Designing a Roadmap to Ethical AI in Government

Joshua Entsminger, Mark Esposito, Terence Tse and Danny Goh
www.thersa.org
Originally posted July 23, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

When a decision was made using AI, we may not know whether or not the data was faulty; regardless, there will come a time when someone appeals a decision made by, or influenced by, AI-driven insights. People have the right to be informed that a significant decision concerning their lives was carried out with the help of an AI. Governments will need a better record of what companies and institutions use AI for making significant decisions to enforce this policy.

When specifically assessing a decision-making process of concern, the first step should be to determine whether or not the data set represents what the organisation wanted the AI to understand and make decisions about.

However, data sets, particularly easily available data sets, cover a limited range of situations, and inevitably, most AI will be confronted with situations they have not encountered before – the ethical issue is the framework by which decisions occur, and good data cannot secure that kind of ethical behavior by itself.

The blog post is here.

What Does an Infamous Biohacker’s Death Mean for the Future of DIY Science?

Kristen Brown
The Atlantic
Originally posted May 5, 2018

Here are two excerpts:

At just 28, Traywick was among the most infamous figures in the world of biohacking—the grandiose CEO of a tiny company called Ascendance Biomedical whose goal was to develop and test new gene therapies without the expense and rigor of clinical trials or the oversight of the FDA. Traywick wanted to cure cancer, herpes, HIV, and even aging, and he wanted to do it without having to deal with the rules and safety precautions of regulators and industry standards.

“There are breakthroughs in the world that we can actually bring to market in a way that wouldn’t require us to butt up against the FDA’s walls, but instead walk around them,” Traywick told me the first time I met him in person, during a biotech conference in San Francisco last January.

To “walk around” regulators, Ascendance and other biohackers typically rely on testing products on themselves. Self-experimentation, although strongly discouraged by agencies like the FDA, makes it difficult for regulators to intervene. The rules that govern drug development simply aren’t written to oversee what an individual might do to themselves.

(cut)

The biggest shame, said Zayner, is that we’ll never get the chance to see how Traywick might have matured once he’d been in the biohacking sphere a little longer.

Whatever their opinion of Traywick, everyone who knew him agreed that he was motivated by an extreme desire to make drugs more widely available for those who need them.

The information is here.

What Trump Administration Corruption Lays Bare: Ineffectual Ethics Rules

Eliza Newlin Carney
The American Prospect
Originally published June 28, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

What’s most stunning about Pruitt’s never-ending ethics saga is not the millions in taxpayer dollars he wasted on first-class, military and private travel to exotic locales, on ‘round the clock security details and on over-the-top office furnishings. The real shocker is that federal ethics officials, having amassed an extraordinary paper trail showing that Pruitt violated multiple rules that bar self-dealing, employee retaliation, unauthorized pay raises and more, have been essentially helpless to do anything about it.

And therein lies the root problem exposed by this administration’s utter disregard for ethics norms: Executive Branch ethics laws are alarmingly weak and out of date. For decades, ethics watchdogs have warned Congress that a patchwork of agencies and officers scattered throughout the government lack the resources and authority to really police federal ethics violations. But since past administrations have typically paid a bit more attention to the Office of Government Ethics (OGE), which oversees executive branch ethics programs, the holes in federal oversight have gone largely unnoticed.

But now that we have a president who, along with much of his cabinet, appears entirely impervious to the OGE’s guidelines and warnings, as well as to a torrent of unfavorable news coverage, the system’s shortfalls have become impossible to ignore. In theory, the Justice Department, the Office of White House Counsel, or Congress could fill in the gaps to help check this administration’s abuses. But none of Trump’s Hill allies or administration appointees has shown the slightest inclination to hold him to account.

The information is here.

Can a machine be ethical? Why teaching AI ethics is a minefield.

Scotty Hendricks
Bigthink.com
Originally published May 31, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Dr. Moor gives the example of Isaac Asimov’s three rules of robotics. For those who need a refresher, they are:

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.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

The rules are hierarchical, and the robots in Asimov’s books are all obligated to follow them.

Dr. Moor suggests that the problems with these rules are obvious. The first rule is so general that an artificial intelligence following them “might be obliged by the First Law to roam the world attempting to prevent harm from befalling human beings” and therefore be useless for its original function!

Such problems can be common in deontological systems, where following good rules can lead to funny results. Asimov himself wrote several stories about potential problems with the laws. Attempts to solve this issue abound, but the challenge of making enough rules to cover all possibilities remains. 

