Has Technology Lost Society's Trust?

Mustafa Suleyman
The RSA.org
Originally published January 8, 2018

Has technology lost society's trust? Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder and Head of Applied AI at DeepMind, considers what tech companies have got wrong, how to fix it and how technology companies can change the world for the better. (7 minute video)

Artificial Intelligence Seeks An Ethical Conscience

Tom Simonite
wired.com
Originally published December 7, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Others in Long Beach hope to make the people building AI better reflect humanity. Like computer science as a whole, machine learning skews towards the white, male, and western. A parallel technical conference called Women in Machine Learning has run alongside NIPS for a decade. This Friday sees the first Black in AI workshop, intended to create a dedicated space for people of color in the field to present their work.

Hanna Wallach, co-chair of NIPS, cofounder of Women in Machine Learning, and a researcher at Microsoft, says those diversity efforts both help individuals, and make AI technology better. “If you have a diversity of perspectives and background you might be more likely to check for bias against different groups,” she says—meaning code that calls black people gorillas would be likely to reach the public. Wallach also points to behavioral research showing that diverse teams consider a broader range of ideas when solving problems.

Ultimately, AI researchers alone can’t and shouldn’t decide how society puts their ideas to use. “A lot of decisions about the future of this field cannot be made in the disciplines in which it began,” says Terah Lyons, executive director of Partnership on AI, a nonprofit launched last year by tech companies to mull the societal impacts of AI. (The organization held a board meeting on the sidelines of NIPS this week.) She says companies, civic-society groups, citizens, and governments all need to engage with the issue.

The article is here.

Leadership and Counseling Psychology: Dilemmas, Ambiguities, and Possibilities

Sandra Shullman
The Counseling Psychologist
First published November 28, 2017

Abstract

In this article, I introduce the scientist–practitioner–advocate–leader model as a strategy for addressing the rapidly changing context for psychologists and psychology. The concept of counseling psychologists as learning leaders is derived from the foundations and values of the profession. Incorporating leadership as a core identity for counseling psychologists may create new directions for science and practice as we increasingly integrate multicultural identities, training, and diverse personal backgrounds into social justice initiatives. The article presents six dilemmas faced by counseling psychologists in assuming leadership as part of professional identity, as well as eight learning leader behaviors that counseling psychologists could integrate in their management of ambiguity and uncertainty across various levels of human organization. The article concludes with a discussion of future possibilities that may arise by adopting leadership as part of the role and core identity of counseling psychology.

The article is here.

The Phenomenon of ‘Bud Sex’ Between Straight Rural Men

Jesse Singal
thecut.com
Originally posted December 18, 2016

A lot of men have sex with other men but don’t identify as gay or bisexual. A subset of these men who have sex with men, or MSM, live lives that are, in all respects other than their occasional homosexual encounters, quite straight and traditionally masculine — they have wives and families, they embrace various masculine norms, and so on. They are able to, in effect, compartmentalize an aspect of their sex lives in a way that prevents it from blurring into or complicating their more public identities. Sociologists are quite interested in this phenomenon because it can tell us a lot about how humans interpret thorny questions of identity and sexual desire and cultural expectations.

(cut)

Specifically, Silva was trying to understand better the interplay between “normative rural masculinity” — the set of mores and norms that defines what it means to be a rural man — and these men’s sexual encounters. In doing so, he introduces a really interesting and catchy concept, “bud-sex”...

The article is here.

Baltimore Cops Studying Plato and James Baldwin

David Dagan
The Atlantic
Originally posted November 25, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Gillespie is trained to teach nuts-and-bolts courses on terrorism response, extremism, and gangs. But since the unrest of 2015, humanities have occupied the bulk of his time. The strategy is unusual in police training. “I’ve been doing this a long time and I’ve never heard of an instructor using this type of approach,” said William Terrill, a criminal-justice professor at Arizona State University who studies police culture.

But he nevertheless understands the general theory behind it. He’s authored studies showing that officers with higher education are less likely to use force than colleagues who have not been to college. The reasons why are unclear, Terrill said, but it’s possible that exposure to unfamiliar ideas and diverse people have an effect on officer behavior. Gillespie’s classes seem to offer a complement to the typical instruction. Most of it “is mechanical in nature,” Terrill said. “It’s kind of this step-by-step, instructional booklet.”

Officers learn how to properly approach a car, say, but they are rarely given tools to imagine the circumstances of the person in the driver’s seat.

The article is here.

How Much Do A Company's Ethics Matter In The Modern Professional Climate?

Larry Alton
Forbes
Originally posted September 12, 2017

More than ever, a company’s success depends on the talent it’s able to attract, but attracting the best talent is about more than just offering the best salary—or even the best benefits. Companies may have a lucrative offer for a prospective candidate, and a culture where they’ll feel at home, but how do corporate ethics stack up against those of its competition?

