The Ethics Of Hiding Your Data From the Machines

Molly Wood
wired.com
Originally posted August 22, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

There’s also a real and reasonable fear that companies or individuals will take ethical liberties in the name of pushing hard toward a good solution, like curing a disease or saving lives. This is not an abstract problem: The co-founder of Google’s artificial intelligence lab, DeepMind, was placed on leave earlier this week after some controversial decisions—one of which involved the illegal use of over 1.5 million hospital patient records in 2017.

So sticking with the medical kick I’m on here, I propose that companies work a little harder to imagine the worst-case scenario surrounding the data they’re collecting. Study the side effects like you would a drug for restless leg syndrome or acne or hepatitis, and offer us consumers a nice, long, terrifying list of potential outcomes so we actually know what we’re getting into.

And for we consumers, well, a blanket refusal to offer up our data to the AI gods isn’t necessarily the good choice either. I don’t want to be the person who refuses to contribute my genetic data via 23andMe to a massive research study that could, and I actually believe this is possible, lead to cures and treatments for diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s and who knows what else.

I also think I deserve a realistic assessment of the potential for harm to find its way back to me, because I didn’t think through or wasn’t told all the potential implications of that choice—like how, let’s be honest, we all felt a little stung when we realized the 23andMe research would be through a partnership with drugmaker (and reliable drug price-hiker) GlaxoSmithKline. Drug companies, like targeted ads, are easy villains—even though this partnership actually could produce a Parkinson’s drug. But do we know what GSK’s privacy policy looks like? That deal was a level of sharing we didn’t necessarily expect.

The info is here.

The Sacklers were drug dealers who put money over morality.

Chris McGreal
The Guardian
Originally published September 17, 2019

If only we could feel Purdue Pharma’s pain.

The directors and owners of the company that did so much to create America’s opioid epidemic are professing distress and bewilderment at the rejection of what they claim are its good faith efforts to help the victims.

Even as Purdue announced plans late Sunday night to file for bankruptcy, its top officials were making unctuous claims that their concern was to combat an epidemic that has claimed more than 400,000 lives. Anyone who stood in the way was depriving suffering Americans of the help they need, they claimed.

Members of the Sackler family who own Purdue have offered to turn over the company to a trust which would funnel future earnings to treatment and other measures to deal with the tragedy. They would also sell Mundipharma, a British-based sister company, and hand over the payment. The Sacklers even said they would give up a part of the huge profits of OxyContin, which made the family multibillionaires.

Some of the state attorneys general and cities suing Purdue have accepted the deal as the best prospect for getting anything out of the company and said the bankruptcy filing was part of the arrangement.

Other attorneys general rejected the move, claiming it was an attempt by Purdue’s owners and executives to hang on to the bulk of the profits of drug dealing and buy their way out of individual accountability. Some of those states are also suing the Sacklers directly.

The info is here.

The crossroads between ethics and technology

Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler
Techcrunch.com
Originally posted August 6, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

The first relates to ethics. If anything is clear today in the world of technology, it is the need to include ethical concerns when developing, distributing, implementing and using technology. This is all the more important because in many domains there is no regulation or legislation to provide a clear definition of what may and may not be done. There is nothing intrinsic to technology that requires that it pursue only good ends. The mission of our generation is to ensure that technology works for our benefit and that it can help realize social ideals. The goal of these new technologies should not be to replicate power structures or other evils of the past. 

Startup nation should focus on fighting crime and improving autonomous vehicles and healthcare advancements. It shouldn’t be running extremist groups on Facebook, setting up “bot farms” and fakes, selling attackware and spyware, infringing on privacy and producing deepfake videos.

The second issue is the lack of transparency. The combination of individuals and companies that have worked for, and sometimes still work with, the security establishment frequently takes place behind a thick screen of concealment. These entities often evade answering challenging questions that result from the Israeli Freedom of Information law and even recourse to the military censor — a unique Israeli institution — to avoid such inquires.

The info is here.