On the other hand, a machine could be programmed to stick to utilitarian calculus when facing an ethical problem. This would be simple to do, as the computer would only have to be given a variable and told to make choices that would maximize the occurrence of it. While human happiness is a common choice, wealth, well-being, or security are also possibilities.

The article is here.

The ethics of experimenting with human brain tissue

Nita Farahany, and others
Nature
Originally published April 25, 2018

If researchers could create brain tissue in the laboratory that might appear to have conscious experiences or subjective phenomenal states, would that tissue deserve any of the protections routinely given to human or animal research subjects?

This question might seem outlandish. Certainly, today’s experimental models are far from having such capabilities. But various models are now being developed to better understand the human brain, including miniaturized, simplified versions of brain tissue grown in a dish from stem cells — brain organoids. And advances keep being made.

These models could provide a much more accurate representation of normal and abnormal human brain function and development than animal models can (although animal models will remain useful for many goals). In fact, the promise of brain surrogates is such that abandoning them seems itself unethical, given the vast amount of human suffering caused by neurological and psychiatric disorders, and given that most therapies for these diseases developed in animal models fail to work in people. Yet the closer the proxy gets to a functioning human brain, the more ethically problematic it becomes.

The information is here.

Why it’s a bad idea to break the rules, even if it’s for a good cause

Robert Wiblin
80000hours.org
Originally posted March 20, 2018

How honest should we be? How helpful? How friendly? If our society claims to value honesty, for instance, but in reality accepts an awful lot of lying – should we go along with those lax standards? Or, should we attempt to set a new norm for ourselves?

Dr Stefan Schubert, a researcher at the Social Behaviour and Ethics Lab at Oxford University, has been modelling this in the context of the effective altruism community. He thinks people trying to improve the world should hold themselves to very high standards of integrity, because their minor sins can impose major costs on the thousands of others who share their goals.

In addition, when a norm is uniquely important to our situation, we should be willing to question society and come up with something different and hopefully better.

But in other cases, we can be better off sticking with whatever our culture expects, both to save time, avoid making mistakes, and ensure others can predict our behaviour.

The key points and podcast are here.

Ethics and sport have long been strangers to one another

Kenan Malik
The Guardian
Originally posted March 8, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Today’s great ethical debate is not about payment but drugs. Last week, the digital, culture, media and sport select committee accused Bradley Wiggins of “crossing the ethical line” for allegedly misusing drugs allowed for medical purposes to enhance performance.

The ethical lines over drug use are, however, as arbitrary and irrational as earlier ones about payment. Drugs are said to be “unnatural” and to provide athletes with an “unfair advantage”. But virtually everything an athlete does, from high-altitude training to high-protein dieting, is unnatural and seeks to gain an advantage.

EPO is a naturally produced hormone that stimulates red blood cell production, so helping endurance athletes. Injections of EPO are banned in sport. Yet Chris Froome is permitted to sleep in a hypoxic chamber, which reduces oxygen in the air, forcing his body to produce more red blood cells. It has the same effect as EPO, is equally unnatural and provides an advantage. Why is one banned but not the other?

The article is here.

Government watchdog files 30 ethics complaints against Trump administration

Julia Manchester
The Hill
Originally posted March 26, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

"The bottom line is that neither Trump nor his administration take conflicts of interest and ethics seriously," Lisa Gilbert, the group's vice president of legislative affairs, told the network.

" 'Drain the swamp' was far more campaign rhetoric than a commitment to ethics, and the widespread lack of compliance and enforcement of Trump's ethics executive order shows that ethics do not matter in the Trump administration."

NBC News reports Public Citizen filed complaints with the White House Office of Management and Budget, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Health and Human Services, Commerce and Interior, among others.

Trump signed an executive order shortly after he took office in 2017 that was aimed at cracking down on lobbyists' influence in the U.S. government.

The order allowed officials who departed the administration to lobby the government, except the agency for which they worked, and permitted lobbyists to enter the administration as long as they didn't work on specific issues that would impact former clients or employers for two years.

The article is here.

Navigating Political Talk at Work

David W. Ballard
Harvard Business Review
Originally posted March 2, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Managers should recognize that the current political environment could be having an effect on people, especially if they’re talking about it in the office. Be aware of employees’ stress levels, share information about benefits and resources that are available to help support them, and encourage appropriate use of your company’s employee assistance program, mental health benefits, flexible work arrangements, and workplace wellness activities that can help people stay healthy and functioning at their best.

