Author: Jack Marshall

Ethics Quiz: SkyNet’s Avocations

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

District Court Judge for the District Of Columbia Beryl A. Howell endorsed the United States Copyright Office’s decision to refuse copyright protection to the owner of an artificial intelligence system that generated visual art. Stephen Thaler owns a program called the “Creativity Machine,” but he was denied a copyright by the office for a piece of visual art his system created. It “lacked human authorship,” Howell decided, meaning that it lacked the “bedrock requirement of copyright.”

“[T]his case presents only the question of whether a work generated autonomously by a computer system is eligible for copyright,” Howell wrote. “In the absence of any human involvement in the creation of the work, the clear and straightforward answer is the one given by the Register: No.”

Wait: the thing didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to create something. A human being was involved at some level. If a human enters the perimeters that an AI program follows and the result is unique art, isn’t that sufficient “human involvement”?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is that ruling competent and fair?

My guess is that this is another (of many) examples of courts misunderstanding new technology, with rulings that will eventually look silly in the rear-view mirror.

Climate Change: Is There Anything It Can’t Do?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

How can you tell that you’ve landed on a woke website where facts don’t matter? Here’s one way: the site features a story that tries to explain the declining attendance at the Disney theme parks without mentioning the headlong, suicidal rush of the Disney organization to embrace radical progressivism and all that entails. Here’s another big clue: the propaganda site defaults to climate change, the Left’s all-purpose explanation for anything people don’t like, because that’s how fear-mongering and indoctrination works.

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It’s An Asshole-O-Rama, Starring Donald And Tucker!

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

“Yecch” doesn’t begin to express my disgust and revulsion regarding this development, but right now I can’t think of anything stronger, and I don’t know how to spell the sound of projectile vomiting, so…Yecch!

After informing the Republican Party that he will not pledge to support its candidate if the GOP’s choice isn’t him, Donald Trump not only plans to skip the first GOP candidate’s debate in Milwaukee this Wednesday, he is going to actively compete with it, teaming up with fellow toxic narcissist Tucker Carlson for an online interview on the same night.

It’s perfect, if you think like Donald Trump, which is to say, obnoxiously, unethically, and undemocratically. No degree of perfection in my sock drawer would prompt me to forsake it to watch the Tucker and Donald Show. “Mr. Trump’s apparent decision to skip the first debate of the presidential nominating contest is a major affront to both the R.N.C. and Fox News, which is hosting the event,” writes the New York Times, for once not being unfair to Trump. Sure, why not stick his thumb in the eyes of two organizations substantially responsible for Trump’s rise in the first place? This full-time troll who claims to value loyalty and gratitude has none himself. Naturally Tucker Carlson wants in: after all, he wants his revenge on Fox too. Nowhere in the consideration of either man, assholes that they are, are the best interests of the nation and the democratic process.

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Ethics Hero: Military Judge Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr.

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr, the military judge in the U.S.S. Cole bombing case, threw out confessions by the Saudi defendant Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in a 50-page decision yesterday. After all, the man accused of planning Al Qaeda’s suicide bombing on Oct. 12, 2000 in Yemen’s Aden Harbor that killed 17 U.S. sailors had been tortured by the CIA, or as th agency likes to describe it, “subjected to enhanced interrogation.” Yes, I seem to remember there was something in the Constitution that said you can’t do that. Quite a few things, actually.

Dirty Harry was also lectured on the same point, if I recall, 50 years ago.

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Ethics Dunces: “Snow White” Star Rachel Zegler, And Disney (Of Course)

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I thought actress Sarah Porkalub, who trashed the (ridiculous) Broadway production of “1776” that had given her the chance to play South Carolina’s Continental Congress delegate Edward Rutledge as an Asian woman (Don’t get me started!), was the most irresponsible and arrogant performer I had heard about in decades, and, in fact, she might still hold the title. But it’s now a close competition, as Rachel Zegler, Disney’s star of the almost as ridiculous live-action re-imagining of its animated 1937 classic, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” as “Snow Latina and the Seven Whatever-the-Hell-They Are” has been allowed to insult her film’s progenitor, which, among other things, is substantially responsible for her employer’s very existence.

