John Danaher
aeon.co
Originally posted March 19, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
Contrary to the critics, I believe our popular discourse about robotic relationships has become too dark and dystopian. We overstate the negatives and overlook the ways in which relationships with robots could complement and enhance existing human relationships.
In Blade Runner 2049, the true significance of K’s relationship with Joi is ambiguous. It seems that they really care for each other, but this could be an illusion. She is, after all, programmed to serve his needs. The relationship is an inherently asymmetrical one. He owns and controls her; she would not survive without his good will. Furthermore, there is a third-party lurking in the background: she has been designed and created by a corporation, which no doubt records the data from her interactions, and updates her software from time to time.
This is a far cry from the philosophical ideal of love. Philosophers emphasise the need for mutual commitment in any meaningful relationship. It’s not enough for you to feel a strong, emotional attachment to another; they have to feel a similar attachment to you. Robots might be able to perform love, saying and doing all the right things, but performance is insufficient.
The information is here.
Thursday, June 7, 2018
Protecting confidentiality in genomic studies
MIT Press Release
Originally released May 7, 2018
Genome-wide association studies, which look for links between particular genetic variants and incidence of disease, are the basis of much modern biomedical research.But databases of genomic information pose privacy risks. From people’s raw genomic data, it may be possible to infer their surnames and perhaps even the shapes of their faces. Many people are reluctant to contribute their genomic data to biomedical research projects, and an organization hosting a large repository of genomic data might conduct a months-long review before deciding whether to grant a researcher’s request for access.
In a paper published in Nature Biotechnology (https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.4108), researchers from MIT and Stanford University present a new system for protecting the privacy of people who contribute their genomic data to large-scale biomedical studies. Where earlier cryptographic methods were so computationally intensive that they became prohibitively time consuming for more than a few thousand genomes, the new system promises efficient privacy protection for studies conducted over as many as a million genomes.
The release is here.
Wednesday, June 6, 2018
The LAPD’s Terrifying Policing Algorithm: Yes It’s Basically ‘Minority Report’
Dan Robitzski
Futurism.com
Originally posted May 11, 2018
The Los Angeles Police Department was recently forced to release documents about their predictive policing and surveillance algorithms, thanks to a lawsuit from the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition (which turned the documents over to In Justice Today). And what do you think the documents have to say?
If you guessed “evidence that policing algorithms, which require officers to keep a checklist of (and keep an eye on) 12 people deemed most likely to commit a crime, are continuing to propagate a vicious cycle of disproportionately high arrests of black Angelinos, as well as other racial minorities,” you guessed correctly.
Algorithms, no matter how sophisticated, are only as good as the information that’s provided to them. So when you feed an AI data from a city where there’s a problem of demonstrably, mathematically racist over-policing of neighborhoods with concentrations of people of color, and then have it tell you who the police should be monitoring, the result will only be as great as the process. And the process? Not so great!
The article is here.
Futurism.com
Originally posted May 11, 2018
The Los Angeles Police Department was recently forced to release documents about their predictive policing and surveillance algorithms, thanks to a lawsuit from the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition (which turned the documents over to In Justice Today). And what do you think the documents have to say?
If you guessed “evidence that policing algorithms, which require officers to keep a checklist of (and keep an eye on) 12 people deemed most likely to commit a crime, are continuing to propagate a vicious cycle of disproportionately high arrests of black Angelinos, as well as other racial minorities,” you guessed correctly.
Algorithms, no matter how sophisticated, are only as good as the information that’s provided to them. So when you feed an AI data from a city where there’s a problem of demonstrably, mathematically racist over-policing of neighborhoods with concentrations of people of color, and then have it tell you who the police should be monitoring, the result will only be as great as the process. And the process? Not so great!
The article is here.
Welcome to America, where morality is judged along partisan lines
Joan Vennochi
Boston Globe
Originally posted May 8, 2018
Here some excerpts:
“It’s OK to lie to the press?” asked Stephanopoulos. To which, Giuliani replied: “Gee, I don’t know — you know a few presidents who did that.”
(cut)
Twenty years later, special counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Trump’s lawyer, Cohen, is now entangled in the collusion investigation, as well as with the payment to Daniels, which also entangles Trump — who, according to Giuliani, might invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying under oath. That must be tempting, given Trump’s well-established contempt for truthfulness and personal accountability.
(cut)
So it goes in American politics, where morality is judged strictly along partisan lines, and Trump knows it.
The information is here.