Senior leaders and supervisors can communicate a powerful message by modeling the behavior and actions they’re trying to promote in the organization. By demonstrating civility and respect, actively using available support resources, participating in organizational activities, and managing their own stress levels in healthy ways, business leaders can back their words with actions that show they are serious about creating a healthy work environment.

Focusing on common goals and shared values is another way to bring people together despite their differences. As a manager, set clear goals for your team and focus people on working together toward common objectives. When political turmoil is creating tension and distraction, focusing on the work and accomplishing something together may be a welcome reprieve.

Finally, step in if things get too heated. If the current political climate is negatively affecting an employee’s job performance, address the issue before it creates a bigger problem. Provide the necessary feedback, work with the employee to create a plan, and point them to available resources that might help. When tensions turn into conflicts between coworkers, counsel employees on any relevant policies related to harassment or incivility, help them find ways to work together, and involve human resources as needed.

The article is here.

Post-conventional moral reasoning is associated with increased ventral striatal activity at rest and during task

Zhuo Fang, Wi Hoon Jung, Marc Korczykowski, Lijuan Luo, and others
Scientific Reports 7, Article number: 7105 (2017)

Abstract

People vary considerably in moral reasoning. According to Kohlberg’s theory, individuals who reach the highest level of post-conventional moral reasoning judge moral issues based on deeper principles and shared ideals rather than self-interest or adherence to laws and rules. Recent research has suggested the involvement of the brain’s frontostriatal reward system in moral judgments and prosocial behaviors. However, it remains unknown whether moral reasoning level is associated with differences in reward system function. Here, we combined arterial spin labeling perfusion and blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging and measured frontostriatal reward system activity both at rest and during a sequential risky decision making task in a sample of 64 participants at different levels of moral reasoning. Compared to individuals at the pre-conventional and conventional level of moral reasoning, post-conventional individuals showed increased resting cerebral blood flow in the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Cerebral blood flow in these brain regions correlated with the degree of post-conventional thinking across groups. Post-conventional individuals also showed greater task-induced activation in the ventral striatum during risky decision making. These findings suggest that high-level post-conventional moral reasoning is associated with increased activity in the brain’s frontostriatal system, regardless of task-dependent or task-independent states.

The article is here.

Official sends memo to agency leaders about ethical conduct

Avery Anapol
The Hill
Originally published October 10, 2017

The head of the Office of Government Ethics is calling on the leaders of government agencies to promote an “ethical culture.”

David Apol, acting director of the ethics office, sent a memo to agency heads titled, “The Role of Agency Leaders in Promoting an Ethical Culture.” The letter was sent to more than 100 agency heads, CNN reported.

“It is essential to the success of our republic that citizens can trust that your decisions and the decisions made by your agency are motivated by the public good and not by personal interests,” the memo reads.

Several government officials are under investigation for their use of chartered planes for government business.

One Cabinet official, former Health secretary Tom Price, resigned over his use of private jets. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is also under scrutiny for his travels.

“I am deeply concerned that the actions of some in Government leadership have harmed perceptions about the importance of ethics and what conduct is, and is not, permissible,” Apol wrote.

The memo includes seven suggested actions that Apol says leaders should take to strengthen the ethical culture in their agencies. The suggestions include putting ethics officials in senior leadership meetings, and “modeling a ‘Should I do it?’ mentality versus a ‘Can I do it?’ mentality.”

The article is here.

Peter Thiel sponsors offshore testing of herpes vaccine, sidestepping U.S. safety rules

Marisa Taylor
Kaiser News
Originally posted August 28, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

“What they’re doing is patently unethical,” said Jonathan Zenilman, chief of Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center’s Infectious Diseases Division. “There’s a reason why researchers rely on these protections. People can die.”

The risks are real. Experimental trials with live viruses could lead to infection if not handled properly or produce side effects in those already infected. Genital herpes is caused by two viruses that can trigger outbreaks of painful sores. Many patients have no symptoms, though a small number suffer greatly. The virus is primarily spread through sexual contact, but also can be released through skin.

The push behind the vaccine is as much political as medical. President Trump has vowed to speed up the FDA’s approval of some medicines. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who had deep financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry, slammed the FDA before his confirmation for over-prioritizing consumer protection to the detriment of medical innovations.

“This is a test case,” said Bartley Madden, a retired Credit Suisse banker and policy adviser to the conservative Heartland Institute, who is another investor in the vaccine. “The FDA is standing in the way, and Americans are going to hear about this and demand action.”

