and an unfathomably large database. And none of the millions of people who made up that database had given their consent. Clearview AI represents our worst fears, but it also offers, at long last, the opportunity to confront them." - Kashmir Hill

Kashmir Hill's book Your Face Belongs to Us: The Secretive Startup Dismantling Your Privacy has been shortlisted for the 2024 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize.

The other side of the conversation comes from Clearview AI which states that its mission "is protecting our families, making our communities more secure and strengthening our national security and defense. We help law enforcement and governments in disrupting and solving crime, while also providing financial institutions, transportation, and other commercial enterprises to verify identities, prevent financial fraud, and combat identity theft."

Clearview AI collected 30 billion images from social media platforms to share with law enforcement. A photo you may have on Facebook or Instagram is likely part of Clearview’s database, enabling potential tracking and identification without your knowledge or consent. At the present moment, Clearview AI has over 50 billion images.

Not everyone is excited about this technology. The Netherlands has hit Clearview AI with a €30.5M fine for its 'illegal' facial recognition database.

Related reading: 

I'd never seen such an audacious attack on anonymity before': Clearview AI and the creepy tech that can identify you with a single picture | Live Science

Clearview AI Scraped 30 Billion Images From Facebook to Share With Police - Business Insider

Weak "Guardrails" on Police Face Recognition Use Make Things Worse | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Twitter's Censorship of Trump

 

Alice C. Linsley

Twitter permanently suspended Trump two days after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol building. There is concern that President Trump’s tweets to his 88 million followers risked “further incitement of violence.”

Now Trump's Twitter account is closed, permanently. 

Twitter made the right decision and should have shut down Trump's account sooner. Though the Media sometimes portrays President Trump's followers as a homogeneous group of rightwing fanatics, Trump’s followers are a diverse group. Unfortunately, some resemble cult members in their behavior.

Trump supporters fear that their hero will be silenced by all the social media platforms. This is naive. The platforms thrive on celebrities and often give them a pass when they violate community standards. Mr. Trump lost his privileges at Twitter, but we will hear from him again.

It is evident that the former president vilified the Media and made enemies there. Political rhetoric has consequences. History reminds us that other charismatic figures of the past have levered themselves to positions of power by making scapegoats, among them Jews, the Media, and middle-class white men.

Calling a rally on the day the electoral votes were to be counted and accepted was unwise. It seems President Trump hoped to show Congress that he has loyal supporters. Did he believe that the allegedly fraudulent votes could be thrown out, leaving him the winner?  

Some Trump followers invaded the Capitol while deliberations were in progress. There were five more states to consider.

Did his tweets and his speech incite violence? It appears they did, but the impact was that of a slow train gaining speed over the past four years. The POTUS is a powerful figure. When events get out of control and threaten lives, property, and the Constitution the censorship of inflammatory political rhetoric is reasonable.

Twitter permitted POTUS to tweet things that went against community standards. They gave him a great deal of leeway over these four years. They should apply their community standards equally to all people. You might call this "censorship" but holding people to high standards of communication is a good thing.

Community standards should be applied equally. Celebs included. Why do some people get a pass? It appears that the more famous you are, the less likely you are to be censored. 

President Trump's tweets were lightning rods that drew criticism from his opponents on the Left. The closing of his Twitter account exposed their hypocrisy. They oppose censorship, yet they resort to it when threatened. The same can be said of opposition on the Right. Nobody wins the news slinging contest. 

Twitter is a private business and can ban anyone. Bakers legally can refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple on grounds of their religious convictions. Roman Catholic institutions can refuse to provide health insurance covering birth control and abortion. Gay couples are not silenced by the refusal of the bakers. They still can "marry" and enjoy their cake from another bakery. A Catholic can buy birth control and get an abortion by other means. Twitter has not violated President Trump's First Amendment right. He no longer has a voice on the Twitter platform, but he has options, as we all do.

Now, if every platform is closed to him, Trump has grounds for a big lawsuit. But why would all the platforms shut him out? Shutting out President Trump means loss of income and benefits reaped from his celebrity.

So, the issue is not censorship which takes place every day at multiple levels. Some Facebook friends do not like what I post and they "unfriend" me. Fox, CNN, MSNBC screen and edit new stories to fit their bias. It is no surprise that the average American wonders what to believe and distrusts Big Tech.

I have managed seven Google blogs for over thirteen years and I never had anything censored by Google, and believe me, I have posted many politically sensitive articles. The one time a blog post was censored (at Christian Women in Science) it was because someone claimed that the post went against community standards. I appealed and Facebook reserved the decision. The educational site Christian Women in Science was cleared of the malicious claim. There are ways to say things that are acceptable. President Trump often failed to measure his words and consider how his angry tweets might influence his supporters.

I use social media extensively. I try to use it constructively, respectfully, and responsibly. How has President Trump used it? Being POTUS, he was allowed to tweet comments that would have been censored were they posted by ordinary citizens.