“It’s really not about the love story at all, which is really, really wonderful,” Zegler has blathered. “I mean, you know, the original cartoon came out in 1937 and very evidently so. Um… there’s a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her! Weird, weird, so we didn’t do that this time…People are making these jokes about ours being the PC Snow White, where it’s like, yeah, it is — because it needed that… our version is a refreshing story about a young woman who has a function beyond “Someday My Prince Will Come.'”

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Insufficient Mockery Alert #2: Blaming The Maui Wildfires On Climate Change

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

You knew this was coming, right? The amazing thing was that it took so long for the climate change hysterics—aka pretty much the whole Democratic Party—to go do that voodoo that they do so well. As the horrible facts came in, it was pretty apparent to all but hopeless “Facts Don’t Matter” addicts that many factors helped cause the disaster in Maui, including administrative incompetence, warnings that were ignored, a deadly combination of hurricane winds and dry conditions, fallen power lines, and more. But the climate change Borg never lets any tragedy, disaster or weather-related anomaly go by without linking it to climate change. Too hot? Climate change! Too cold? Climate change! No snow? Blizzards? High winds? Sharks in the water? Racism? Poverty? Whatever. If it’s bad, climate change is the culprit.

Yet for some mysterious reason, ABC, which is owned by Disney who these days never heard a piece of woke propaganda that it didn’t want to shout to the metaphorical rafters, headlined a story, “Why climate change can’t be blamed for the Maui wildfires.” What did ABC think would happen?

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The International Chess Federation Doesn’t Understand Its Own Game, Biology, And Who Knows What Else…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Funny, I thought chess players were supposed to be intelligent—observant, capable of long-term planning, adept at strategy, those kinds of things.

That’s one more stereotype to discard. The people who run international chess competitions have just outed themselves as morons. The International Chess Federation, or FIDE just banned transgender women from competing in men’s chess tournaments and stripped trans men of women’s chess titles they won. The body revealed its guidelines for transgender competitors this week, thus highlighting its long-running idiocy.

Okay, fine: defining the gender of chess players by their chromosomes would be a solution to a problem if there were a problem, but there isn’t. There is no reason to segregate female and male chess players except ancient prejudice and ignorance—well that, and if it is decided that the fewer little chess players conceived, the better.

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Friday Open Forum (Cont.)

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

I have to squeeze in some EA Catch-up today despite an unusual number of paid ethics work projects. I hope the forum takes up any slack.

Yesterday’s posts were truncated mid-day by my first excursion to a baseball game (Red Sox vs. Nats) since 2021, when I found having to eat a hot dog while wearing a stupid mask made the game unbearable. But there have been some alarming developments since then too…

Play Ball!

Ethics Observations On A Bizarre Conservative Tweet Exchange [Name Confusion Corrected!]

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Lizzie Marbach, a former Ohio GOP official and currently director of communications at Ohio Right to Life, tweeted ,

This upset Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), who is Jewish,  so he tweeted, twice,

Ugh.

Ethics Observations: Continue reading →

Guest Post: Reflections from the Echo Chamber

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

by JutGory

A repetitive, if not constant, topic here is whether or not this blog is a right-wing echo chamber that is inhospitable to left-wing or progressive commenters.  With the recent hit and run by A Friend and a short visit from Ryan Pell, the topic again was front and center for a brief moment.  While one of my recent comments about that suggested that progressives had greater difficulty staying here because they were less inclined than conservatives to follow the rules.  Some of those comments can be found here:

Comment Of The Day: “First Open Forum Of August!”

I am not sure if that was completely right, but likely not entirely wrong.  It is certainly not fair to say conservatives are ethical and liberals-progressives are not.  There are ample counter-examples posted on this blog on both points.  Then, an alternate explanation occurred to me.  The reason why liberal/progressives do not seem to last long here may be because they are not here to discuss ethics; they are here to discuss politics. The topics, while overlapping, are different.  Politics presents arguments to win, and facts to spin.  We all have “our side,” and the goal of politics is for your side to prevail.

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