Boston Globe
Originally posted May 8, 2018
Here some excerpts:
“It’s OK to lie to the press?” asked Stephanopoulos. To which, Giuliani replied: “Gee, I don’t know — you know a few presidents who did that.”
(cut)
Twenty years later, special counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Trump’s lawyer, Cohen, is now entangled in the collusion investigation, as well as with the payment to Daniels, which also entangles Trump — who, according to Giuliani, might invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying under oath. That must be tempting, given Trump’s well-established contempt for truthfulness and personal accountability.
(cut)
So it goes in American politics, where morality is judged strictly along partisan lines, and Trump knows it.
The information is here.
Tuesday, June 5, 2018
Norms and the Flexibility of Moral Action
Oriel Feldman Hall, Jae-Young Son, and Joseph Heffner
Preprint
ABSTRACT
A complex web of social and moral norms governs many everyday human behaviors, acting as the glue for social harmony. The existence of moral norms helps elucidate the psychological motivations underlying a wide variety of seemingly puzzling behavior, including why humans help or trust total strangers. In this review, we examine four widespread moral norms: fairness, altruism, trust, and cooperation, and consider how a single social instrument—reciprocity—underpins compliance to these norms. Using a game theoretic framework, we examine how both context and emotions moderate moral standards, and by extension, moral behavior. We additionally discuss how a mechanism of reciprocity facilitates the adherence to, and enforcement of, these moral norms through a core network of brain regions involved in processing reward. In contrast, violating this set of moral norms elicits neural activation in regions involved in resolving decision conflict and exerting cognitive control. Finally, we review how a reinforcement mechanism likely governs learning about morally normative behavior. Together, this review aims to explain how moral norms are deployed in ways that facilitate flexible moral choices.
The research is here.
Preprint
ABSTRACT
A complex web of social and moral norms governs many everyday human behaviors, acting as the glue for social harmony. The existence of moral norms helps elucidate the psychological motivations underlying a wide variety of seemingly puzzling behavior, including why humans help or trust total strangers. In this review, we examine four widespread moral norms: fairness, altruism, trust, and cooperation, and consider how a single social instrument—reciprocity—underpins compliance to these norms. Using a game theoretic framework, we examine how both context and emotions moderate moral standards, and by extension, moral behavior. We additionally discuss how a mechanism of reciprocity facilitates the adherence to, and enforcement of, these moral norms through a core network of brain regions involved in processing reward. In contrast, violating this set of moral norms elicits neural activation in regions involved in resolving decision conflict and exerting cognitive control. Finally, we review how a reinforcement mechanism likely governs learning about morally normative behavior. Together, this review aims to explain how moral norms are deployed in ways that facilitate flexible moral choices.
The research is here.
Is There Such a Thing as Truth?
Errol Morris
Boston Review
Originally posted April 30, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
In fiction, we are often given an imaginary world with seemingly real objects—horses, a coach, a three-cornered hat and wig. But what about the objects of science—positrons, neutrinos, quarks, gravity waves, Higgs bosons? How do we reckon with their reality?
And truth. Is there such a thing? Can we speak of things as unambiguously true or false? In history, for example, are there things that actually happened? Louis XVI guillotined on January 21, 1793, at what has become known as the Place de la Concorde. True or false? Details may be disputed—a more recent example: how large, comparatively, was Donald Trump’s victory in the electoral college in 2016, or the crowd at his inauguration the following January? But do we really doubt that Louis’s bloody head was held up before the assembled crowd? Or doubt the existence of the curved path of a positron in a bubble chamber? Even though we might not know the answers to some questions—“Was Louis XVI decapitated?” or “Are there positrons?”—we accept that there are answers.
And yet, we read about endless varieties of truth. Coherence theories of truth. Pragmatic, relative truths. Truths for me, truths for you. Dog truths, cat truths. Whatever. I find these discussions extremely distasteful and unsatisfying. To say that a philosophical system is “coherent” tells me nothing about whether it is true. Truth is not hermetic. I cannot hide out in a system and assert its truth. For me, truth is about the relation between language and the world. A correspondence idea of truth. Coherence theories of truth are of little or no interest to me. Here is the reason: they are about coherence, not truth. We are talking about whether a sentence or a paragraph or group of paragraphs is true when set up against the world. Thackeray, introducing the fictional world of Vanity Fair, evokes the objects of a world he is familiar with—“a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harnesses, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour.”
The information is here.
Boston Review
Originally posted April 30, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
In fiction, we are often given an imaginary world with seemingly real objects—horses, a coach, a three-cornered hat and wig. But what about the objects of science—positrons, neutrinos, quarks, gravity waves, Higgs bosons? How do we reckon with their reality?