This may not seem like the most important question to ask when you’re trying to hire someone for a position—especially one that might not be directly affected by the actions of your corporation as a whole—but the modern workplace is changing, as are American professionals’ values, and if you want to keep up, you need to know just how significant those ethical values are.

What Qualifies as “Ethics”?

What do I mean by “ethics”? This is a broad category, and subjective in nature, but generally, I’m referring to these areas:

• Fraud and manipulation. This should be obvious, but ethical companies don’t engage in shady or manipulative financial practices, such as fraud, bribery, or insider trading. The problem here is that individual actions are often associated with the company as a whole, so any individual within your company who behaves in an unethical way could compromise the reputation of your company. Setting strict no-tolerance policies and taking proper disciplinary action can mitigate these effects.

The article is here.

The importance of building ethics into artificial intelligence

Kriti Sharma
Mashable
Originally published August 18, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Humans possess inherent social, economic and cultural biases. It’s unfortunately core to social fabrics around the world. Therefore, AI offers a chance for the business community to eliminate such biases from their global operations.

The onus is on the tech community to build technology that utilizes data from relevant, trusted sources to embrace a diversity of culture, knowledge, opinions, skills and interactions.

Indeed, AI operating in the business world today performs repetitive tasks well, learns on the job and even incorporates human social norms into its work. However, AI also spends a significant amount of time scouring the web and its own conversational history for additional context that will inform future interactions with human counterparts.

This prevalence of well-trodden data sets and partial information on the internet presents a challenge and an opportunity for AI developers. When built with responsible business and social practices in mind, AI technology has the potential to consistently – and ethically – deliver products and services to people who need them. And do so without the omnipresent human threat of bias.

Ultimately, we need to create innately diverse AI. As an industry-focused tech community, we must develop effective mechanisms to filter out biases, as well as any negative sentiment in the data that AI learns from to ensure the technology does not perpetuate stereotypes. Unless we build AI using diverse teams, datasets and design, we risk repeating the fundamental inequality of previous industrial revolutions.

The article is here.

Why Should We All Be Cultural Psychologists? Lessons From the Study of Social Cognition.

Qi Wang
Perspectives on Psychological Science September 2016 vol. 11 no. 5 583-596

Abstract

I call the attention of psychologists to the pivotal role of cultural psychology in extending and enriching research programs. I argue that it is not enough to simply acknowledge the importance of culture and urge psychologists to practice cultural psychology in their research. I deconstruct five assumptions about cultural psychology that seriously undermine its contribution to the building of a true psychological science, including that cultural psychology (a) is only about finding group differences, (b) does not appertain to group similarities, (c) concerns only group-level analysis, (d) is irrelevant to basic psychological processes, and (e) is used only to confirm the generalizability of theories. I discuss how cultural psychology can provide unique insights into psychological processes and further equip researchers with additional tools to understand human behavior. Drawing lessons from the 20 years of cultural research that my colleagues and I have done on the development of social cognition, including autobiographical memory, future thinking, self, and emotion knowledge, I demonstrate that incorporating cultural psychology into research programs is not only necessary but also feasible.

Here is an excerpt:

Although those who truly believe that culture does not matter may be rare in the face of mounting theoretical insights and empirical findings to the contrary, there are those who choose not to care about culture because of the fear to venture into the unknown or the desire to maintain status quo. The hope rests on the researchers like my colleague in the second story, who are curious about culture and yet unsure of how to make it matter for their research. They sense the urgency when facing an increasingly diverse world around them and when working with an increasingly diverse participant pool. For those researchers, the important question is how to incorporate culture into research so that they are not continuing to ignore the cultural backgrounds of their participants--taking an attitude of "don't ask, don't tell"--or to control for the variation in analysis as if it imposes "noise."

The article is here.

How The Morality Of ‘Star Trek’ Could Help Today’s Chaotic World

By Karli Bendlin
The Huffington Post
Originally published July 20, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

Gene Roddenberry’s original concept for the show focused on both a Western outer space adventure and a political agenda grounded in equality. The series touched on many social issues, including race relations, feminism and gender identity; themes that carried over into the film franchise.

For example, the episode “The Outcast” took a look at gender and sexual identity when the crew came in contact with a race that had no assigned gender. The episode was intended to draw attention to the discussion of LGBT rights, a topic still considered taboo in mainstream culture. “Star Trek Beyond” will feature the franchise’s first openly gay character, a move that producer J.J. Abrams said Roddenberry would have applauded.