Why Moral Emotions Go Viral Online

Ana P. Gantman, William J. Brady, & Jay Van Bavel
Scientific American
Originally posted August 20, 2019

Social media is changing the character of our political conversations. As many have pointed out, our attention is a scarce resource that politicians and journalists are constantly fighting to attract, and the online world has become a primary trigger of our moral outrage. These two ideas, it turns out, are fundamentally related. According to our forthcoming paper, words that appeal to one’s sense of right and wrong are particularly effective at capturing attention, which may help explain this new political reality.

It occurred to us that the way people scroll through their social media feeds is very similar to a classic method psychologists use to measure people’s ability to pay attention. When we mindlessly browse social media, we are rapidly presenting a stream of verbal stimuli to ourselves. Psychologists have been studying this issue in the lab for decades, displaying to subjects a rapid succession of words, one after another, in the blink of an eye. In the lab, people are asked to find a target word among a collection of other words. Once they find it, there’s a short window of time in which that word captures their attention. If there’s a second target word in that window, most people don’t even see it—almost as if they had blinked with their eyes open.

There is an exception: if the second target word is emotionally significant to the viewer, that person will see it. Some words are so important to us that they are able to capture our attention even when we are already paying attention to something else.

The info is here.

Can Physicians Work in US Immigration Detention Facilities While Upholding Their Hippocratic Oath?

Spiegel P, Kass N, Rubenstein L.
JAMA. Published online August 30, 2019.
doi:10.1001/jama.2019.12567

The modern successor to the Hippocratic oath, called the Declaration of Geneva, was updated and approved by the World Medical Association in 2017. The pledge states that “The health and well-being of my patient will be my first consideration” and “I will not use my medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat.” Can a physician work in US immigration detention facilities while upholding this pledge?

There is a humanitarian emergency at the US-Mexico border where migrants, including families, adults, or unaccompanied children, are detained and processed by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Customs and Border Patrol and are held in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions with insufficient medical care.2 Children (persons <18 years), without their parents or guardians, are often being detained in these detention facilities beyond the 72 hours allowed under federal law. Adults and children with a parent or legal guardian are then transferred from Customs and Border Patrol facilities to DHS’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, which are also overcrowded and where existing standards for conditions of confinement are often not met. Unaccompanied minors are transferred from Customs and Border Patrol detention facilities to Health and Human Services (HHS) facilities run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). The majority of these unaccompanied children are then released to the care of community sponsors, while others stay, sometimes for months.

Children should not be detained for immigration reasons at all, according to numerous professional associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics.3 Detention of children has been associated with increased physical and psychological illness, including posttraumatic stress disorder, as well as developmental delay and subsequent problems in school.

Given the psychological and physical harm to children who are detained, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child stated that the detention of a child “cannot be justified solely on the basis of the child being unaccompanied or separated, or on their migratory or residence status, or lack thereof,” and should in any event only be used “…as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.”6 The United States is the only country not to have ratified the convention on the Rights of the Child, but the international standard is so widely recognized that it should still apply. Children held in immigration detention should be released into settings where they are safe, protected, and can thrive.

The info is here.

Do Ethics Really Matter To Today's Consumers?

Anna-Mieke Anderson

Forbes.com
Originally posted August 20, 2019

Unlike any other time in history, consumers are truly demanding more from the companies with which they do business. Today’s shoppers are looking for ethical, eco-friendly brands that put people and the planet ahead of profits.  Led by the estimated 83 million millennials in the world, this change shows the need for companies to lead with compassion and authenticity. The spending power of millennials can’t be overlooked. They are projected to spend $1.4 trillion annually by 2020.

Undoubtedly, technology is a major contributing factor to this shift in purchasing. Consumers have endless information about a company’s practices, mission and values at their fingertips. They are also attuned to what’s happening in the world around them and want to help address the pressing issues they are facing while not contributing further to the problems they inherited. Consider this: 81% of millennials want a company to make public commitments to charitable causes and global citizenship, something many corporations are not used to doing.

According to the 2018 Conscious Consumer Spending Index, in 2018, 59% of people bought goods or services from a company they considered socially responsible, and 32% of Americans plan to spend even more this year with companies that align with their social values. What’s equally important to note is that in the same timeframe, 32% of Americans refused to support a company that they felt was not socially responsible.