And truth. Is there such a thing? Can we speak of things as unambiguously true or false? In history, for example, are there things that actually happened? Louis XVI guillotined on January 21, 1793, at what has become known as the Place de la Concorde. True or false? Details may be disputed—a more recent example: how large, comparatively, was Donald Trump’s victory in the electoral college in 2016, or the crowd at his inauguration the following January? But do we really doubt that Louis’s bloody head was held up before the assembled crowd? Or doubt the existence of the curved path of a positron in a bubble chamber? Even though we might not know the answers to some questions—“Was Louis XVI decapitated?” or “Are there positrons?”—we accept that there are answers.
And yet, we read about endless varieties of truth. Coherence theories of truth. Pragmatic, relative truths. Truths for me, truths for you. Dog truths, cat truths. Whatever. I find these discussions extremely distasteful and unsatisfying. To say that a philosophical system is “coherent” tells me nothing about whether it is true. Truth is not hermetic. I cannot hide out in a system and assert its truth. For me, truth is about the relation between language and the world. A correspondence idea of truth. Coherence theories of truth are of little or no interest to me. Here is the reason: they are about coherence, not truth. We are talking about whether a sentence or a paragraph or group of paragraphs is true when set up against the world. Thackeray, introducing the fictional world of Vanity Fair, evokes the objects of a world he is familiar with—“a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harnesses, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour.”
The information is here.
Monday, June 4, 2018
Human-sounding Google Assistant sparks ethics questions
The Strait Times
Originally published May 9, 2018
Here are some excerpts:
The new Google digital assistant converses so naturally it may seem like a real person.
The unveiling of the natural-sounding robo-assistant by the tech giant this week wowed some observers, but left others fretting over the ethics of how the human-seeming software might be used.
(cut)
The Duplex demonstration was quickly followed by debate over whether people answering phones should be told when they are speaking to human-sounding software and how the technology might be abused in the form of more convincing "robocalls" by marketers or political campaigns.
(cut)
Digital assistants making arrangements for people also raises the question of who is responsible for mistakes, such as a no-show or cancellation fee for an appointment set for the wrong time.
The information is here.
Originally published May 9, 2018
Here are some excerpts:
The new Google digital assistant converses so naturally it may seem like a real person.
The unveiling of the natural-sounding robo-assistant by the tech giant this week wowed some observers, but left others fretting over the ethics of how the human-seeming software might be used.
(cut)
The Duplex demonstration was quickly followed by debate over whether people answering phones should be told when they are speaking to human-sounding software and how the technology might be abused in the form of more convincing "robocalls" by marketers or political campaigns.
(cut)
Digital assistants making arrangements for people also raises the question of who is responsible for mistakes, such as a no-show or cancellation fee for an appointment set for the wrong time.
The information is here.
A narrative thematic analysis of moral injury in combat veterans
Held, P., Klassen, B. J., Hall, J. M., Friese, and others
Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.
Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tra0000364
Here is a portion of the Introduction:
In war, service members sometimes have to make difficult decisions, some of which may violate their deeply held beliefs and moral values. The term moral injury was coined to refer to the enduring mental health consequences that can occur from participating in, witnessing, or learning about acts that violate one’s moral code (Drescher et al., 2011; Litz et al., 2009; Shay, 1994). Some examples of potentially morally injurious events include disproportionate violence, engaging in atrocities, or violations of rules of engagement (Litz et al., 2009; Stein et al., 2012). Although consensus regarding how best to measure moral injury has not been reached, one preliminary estimate suggested that as many as 25% of a representative sample of veterans endorsed exposure to morally injurious experiences (Wisco et al., 2017). Involvement in these situations has been shown to be associated with a range of negative psychological reactions, including the development of mental health symptoms, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression (Held, Klassen, Brennan, & Zalta, 2017; Maguen et al., 2010), substance use problems (Wilk et al., 2010) and suicidal ideation (Maguen et al., 2012).
Litz and colleagues (2009) have proposed the sole theoretical model of how moral transgressions result in the development of mental health symptoms. Following the morally injurious event, individuals experience a conflict between the event and their own moral beliefs. For example, a service member may believe that civilians should not be harmed during combat but is involved in an event that involves the death of noncombatants. In an attempt to resolve this cognitive conflict, self-directed attributions of the event’s cause may be made, such as service members believing that they were complicit in noncombatants being harmed. The stable, internal, and global attributions that result lead to the development of painful emotions (e.g., guilt, shame, fear of social rejection) and withdrawal from social interaction. Lack of social contact leads to missed opportunities for potentially corrective information and further strengthens the painful emotions and the stable, internal, and global attributions about the morally injurious event (e.g., Martin et al., 2017). It has been proposed that unless addressed, the moral injury continues to manifest and perpetuate itself through intrusions, avoidance, and numbing in a manner similar to PTSD (Jinkerson, 2016; Farnsworth, Drescher, Nieu- wsma, Walser, & Currier, 2014; Litz, Lebowitz, Gray, & Nash, 2016; Litz et al., 2009).