The best way to keep speech free is to speak more often and to express a range of views. That is a reason to blog, write for publication, discuss these matters on social media, and use every available venue for expression. In the end, free speech is hard work and requires being an adult.

Related reading: What Elon Musk's Purchase of Twitter Could Mean for Donald Trump's Account; The Ethics of Blogging; Arguing About Social Concerns; Giant Tech Faces Antitrust Hearings; Regulation of Big Tech; Social Media Bots and Political Propaganda; The Media Stokes Anger and Radicalization; Trapped in a Web of Punditry; Political Debate and Search Engine Politics

Tech Giants Face Antitrust Hearings

Jeff Bezos 

Leaders of the world's four most powerful companies will defend the Internet giants, painting them as US success stories in a fiercely competitive world during a major antitrust hearing Wednesday.

The unprecedented hearing will feature chief executives Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google and its parent firm Alphabet.

The CEOs will testify remotely at the hearing, which comes less than 100 days before the US election.

Zuckerberg is to say that the internet giant would not have succeeded without US laws fostering competition, but that the rules of the internet now need updating.

"Facebook is a proudly American company," Zuckerberg said in prepared remarks ahead of what will be a closely watched House Judiciary Committee hearing.

"Our story would not have been possible without US laws that encourage competition and innovation."

Bezos will paint online giant Amazon as an American "success" story, while accepting a need for scrutiny.

"I believe Amazon should be scrutinized," Bezos said in prepared remarks posted online ahead of the hearing.

Read it all here.

Twitter Scam Address Blacklisted

Coinbase stopped around 1,100 customers from sending bitcoin to hackers who gained access to high-profile Twitter accounts last Wednesday. The attackers hacked over 100 Twitter accounts in a massive coordinated bitcoin scam.

According to Twitter, the hackers convinced some of the company’s employees to use internal systems and tools to access the accounts and help the hackers defraud users into sending them bitcoin.

According to Forbes, Coinbase and other cryptocurrency exchanges were able to stop some customers from sending bitcoin to the hackers by blacklisting the hackers’ wallet address. Coinbase says it prevented just over 1,000 customers from sending around $280,000 worth of bitcoin during last Wednesday’s attack. Roughly 14 Coinbase users sent around $3,000 worth of bitcoin to the scam’s bitcoin address before the company moved to blacklist it.

The cyber attack involved 130 accounts -- 45 of which were used to urge people to send them BTC. Data belonging to eight accounts was also downloaded and stolen; however, Twitter does not believe the hackers were able to access cleartext passwords and so mass password resets are not required.

Twitter is working with law enforcement to investigate the incident. The company is also conducting a forensic review of all impacted accounts.

Related: Twitter Hack: Coinbase Blocks $280,000 in Bitcoin theft

Personal Privacy and Data Collection

Concerns about personal privacy and data collection continue as more advanced technologies are applied. This issue is not going away. Federal protections are held up by partisan politics and the reality that legislation cannot keep pace with technological advances. The laws enacted today are likely to be obsolete within a matter of months.

According to a 2019 survey of the Pew Research Center, most Americans feel that they have little control over how their personal information is collected and used by businesses and government. around 6 out of 10 persons sampled believed that "it is not possible to go through daily life without having their data collected."

The survey discovered that 70% of those sampled believe that their personal data is less secure now than five years ago.

In general, we want protection from entities that seek to gain financially from our information, but we also want the government to effective use data to track potential terrorist activity. The Pew survey found that 49% say it is acceptable for government to collect data about all Americans to assess who might be a potential terrorist threat.

Nobody is fooled by the lengthy privacy notices from banks and financial services. They are written by lawyers who are retained by the companies to protect them from legal liability rather than to inform users as to how their personal information might be shared. The term “privacy notice” gives the impression that the organization is going to protect personal information instead of how it is going to disclose that information.

In the absence of a comprehensive federal data privacy and data security law, individual states fill the gap. An example is The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) which took effect on 1 January 2020. The California Consumer Privacy Act requires that companies "notify users of the intent to monetize their data, and give them a straightforward means of opting out of said monetization."

For now, these are the best practices for protecting personal information: 

Be alert to impersonators and scammers.
Safely dispose of personal information.
Keep security software updated.
Lock your computer to avoid security breaches when not being used by you.
Avoid phishing emails.
Be wise about Wi-Fi use, especially in public venues such as coffee shops.

Do not click on social media surveys.

Never share personal information by email or on social media.

Change passwords every 6-8 months and keep these private.

Related reading:  Notre Dame-IBM Launch Tech Ethic Lab; How to Keep Your Personal Information Secure; From the Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Notre Dame-IBM Launch Tech Ethics Lab

In the first season of The West Wing, Sam Seaborn made a poignant point that privacy and data security would be the hot button issue of the decades ahead. In this Big Data Age, huge sums of information can be captured more easily than ever. In this environment, the application of advanced technologies has become a two-edged sword. It is applied across every industry: banking, marketing, entertainment, small businesses, and government.