The info is here.

California Requires Suicide Prevention Phone Number On Student IDs

Mark Kreider
Kaiser Health News
Originally posted August 30, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

A California law that has greeted students returning to school statewide over the past few weeks bears a striking resemblance to that Palo Alto policy from four years ago. Beginning with the 2019-20 school year, all IDs for California students in grades seven through 12, and in college, must bear the telephone number of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. That number is 800-273-TALK (8255).

“I am extremely proud that this strategy has gone statewide,” said Herrmann, who is now superintendent of the Roseville Joint Union High School District near Sacramento.

The new student ID law marks a statewide response to what educators, administrators and students themselves know is a growing need.

The numbers support that idea — and they are as jarring as they are clarifying.

Suicide was the second-leading cause of death in the United States among people ages 10 to 24 in 2017, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  The suicide rate among teenagers has risen dramatically over the past two decades, according to data from the CDC.

The info is here.

Reasons or Rationalisations: The Role of Principles in the Moral Dumbfounding Paradigm

Cillian McHugh, Marek McGann, Eric Igou, & Elaine L. Kinsella 
PsyArXiv
Last edited August 15, 2019

Abstract

Moral dumbfounding occurs when people maintain a moral judgment even though they cannot provide reasons for it. Recently, questions have been raised about whether dumbfounding is a real phenomenon. Two reasons have been proposed as guiding the judgments of dumbfounded participants: harm-based reasons (believing an action may cause harm) or norm-based reasons (breaking a moral norm is inherently wrong). Participants who endorsed either reason were excluded from analysis, and instances of moral dumbfounding seemingly reduced to non-significance. We argue that endorsing a reason is not sufficient evidence that a judgment is grounded in that reason. Stronger evidence should additionally account for (a) articulating a given reason, and (b) consistently applying the reason in different situations. Building on this, we develop revised exclusion criteria across 2 studies. Study 1 included an open-ended response option immediately after the presentation of a moral scenario. Responses were coded for mention of harm-based or norm-based reasons. Participants were excluded from analysis if they both articulated and endorsed a given reason. Using these revised criteria for exclusion, we found evidence for dumbfounding, as measured by the selecting of an admission of not having reasons. Study 2 included a further three questions assessing the consistency with which people apply harm-based reasons. As predicted, few participants consistently applied, articulated, and endorsed harm-based reasons, and evidence for dumbfounding was found.

The research is here.

Aiming For Moral Mediocrity

Eric Schwitzgebel
Res Philosophica, Vol 96 (3), July 2019.
DOI: 10.11612/resphil.1806

Abstract

Most people aim to be about as morally good as their peers—not especially better, not especially worse. We do not aim to be good, or non-bad, or to act permissibly rather than impermissibly, by fixed moral standards. Rather, we notice the typical behavior of our peers, then calibrate toward so-so. This is a somewhat bad way to be, but it’s not a terribly bad way to be. We are somewhat morally criticizable for having low moral ambitions. Typical arguments defending the moral acceptability of low moral ambitions—the So-What-If-I’m-Not-a-Saint Excuse, the Fairness Objection, the Happy Coincidence Defense, and the claim that you’re already in The-Most-You-Can-Do Sweet Spot—do not survive critical scrutiny.

Conclusion

Most of us do not aim to be morally good by absolute standards. Instead we aim to be about as morally good as our peers. Our peers are somewhat morally criticizable—not morally horrible, but morally mediocre. If we aim to approximately match their mediocrity, we are somewhat morally
criticizable for having such low personal moral ambitions. It’s tempting to try to rationalize one’s mediocrity away by admitting merely that one is not a saint, or by appealing to the Fairness Objection or the Happy Coincidence Defense, or by flattering oneself that one is already in TheMost-You-Can-Do Sweet Spot—but these self-serving excuses don’t survive scrutiny.

Consider where you truly aim. Maybe moral goodness isn’t so important to you, as long as you’re not among the worst. If so, own your mediocrity.  Accept the moral criticism you deserve for your low moral ambitions, or change them.