Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Publishing. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

None of these people exist, but you can buy their books on Amazon anyway

Conspirador Norteno
Substack.com
Originally published 12 Jan 24

Meet Jason N. Martin N. Martin, the author of the exciting and dynamic Amazon bestseller “How to Talk to Anyone: Master Small Talks, Elevate Your Social Skills, Build Genuine Connections (Make Real Friends; Boost Confidence & Charisma)”, which is the 857,233rd most popular book on the Kindle Store as of January 12th, 2024. There are, however, a few obvious problems. In addition to the unnecessary repetition of the middle initial and last name, Mr. N. Martin N. Martin’s official portrait is a GAN-generated face, and (as we’ll see shortly), his sole published work is strangely similar to several books by another Amazon author with a GAN-generated face.

In an interesting twist, Amazon’s recommendation system suggests another author with a GAN-generated face in the “Customers also bought items by” section of Jason N. Martin N. Martin’s author page. Further exploration of the recommendations attached to both of these authors and their published works reveals a set of a dozen Amazon authors with GAN-generated faces and at least one published book. Amazon’s recommendation algorithms reliably link these authors together; whether this is a sign that the twelve author accounts are actually run by the same entity or merely an artifact of similarities in the content of their books is unclear at this point in time. 


Here's my take:

Forget literary pen names - AI is creating a new trend on Amazon: ghostwritten books. These novels, poetry collections, and even children's stories boast intriguing titles and blurbs, yet none of the authors on the cover are real people. Instead, their creations spring from the algorithms of powerful language models.

Here's the gist:
  • AI churns out content: Fueled by vast datasets of text and code, AI can generate chapters, characters, and storylines at an astonishing pace.
  • Ethical concerns: Questions swirl around copyright, originality, and the very nature of authorship. Is an AI-generated book truly a book, or just a clever algorithm mimicking creativity?
  • Quality varies: While some AI-written books garner praise, others are criticized for factual errors, nonsensical plots, and robotic dialogue.
  • Transparency is key: Many readers feel deceived by the lack of transparency about AI authorship. Should books disclose their digital ghostwriters?
This evolving technology challenges our understanding of literature and raises questions about the future of authorship. While AI holds potential to assist and inspire, the human touch in storytelling remains irreplaceable. So, the next time you browse Amazon, remember: the author on the cover might not be who they seem.

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Language analysis reveals recent and unusual 'moral polarisation' in Anglophone world

Andrew Masterson
Cosmos Magazine
Originally published March 4, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

Words conveying moral values in more specific domains, however, did not always accord to a similar pattern – revealing, say the researchers, the changing prominence of differing sets of concerns surrounding concepts such as loyalty and betrayal, individualism, and notions of authority.

Remarkably, perhaps, the study is only the second in the academic literature that uses big data to examine shifts in moral values over time. The first, by psychologists Pelin and Selin Kesibir, and published in The Journal of Positive Psychology in 2012, used two approaches to track the frequency of morally-loaded words in a corpus of US books across the twentieth century.

The results revealed a “decline in the use of general moral terms”, and significant downturns in the use of words such as honesty, patience, and compassion.

Haslam and colleagues found that at headline level their results, using a larger dataset, reflected the earlier findings. However, fine-grain investigations revealed a more complex picture. Nevertheless, they say, the changes in the frequency of use for particular types of moral terms is sufficient to allow the twentieth century to be divided into five distinct historical periods.

The words used in the search were taken from lists collated under what is known as Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), a generally supported framework that rejects the idea that morality is monolithic. Instead, the researchers explain, MFT aims to “categorise the automatic and intuitive emotional reactions that commonly occur in moral evaluation across cultures, and [identifies] five psychological systems (or foundations): Harm, Fairness, Ingroup, Authority, and Purity.”

The info is here.

Sunday, November 25, 2018

Academic Ethics: Should Scholars Avoid Citing the Work of Awful People?

Brian Leiter
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally posted October 25, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

The issue is particularly fraught in one of my academic fields, philosophy, in which Gottlob Frege, the founder of modern logic and philosophy of language, was a disgusting anti-Semite, and Martin Heidegger, a prominent figure in 20th-century existentialism, was an actual Nazi.

What is a scholar to do?

I propose a simple answer: Insofar as you aim to contribute to scholarship in your discipline, cite work that is relevant regardless of the author’s misdeeds. Otherwise you are not doing scholarship but something else. Let me explain.

Wilhelm von Humboldt crafted the influential ideal of the modern research university in Germany some 200 years ago. In his vision, the university is a place where all, and only, Wissenschaften — "sciences" — find a home. The German Wissenschaften has no connotation of natural science, unlike its English counterpart. A Wissenschaft is any systematic form of inquiry into nature, history, literature, or society marked by rigorous methods that secure the reliability or truth of its findings.

The info is here.

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Financial Ties That Bind: Studies Often Fall Short On Conflict-Of-Interest Disclosures

Rachel Bluth
Kaiser Health News
Originally published August 15, 2018

Papers in medical journals go through rigorous peer review and meticulous data analysis.

Yet many of these articles are missing a key piece of information: the financial ties of the authors.

Nearly two-thirds of the 100 physicians who rake in the most money from 10 device manufacturers failed to disclose a conflict of interest in their academic writing in 2016, according to a study published Wednesday in JAMA Surgery.

The omission can have real-life impact for patients when their doctors rely on such research to make medical decisions, potentially without knowing the authors’ potential conflicts of interest.

“The issue is anytime there’s a new technology, people get really excited about it,” said lead researcher Dr. Mehraneh Jafari. “Whoever is reading the data on it needs to have the most information.”

The article is here.