The 2020 US Census has a legitimate purpose. The data helps states achieve adequate representation in Congress and the appropriate level of federal funding. However, some citizens are not eager to share their personal information. We have become aware of the potential dangers of data collection. We know that data is used to sell us products that we really don't need and to slant political messages to target audiences. We have learned not to click on those Facebook surveys that collect personal information that is sold to make Facebook richer, while those surveyed receive no gain.

The ethics of advanced technologies concern everyone. However, the conversation about the reach of advanced technologies requires experts. To that end, the University of Notre Dame has launched a collaboration with IBM that will address the ethical issues surrounding the use of advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, machine learning and quantum computing.

Funded by a 10-year, $20 million IBM commitment, the new Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab will conduct research and promote models for the ethical application of technology within the tech sector, business and government.

The Tech Ethics Lab will be based at the University and will operate as a separate unit within the University’s Technology Ethics Center (ND-TEC).

Mark McKenna, Professor of Law at Notre Dame and founding director of ND-TEC, said: “Rather than following the ‘ready, fire, aim’ approach sometimes used in developing new technologies, we hope to provide resources that allow developers and industry to create better, more responsible technologies that positively benefit society.”

Source: Notre Dame News; The History of Artificial Intelligence

Public Debate and Search Engine Politics

As G.K. Chesterton noted in his book Heretics, the more people debate in a public forum the more firmly entrenched beliefs become. He wrote, "Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape." (Read the full quotation here.)

Algorithms add to the dynamic shaping of political bias in society. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter stated that within the Twitter organization, “We have folks that are at various points in the political spectrum and they don’t feel comfortable today bringing up certain issues or their viewpoints on certain issues. And I don’t believe that is acceptable.”

Despite his efforts to create an inclusive environment at Twitter’s headquarters, Twitter’s behavior on the internet appears to favor Democrats and liberals. Dorsey admitted that there is a “left-leaning bias” among Twitter employees, but he maintains that this liberal bias does not translate to the algorithm Twitter uses to return search queries.

A recent Harvard University study showed that Google’s search results do have a bias towards Democrats. (Read more here.)

There are growing concerns about the fairness of computer programs in shaping public opinion and political bias. A 2018 survey of the Pew Research Center found that age and ethnicity were factors in how people view the fairness of social media.

The survey also found that people believe that "humans are complex, and these systems are incapable of capturing nuance. This is a relatively consistent theme, mentioned across several of these concepts as something about which people worry when they consider these scenarios. This concern is especially prominent among those who find the use of criminal risk scores unacceptable. Roughly half of these respondents mention concerns related to the fact that all individuals are different, or that a system such as this leaves no room for personal growth or development."

Automated decision making uses automated reasoning to aid or replace human decision-making, and this has been discussed at conferences and policy meetings around the globe. These conversations have revealed that there are "no ethical or legal frameworks comprehensively describing personal responsibility for the tools’ application, safety of their implementation or the rights and obligations of the states and citizens in this regard."

This report states that "none of the researched countries established a coordinating body responsible for monitoring automated decision making implementation, including the creation of tools and their performance."

The report is followed by Policy Recommendations that governments should implement.

Related reading: Do You Know What Your Algorithms Are Up To?; The Facebook Algorithm Explained; Algorithm Exposes Readers to Opposite Viewpoints

Robots Designed to Act Morally?

NAO is the world’s most widely used humanoid robot for education, healthcare, and research. NAO is a fully programmable robot that can walk, talk, listen to you, and even recognise your face. However, robotic science is far from knowing how to instill human-like morality. How to build ethical robots is one of the challenges in artificial intelligence and machine ethics.

Boer Deng

In his 1942 short story 'Runaround', science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov introduced the Three Laws of Robotics — engineering safeguards and built-in ethical principles that he would go on to use in dozens of stories and novels. They were: 1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; 2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; and 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Fittingly, 'Runaround' is set in 2015. Real-life roboticists are citing Asimov's laws a lot these days: their creations are becoming autonomous enough to need that kind of guidance. In May, a panel talk on driverless cars at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington DC, turned into a discussion about how autonomous vehicles would behave in a crisis. What if a vehicle's efforts to save its own passengers by, say, slamming on the brakes risked a pile-up with the vehicles behind it? Or what if an autonomous car swerved to avoid a child, but risked hitting someone else nearby?

Read more here.

Related reading: The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence by Nick Bostrom

Savulescu and Harris on Enhancing Morality

Julian Savulescu (Oxford) and John Harris (Manchester University) debate whether technology should be used to enhance morality at the UK Institute of Art and Ideas. They assume that humans have the psychology of our hunter-gatherer ancestors and this makes us unfit for modern life.

Besides having bought into the whole Non-Essentialist evolutionary argument, they appear to be ignorant of how sophisticated our ancestors were.


Related reading: Theories of Change and Constancy; Dawkins: Humans Have Outgrown Natural Selection; The Science Guy Reveals His Ignorance; The Evolution of Darwinian Evolution; Biblical Anthropologists Discuss Darwin