The article is here.
Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.
Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tra0000364
Here is a portion of the Introduction:
In war, service members sometimes have to make difficult decisions, some of which may violate their deeply held beliefs and moral values. The term moral injury was coined to refer to the enduring mental health consequences that can occur from participating in, witnessing, or learning about acts that violate one’s moral code (Drescher et al., 2011; Litz et al., 2009; Shay, 1994). Some examples of potentially morally injurious events include disproportionate violence, engaging in atrocities, or violations of rules of engagement (Litz et al., 2009; Stein et al., 2012). Although consensus regarding how best to measure moral injury has not been reached, one preliminary estimate suggested that as many as 25% of a representative sample of veterans endorsed exposure to morally injurious experiences (Wisco et al., 2017). Involvement in these situations has been shown to be associated with a range of negative psychological reactions, including the development of mental health symptoms, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression (Held, Klassen, Brennan, & Zalta, 2017; Maguen et al., 2010), substance use problems (Wilk et al., 2010) and suicidal ideation (Maguen et al., 2012).
Litz and colleagues (2009) have proposed the sole theoretical model of how moral transgressions result in the development of mental health symptoms. Following the morally injurious event, individuals experience a conflict between the event and their own moral beliefs. For example, a service member may believe that civilians should not be harmed during combat but is involved in an event that involves the death of noncombatants. In an attempt to resolve this cognitive conflict, self-directed attributions of the event’s cause may be made, such as service members believing that they were complicit in noncombatants being harmed. The stable, internal, and global attributions that result lead to the development of painful emotions (e.g., guilt, shame, fear of social rejection) and withdrawal from social interaction. Lack of social contact leads to missed opportunities for potentially corrective information and further strengthens the painful emotions and the stable, internal, and global attributions about the morally injurious event (e.g., Martin et al., 2017). It has been proposed that unless addressed, the moral injury continues to manifest and perpetuate itself through intrusions, avoidance, and numbing in a manner similar to PTSD (Jinkerson, 2016; Farnsworth, Drescher, Nieu- wsma, Walser, & Currier, 2014; Litz, Lebowitz, Gray, & Nash, 2016; Litz et al., 2009).
The article is here.
Sunday, June 3, 2018
Hostile environment: The dark side of nudge theory
Nick Barrett
politics.co.uk
Originally posted May 1, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
Just as a website can use a big yellow button to make buying a book or signing up to a newsletter inviting, governments can use nudge theory to make saving money for your pension easy and user-friendly. But it can also establish its own dark patterns too and the biggest government dark pattern of all is the hostile environment policy established in 2012 to encourage migrants to leave the country.
The policy meant that without the right paperwork, people were deprived of health services, employment rights and access to housing and effectively excluded from mainstream society. They were not barred. The circumstances were simply created to nudge them into leaving the country.
For six years the hostile environment persecuted the least visible among us. It was only when its effects on the Windrush generation were revealed that the policy’s inherent prejudice became clear to all. What could once be seen as firm but fair suddenly looked cruel and unusual. These measures might have been defensible if the legal migration process hadn’t been turned into a painfully punitive process for anybody arriving from outside of the EU.
The information is here.
politics.co.uk
Originally posted May 1, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
Just as a website can use a big yellow button to make buying a book or signing up to a newsletter inviting, governments can use nudge theory to make saving money for your pension easy and user-friendly. But it can also establish its own dark patterns too and the biggest government dark pattern of all is the hostile environment policy established in 2012 to encourage migrants to leave the country.
The policy meant that without the right paperwork, people were deprived of health services, employment rights and access to housing and effectively excluded from mainstream society. They were not barred. The circumstances were simply created to nudge them into leaving the country.
For six years the hostile environment persecuted the least visible among us. It was only when its effects on the Windrush generation were revealed that the policy’s inherent prejudice became clear to all. What could once be seen as firm but fair suddenly looked cruel and unusual. These measures might have been defensible if the legal migration process hadn’t been turned into a painfully punitive process for anybody arriving from outside of the EU.
The information is here.
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