Bursting the Filter Bubble: Democracy, Design, and Ethics

V. E. Bozdag

Book/Thesis
Originally published in 2015

Online web services such as Google and Facebook started using personalization algorithms. Because information is customized per user by the algorithms of these services, two users who use the same search query or have the same friend list may get different results. Online services argue that by using personalization algorithms, they may show the most relevant information for each user, hence increasing user satisfaction. However, critics argue that the opaque filters used by online services will only show agreeable political viewpoints to the users and the users never get challenged by opposing perspectives. Considering users are already biased in seeking like-minded perspectives, viewpoint diversity will diminish and the users may get trapped in a “filter bubble”. This is an undesired behavior for almost all democracy models. In this thesis we first analyzed the filter bubble phenomenon conceptually, by identifying internal processes and factors in online web services that might cause filter bubbles. Later, we analyzed this issue empirically. We first studied existing metrics in viewpoint diversity research of the computer science literature. We also extended these metrics by adding a new one, namely minority access from media and communication studies. After conducting an empirical study for Dutch and Turkish Twitter users, we showed that minorities cannot reach a large percentage of users in Turkish Twittersphere. We also analyzed software tools and design attempts to combat filter bubbles. We showed that almost all of the tools implement norms required by two popular democracy models. We argue that democracy is essentially a contested concept, and other less popular democracy models should be included in the design of such tools as well.

The book/thesis can be downloaded here.

Business ethics and morality have their limitations, new analysis suggests

Jayne Smith
workplaceinsight.net
Originally published 16 Jan 20

Morality has its limitations in the business domain, according to a new analysis of available research by Dr Hannes Leroy from Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) Erasmus University and his co-authors. This is despite the fact that there is a widespread belief that morality and business ethics matter in the way organisations act, although there is also a concomitant belief that there is a general lack of attention to morality in the world of leadership. This appears to be true regardless of industry, firm size, or the status and level of a leader in a company.

The researchers reviewed 300 studies on moral leadership and discovered the pitfalls of morality at work.The study, Taking Stock of Moral Approaches to Leadership: An Integrative Review of Ethical, Authentic, and Servant Leadership was published in the journal Academy of Management Annals.

The info is here.

People Who Second-Guess Themselves Make Worse Decisions

Christopher Ingraham
The Washington Post
Originally posted 9 Jan 20

Here is an excerpt:

The researchers specifically wanted to know whether the revisions were more accurate than the originals.

In theory, there are a lot of reasons to believe this might be the case. A person would presumably revise a prediction after obtaining new information, such as an analyst’s match forecast or a team roster change.

In practice, however, the opposite was true: Revised forecasts accurately predicted the final match score 7.7 percent of the time. But the unaltered forecasts were correct 9.3 percent of the time.

In other words, revised forecasts were about 17 percent less accurate than those that had never changed.

(cut)

So where did the second-guessers go wrong? For starters, the researchers controlled for match-to-match and player-to-player variation — it isn’t likely the case, in other words, that matches receiving more revisions were more difficult to predict, or that bad guessers were more likely to revise their forecasts.

The researchers found that revisions were more likely to go awry when forecasters dialed up the scores — by going, say, from predicting a 2-1 final score to 3-2. Indeed, across the data set, the bettors systematically underestimated the likelihood of a 0-0 draw: an outcome anticipated 1.5 percent of the time that actually occurs in 8.4 percent of matches.

The info is here.

Taking Stock of Moral Approaches to Leadership: An Integrative Review of Ethical, Authentic, and Servant Leadership

G. James Lemoine, Chad A. Hartnell,
and Hannes Leroy
Academy of Management AnnalsVol. 13, No. 1
Published Online:16 Jan 2019
https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2016.0121

Abstract

Moral forms of leadership such as ethical, authentic, and servant leadership have seen a surge of interest in the 21st century. The proliferation of morally based leadership approaches has resulted in theoretical confusion and empirical overlap that mirror substantive concerns within the larger leadership domain. Our integrative review of this literature reveals connections with moral philosophy that provide a useful framework to better differentiate the specific moral content (i.e., deontology, virtue ethics, and consequentialism) that undergirds ethical, authentic, and servant leadership, respectively. Taken together, this integrative review clarifies points of integration and differentiation among moral approaches to leadership and delineates avenues for future research that promise to build complementary rather than redundant knowledge regarding how moral approaches to leadership inform the broader leadership domain.

From the Conclusion section

Although morality’s usefulness in the leadership domain has often been questioned (e.g., Mumford & Fried, 2014), our comparative review of the three dominant moral approaches (i.e., ethical, authentic, and servant leadership) clearly indicates that moral leadership behaviors positively impact a host of desirable organizationally relevant outcomes. This conclusion counters old critiques that issues of morality in leadership are unimportant (e.g., England & Lee, 1974; Rost, 1991; Thompson, 1956). To the contrary, moral forms of leadership have much potential to explain leadership’s influence in a manner substantially distinct from classical forms of leadership such as task-oriented, relationship-oriented, and change-oriented leadership (DeRue, Nahrgang, Wellman, & Humphrey, 2011; Yukl, Gordon, & Taber, 2002).

Whither Bioethics Now?: The Promise of Relational Theory

Susan Sherwin and Katie Stockdale
International Journal of Feminist 
Approaches to Bioethics 10 (1): 7-29. 2017.

Abstract

This article reflects on the work of feminist bioethicists over the past ten years, reviewing how effective feminists have been in using relational theory to reorient bioethics and where we hope it will go from here. Feminist bioethicists have made significant achievements using relational theory to shape the notion of autonomy, bringing to light the relevance of patients' social circumstances and where they are situated within systems of privilege and oppression. But there is much work to be done to reorient bioethics so that it is capable of addressing some current public health challenges. We argue that relational theory holds promise for beginning this work.