American researchers are increasingly going offshore to developing countries to conduct clinical trials, citing rising domestic costs. But in order to approve the drug for the U.S. market, the FDA requires that clinical trials involving human participants be reviewed and approved by an IRB or an international equivalent. The IRB can reject research based on safety concerns.

The article is here.

An erosion of ethics oversight should make us all more cynical about Trump

The Editorial Board
The Los Angeles Times
Originally published August 4, 2017

President Trump’s problems with ethics are manifest, from his refusal to make public his tax returns to the conflicts posed by his continued stake in the Trump Organization and its properties around the world — including the Trump International Hotel just down the street from the White House, in a building leased from the federal government he’s now in charge of. The president’s stubborn refusal to hew to the ethical norms set by his predecessors has left the nation to rightfully question whose best interests are foremost in his mind.

Some of the more persistent challenges to the Trump administration’s comportment have come from the Office of Government Ethics, whose recently departed director, Walter M. Shaub Jr., fought with the administration frequently over federal conflict-of-interest regulations. Under agency rules, chief of staff Shelley K. Finlayson should have been Shaub’s successor until the president nominated a new director, who would need Senate confirmation.

But Trump upended that transition last month by naming the office’s general counsel, David J. Apol, as the interim director. Apol has a reputation within the agency for taking contrarian — and usually more lenient — stances on ethics requirements than did Shaub and the consensus opinion of the staff (including Finlayson). And that, of course, raises the question of whether the White House replaced Finlayson with Apol in hopes of having a more conciliatory ethics chief without enduring a grueling nomination fight.

The article is here.

The Wellsprings of Our Morality

Daniel M.T. Fessler
What can evolution tell us about morality?
http://www.humansandnature.org

Mother Nature is amoral, yet morality is universal. The natural world lacks both any guiding hand and any moral compass. And yet all human societies have moral rules, and, with the exception of some individuals suffering from pathology, all people experience profound feelings that shape their actions in light of such rules. Where then did these constellations of rules and feelings come from?

The term “morality” jumbles rules and feelings, as well as judgments of others’ actions that result from the intersection of rules and feelings. Rules, like other features of culture, are ideas transmitted from person to person: “It is laudable to do X,” “It is a sin to do Y,” etc. Feelings are internal states evoked by events, or by thoughts of future possibilities: “I am proud that she did X,” “I am outraged that he did Y,” and so on. Praise or condemnation are social acts, often motivated by feelings, in response to other people’s behavior. All of this is commonly called “morality.”

So, what does it mean to say that morality is universal? You don’t need to be an anthropologist to recognize that, while people everywhere experience strong feelings about others’ behavior—and, as a result, reward or punish that behavior—cultures differ with regard to the beliefs on which they base such judgments. Is injustice a graver sin than disrespect for tradition? Which is more important, the autonomy of the individual or the harmony of the group? The answer is that it depends on whom you ask.

The information is here.

Trump Has Plunged Nation Into ‘Ethics Crisis,’ Ex-Watchdog Says

Britain Eakin
Courthouse News Service
Originally published July 28, 2017

The government’s former top ethics chief sounded the alarm Friday, saying the first eight months of the Trump administration have been “an absolute shock to the system” that has plunged the nation into “an ethics crisis.”

Walter Shaub Jr. resigned July 6 after months of clashes with the White House over issues such as President Trump’s refusal to divest his businesses and the administration’s delay in disclosing ethics waivers for appointees.

As he left office he told NPR that “the current situation has made it clear that the ethics program needs to be stronger than it is.”

He did not elaborate at that time on what about the “situation” so troubled him, but he said at the Campaign Legal Center, he would have more freedom “to push for reform” while broadening his focus to ethics issues at all levels of government.

During a talk at the National Press Club Friday morning, Shaub said the president and other administration officials have departed from ethical principles and norms as part of a broader assault on the American representative form of government.

Shaub said he is “extremely concerned” by this.

“The biggest concern is that norms evolve. So if we have a shock to the system, what we’re experiencing now could become the new norm,” Shaub said.

The article is here.

What do White House Rules Mean if They Can Be Circumvented?