“One of the many things I admire about [Roddenberry] was … how he was so about inclusivity, and I can’t imagine that he would not have wanted one of these characters, if he had been allowed ― which, of course, he would never have been allowed to in that era ― [to] have them be gay,” Abrams told HuffPost in a recent interview.

The entire article is here.

Competencies for Psychologists in the Domains of Religion and Spirituality

C. Vieten, S. Scammell, A. Pierce, R. Pilato, I Ammondson, K, I. Pargament, & D. Lukoff
Spirituality in Clinical Practice, Vol 3(2), Jun 2016, 92-114.

Abstract

Religion and spirituality are important aspects of human diversity that should receive adequate attention in cultural competence training for psychologists. Furthermore, spiritual and religious beliefs and practices are relevant to psychological and emotional well-being, and clinicians who are trained to sensitively address these domains in their clinical practice should be more effective. Our research team previously published a set of 16 religious and spiritual competencies based on a combination of focus group and survey research with the intent that they could be used to guide training. In the present study, we conducted a survey to determine whether these competencies would be acceptable to a broader population of practicing clinicians. Results indicate a large degree of support for the proposed competencies. Between 73.0 and 94.1% of respondents agreed that psychologists should receive training and demonstrate competence in each of the 16 areas. The majority (52.2%–80.7%) indicated that they had received little or no training, and between 29.7% and 58.6% had received no training at all, in these competencies. We conclude with recommendations for integrating these religious and spiritual competencies more fully into clinical training and practice.

The article is here.

Are research ethics guidelines culturally competent?

Ben Gray, Jo Hilder, Lindsay Macdonald, Rachel Tester, Anthony Dowell, & Maria Stubbe
Research Ethics May 20, 2016

Abstract

Research ethics guidelines grew out of several infamous episodes where research subjects were exploited. There is significant international synchronization of guidelines. However, indigenous groups in New Zealand, Canada and Australia have criticized these guidelines as being inadequate for research involving indigenous people and have developed guidelines from their own cultural perspectives. Whilst traditional research ethics guidelines place a lot of emphasis on informed consent, these indigenous guidelines put much greater emphasis on interdependence and trust. This article argues that traditional guidelines are premised on relationships of equal power, and that often the researcher has more power that is not fully equalized by providing information. Where there is a relationship of unequal power, then focusing on interdependence and trust is more likely to achieve ethical safety. We illustrate this thesis by describing the detail of a research project looking at the use of interpreters, where we video-recorded live consultations and then interviewed the patient, interpreter and doctor. We conclude by suggesting that mainstream research ethics guidelines should pay more attention to the development of a trustworthy relationship between subject and researcher, and that, following the lead from clinical medicine, we should develop a culturally competent ethical framework for research on human subjects.

The article is here.

The patient called me ‘colored girl.’ The senior doctor training me said nothing

By Jennifer Adaeze Anyaegbunam
Stat
Originally posted April 11, 2016

Medicine struggles with a chronic disease: racism.

Medical schools try to combat this disease with diversity initiatives and training in unconscious bias and cultural sensitivity. I’m about to graduate from the University of Virginia School of Medicine, so I’ve been through such programs.

They’re not enough.

Every one of us needs to own the principles that protect us and our patients from racism and bias. That means learning to see prejudice and speaking up against it. But that is far, far easier said than done.

Again and again during my four years of training, I encountered racism and ignorance, directed either at patients or at me and other students of color. Yet it was very hard for me to speak up, even politely, because as a student, I felt I had no authority — and didn’t want to seem confrontational to senior physicians who would be writing my evaluations.

The article is here.

Bill would allow therapists to refuse clients over religious beliefs

Holly Meyer
The Tennessean
Originally published March 2, 2016

A bill that would allow counselors and therapists to refuse to see clients whose cases violate their religious beliefs has taken a step forward in the Tennessee state House.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Dan Howell, R-Georgetown, would let counselors and therapists refer clients without risking repercussions, such as a civil lawsuit or criminal action. The state House Health Subcommittee advanced the legislation Tuesday to the full committee.

The subcommittee recommended passage of the legislation with an amendment that changes the bill's language from "sincerely held religious beliefs" to "sincerely held principles."

The article is here.

The Autism Paradox

Kathleen K. Miller
AMA Journal of Ethics. April 2015, Volume 17, Number 4: 297-298

Through the process of researching this issue, I became fascinated with recent research on neurodiversity as it applies to autism. To oversimplify vastly, neurodiversity is the idea that neurological differences (including autism) are the result of normal variation. In other words, we may be creating pathology where there is none. Should we consider autism a disease? Or is it a variation of normal? This question has been the source of heated debate, with many autism advocates arguing that autism should not be considered a disease or disorder.