Here is an excerpt:

One reason to think that it is important to see feminist relational theory as the shaping sensibility through which other normative concepts and ideals can be understood is that a relational lens enables us to see the ways in which the very possibility of solidarity can depend on whether social, political, and economic circumstances make possible the choices and actions that are constitutive of solidarity. For example, drawing upon feminist conceptions of relational personhood and autonomy, author Susan Sherwin (2012) points out that the choices and actions available to individuals are bound up with the choices and actions of agents at other levels of human organization, such as international bodies, corporations, social groups, and governments. Since moral responsibility is limited to what agents actually can choose and do, moral responsibilities across all levels of human organization are intertwined and thus also relational.

The article is here.

Psychologist sentenced to four years in prison for healthcare fraud

Macomb Daily Staff

Iosco County News-Herald
Originally posted 13 Jan 20

An Armada Township psychologist was ordered to spend more than four years in federal prison for overbilling an insurance company more than $3 million partly to fund opening a Michigan hotel. He also attempted to expand a museum in his hometown.

Paul L. Smith, who most recently practiced in Shelby Township, received 51 months behind bars last Tuesday from Judge Judge Bernard A. Friedman after pleading guilty to health care fraud and unlawful monetary transactions, according to U.S. Attorneys.

Smith submitted approximately 1,700 false claims for neuropsychological testing and 140 false claims for psychological testing from January 2015 to February 2018, the indictment says.

Smith, who practiced for over 20 years at various locations throughout metro Detroit, submitted claims to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan for reimbursement for services that he did not provide, U.S. Attorneys said in a news release. In three years, Smith fraudulently obtained $3.16 million from Blue Cross Blue Shield. Smith subsequently used hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase real property, liquor licenses and furniture, in his venture to become a hotelier in Arcadia in northwest Michigan, reportedly known as “Swan Resort.”

The info is here.

A Reality Check On Artificial Intelligence: Are Health Care Claims Overblown?

Liz Szabo
Kaiser Health News
Originally published 30 Dec 19

Here is an excerpt:

“Almost none of the [AI] stuff marketed to patients really works,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, professor of medical ethics and health policy in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

The FDA has long focused its attention on devices that pose the greatest threat to patients. And consumer advocates acknowledge that some devices ― such as ones that help people count their daily steps ― need less scrutiny than ones that diagnose or treat disease.

Some software developers don’t bother to apply for FDA clearance or authorization, even when legally required, according to a 2018 study in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Industry analysts say that AI developers have little interest in conducting expensive and time-consuming trials. “It’s not the main concern of these firms to submit themselves to rigorous evaluation that would be published in a peer-reviewed journal,” said Joachim Roski, a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton, a technology consulting firm, and co-author of the National Academy’s report. “That’s not how the U.S. economy works.”

But Oren Etzioni, chief executive officer at the Allen Institute for AI in Seattle, said AI developers have a financial incentive to make sure their medical products are safe.

The info is here.

Researchers: Are we on the cusp of an ‘AI winter’?

Sam Shead
bbc.com
Originally posted 12 Jan 20

Hype surrounding AI has peaked and troughed over the years as the abilities of the technology get overestimated and then re-evaluated.

The peaks are known as AI summers, and the troughs AI winters.

The 10s were arguably the hottest AI summer on record with tech giants repeatedly touting AI's abilities.

AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, sometimes called one of the "godfathers of AI", told the BBC that AI's abilities were somewhat overhyped in the 10s by certain companies with an interest in doing so.

There are signs, however, that the hype might be about to start cooling off.

"I have the sense that AI is transitioning to a new phase," said Katja Hoffman, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge.

Given the billions being invested in AI and the fact that there are likely to be more breakthroughs ahead, some researchers believe it would be wrong to call this new phase an AI winter.

The info is here.

Bounded awareness: Implications for ethical decision making

Max H. Bazerman and Ovul Sezer
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
Volume 136, September 2016, Pages 95-105

Abstract

In many of the business scandals of the new millennium, the perpetrators were surrounded by people who could have recognized the misbehavior, yet failed to notice it. To explain such inaction, management scholars have been developing the area of behavioral ethics and the more specific topic of bounded ethicality—the systematic and predictable ways in which even good people engage in unethical conduct without their own awareness. In this paper, we review research on both bounded ethicality and bounded awareness, and connect the two areas to highlight the challenges of encouraging managers and leaders to notice and act to stop unethical conduct. We close with directions for future research and suggest that noticing unethical behavior should be considered a critical leadership skill.

Bounded Ethicality

Within the broad topic of behavioral ethics is the much more specific topic of bounded ethicality (Chugh, Banaji, & Bazerman, 2005). Chugh et al. (2005) define bounded ethicality as the psychological processes that lead people to engage in ethically questionable behaviors that are inconsistent with their own preferred ethics. That is, if they were more reflective about their choices, they would make a different decision. This definition runs parallel to the concepts of bounded rationality (March & Simon, 1958) and bounded awareness (Chugh & Bazerman, 2007). In all three cases, a cognitive shortcoming keeps the actor from taking the action that she would choose with greater awareness. Importantly, if people overcame these boundaries, they would make decisions that are more in line with their ethical standards. Note that behavioral ethicists do not ask decision makers to follow particular values or rules, but rather try to help decision makers adhere more closely
to their own personal values with greater reflection.

The paper can be downloaded here.