Sheelah Kolhatkar
The New Yorker
Originally posted June 6, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Each Administration establishes its own ethics rules, often by executive order, which go beyond ethics laws codified by Congress (those laws require such things as financial-disclosure forms from government employees, the divestiture of assets if they pose conflicts, and recusal from government matters if they intersect with personal business). While the rules established by law are hard and fast, officials can be granted waivers from the looser executive-order rules. The Obama Administration granted a handful of such waivers over the course of its eight years. What’s startling with the Trump White House is just how many waivers have been issued so early in Trump’s term—more than a dozen were disclosed last week, with another twenty-four expected this week, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal—as well as the Administration’s attempt to keep them secret, all while seeming to flout the laws that dictate how the whole system should work.

The ethics waivers made public last week apply to numerous officials who are now working on matters affecting the same companies and industries they represented before joining the Administration. The documents were only released after the Office of Government Ethics pressed the Trump Administration to make them public, which is how they have been handled in the past; the White House initially refused, attempting to argue that the ethics office lacked the standing to even ask for them. After a struggle, the Administration relented, but many of the waivers it released were missing critical information, such as the dates when they were issued. One waiver in particular, which appears to apply to Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, without specifically naming him, grants Administration staff permission to communicate with news organizations where they might have formerly worked (Breitbart News, in Bannon’s case). The Bannon-oriented waiver, issued by the “Counsel to the President,” contains the line “I am issuing this memorandum retroactive to January 20, 2017.”

Walter Shaub, the head of the Office of Government Ethics, quickly responded that there is no such thing as a “retroactive” ethics waiver. Shaub told the Times, “If you need a retroactive waiver, you have violated a rule.”

The article is here.

Ethics agency to review waivers for Trump appointees

Bill Allison
The World Daily
Originally published April 29, 2017

The federal ethics agency is reviewing every waiver of conflict-of-interest rules that President Donald Trump’s appointees have received.

A memorandum from the U.S. Office of Government Ethics seeks documentation of waivers granted to appointees ordinarily required to recuse themselves from matters in which they or family members have a financial interest.

Issued by the agency’s director, Walter Shaub, it specifies that all agencies and appointees, “including White House officials,” must comply with the notice, which covers appointees in the administrations of Trump and Barack Obama.

The article is here.

Contempt for ethics hobbles Trump

Norman L. Eisen and Richard W. Painter
USA Today
Originally published April 26, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Finally, there is Trump’s core ethics promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington. Instead, he has brought a large number of lobbyists and other persons into his administration with a vast array of personal financial conflicts of interest (exceeded only by those of the president himself). The swamp has become a cesspool — an upscale one, dominated by billionaires. A number of the high-ranking officials in Trump's administration, like their leader, insist upon maintaining   their investments in various businesses, while at the same time conducting official U.S. government policy. The Senate vetting of their conflicts has contributed to the historically slow confirmation pace of Trump nominees (another embarrassment). In government, divided loyalties do not work.

The White House's lax attitude toward ethics results in both bad ethics and bad policy, and encourages a host of lesser offenses like the recent promotion of Mar-a-Lago — a club where the president is still selling memberships for $200,000 — as the "winter White House" on official web pages of the State Department. Even a cursory check of ethics rules would have revealed that this is flatly prohibited, but nobody bothered to check. The message sent all over the world is that the United States is a land of "pay to play."

The article is here.

GAO to Review Ethics, Funding of Trump Transition

Eric Katz
Government Executive
Originally published April 11, 2017

The federal government’s internal auditor is commencing a review of President Trump’s transition into office, examining potential conflicts of interest, contacts with foreign government and funding sources.

The Government Accountability Office is launching the review after Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., requested it. GAO will determine how the General Services Administration managed the transition and its funding mechanisms, what Trump’s transition spent those funds on and how much private funding it collected. The auditors will also probe the Office of Government Ethics to evaluate what information it made available to the transition team and to what extent Trump’s associates took advantage of OGE’s offerings versus the previous two transitions.

The article is here.

Bannon May Have Violated Ethics Pledge by Communicating With Breitbart

Lachlan Markay
Daily Beast
Originally published March 30, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Bannon, Breitbart’s former chairman, has spoken directly to two of the company’s top editors since joining the White House. Trump’s predecessor publicly waived portions of the ethics pledge for similar communications, but the White House confirmed this week that it has not done so for Bannon.

“It seems to me to be a very clear violation,” Richard Painter, who was White House counsel for President George W. Bush, told The Daily Beast in an interview.

A White House spokesperson confirmed that every Trump appointee has signed the ethics pledge required by an executive order imposed by the president in January. No White House employees have received waivers to the pledge, the spokesperson added.

All incoming appointees are required to certify that they “will not for a period of 2 years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients.”

The article is here.