As a pediatrician, this is a question I struggle with. I support autism advocacy and the rights of people with autism. I believe we need to adjust our mental framework and see people with autism as more than their diagnoses.

The entire article is here.

The Myth of the Normal Brain: Embracing Neurodiversity

By Thomas Armstrong
AMA Journal of Ethics. April 2015, Volume 17, Number 4: 348-352

Here is an excerpt:

Such strengths may suggest an evolutionary explanation for why these disorders are still in the gene pool. A growing number of scientists are suggesting that psychopathologies may have conferred specific evolutionary advantages in the past as well as in the present. The systemizing abilities of individuals with autism spectrum disorder might have been highly adaptive for the survival of prehistoric humans. As autism activist Temple Grandin, who herself has autism, surmised: “Some guy with high-functioning Asperger’s developed the first stone spear; it wasn’t developed by the social ones yakking around the campfire”.

Similarly, the three-dimensional thinking seen in some people with dyslexia may have been highly adaptive in preliterate cultures for designing tools, plotting out hunting routes, and constructing shelters, and would not have been regarded as a barrier to learning.

The entire article is here.

Thinking about how we think about morality

By Jennifer Cole Wright
OUPblog
Originally published March 22, 2015

Morality is a funny thing. On the one hand, it stands as a normative boundary – a barrier between us and the evils that threaten our lives and humanity. It protects us from the darkness, both outside and within ourselves. It structures and guides our conception of what it is to be good (decent, honorable, honest, compassionate) and to live well.

On the other hand, morality breeds intolerance. After all, if something is morally wrong to do, then we ought not to tolerate its being done. Living morally requires denying the darkness. It requires cultivating virtue and living in alignment with our moral values and principles. Anything that threatens this – divergent ideas, values, practices, or people – must therefore be ignored or challenged; or worse, sanctioned, punished, destroyed.

The entire blog post is here.

Diversity Is Useless Without Inclusivity

By Christine Riordan
Harvard Business Review
Originally posted June 5, 2014

Over the past decade, organizations have worked hard to create diversity within their workforce. Diversity can bring many organizational benefits, including greater customer satisfaction, better market position, successful decision-making, an enhanced ability to reach strategic goals, improved organizational outcomes, and a stronger bottom line.

However, while many organizations are better about creating diversity, many have not yet figured out how to make the environment inclusive—that is, create an atmosphere in which all people feel valued and respected and have access to the same opportunities.

That’s a problem.

The entire article is here.

The N-Word "Double Standard"

Understanding Moral Values in Psychotherapy

By John Gavazzi and Sam Knapp

Submitted for publication

Psychotherapy is not a value-free experience; hence, morality plays a role in the helping relationship. The psychologist’s role in psychotherapy inherently entails more power in the relationship. Therefore, to work in their patient’s best interest, psychologists need to remain aware of the power imbalance and their potential influence on the belief systems and values of their patients. All psychologists have the ability to influence their patients in many areas of their lives including the domains of morality, values, and ethics.

In terms of psychotherapy training, psychologists need to be aware of their moral beliefs as these apply to a variety of topics in psychotherapy. Patients come to psychotherapy with diverse beliefs and backgrounds, so psychologists need to be open to the diversities of modern American life. Psychologists also need to be aware of their limits of what is acceptable versus unacceptable, in terms of their patients’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Psychologists and patients who have congruent belief systems rarely discuss how their synchronous values work toward a positive outcome, although congruence between the value systems of clients and psychologists is correlated with successful outcomes in psychotherapy (Beutler & Bergen, 1991).  Furthermore, research supports the idea that patient values shift toward psychologist values during therapy (Williams & Levitt, 2007). This finding is a less obvious result of psychotherapy, and typically not a planned goal of therapy. 

The entire article is here.

"I Wish I Were Black" and Other Tales of Privilege

By Angela Onwuachi-Willig
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally published October 28, 2013

To be white is to not think about it," a white legal scholar named Barbara Flagg wrote two decades ago.

After the University of Texas at Austin denied Abigail Fisher admission, she made several statements that revealed just how little she had ever had to think about her race. Fisher, the petitioner in the Supreme Court's recently decided affirmative-action case, said in a videotaped interview made available by her lawyers: "There were people in my class with lower grades who weren't in all the activities I was in, who were being accepted into UT, and the only other difference between us was the color of our skin."

As decades of debates over affirmative action have revealed, many whites spend so little time having to think about, much less deal with, race and racism, that they understand race as nothing more than a plus factor in the admissions process. Like Fisher, they fail to see the many disadvantages that stem from simply existing as a person of color in this country—disadvantages that often hamper opportunities to achieve the badges that help students "win" in the admissions game.

The entire article is here.