Science & Technology

It’s Time To Play That Exciting Game Show, “Cute, Silly,or Wrong?”!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Hello everybody! I’m your host, Wink Smarmy, and welcome to “Cute, Silly,or Stupid?,” the popular ethics game show where our panelists try to decide whether an individual or organization is doing or saying something that strikes a positive emotional chord with the public sincerely, or whether they are cynically grandstanding or virtue signaling to achieve popularity, influence, money, or power. Welcome panel! And here’s today’s challenge…

A video posted to Facebook by the Richmond Wildlife Center shows Executive Director Melissa Stanley dressed as a giant mother fox to feed a red fox kit (that means a baby fox, not a kit you use to assemble foxes) rescued by the center earlier this month.

“It’s important to make sure that the orphans that are raised in captivity do not become imprinted upon or habituated to humans,” the post said. “To prevent that, we minimize human sounds, create visual barriers, reduce handling, reduce multiple transfers amongst different facilities, and wear masks for the species.”

Here’s the video:

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On Shaking Trust: Trivial Episode, Useful Lesson

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

My gut reaction to the latest Royal scandal in Great Britain was dismissive: so a snapshot of Princess Catherine was photoshopped: the Horror. But this was just a bi-product of my long-standing lack of interest in the UK’s peculiar institution and a hangover from so many of my female acquaintances reacting to the death of Princess Diana as if their own families had suffered the equivalent of the Cheshire home invasion. The current episode is important for the ethics lesson it teaches, although you would think that this particular lesson would have been learned by the Windsors a long time ago. Did the royal family not watch “The Crown”?

The Prince and Princess of Windsor released the first official photo of Catherine since her abdominal surgery two months ago, a Mother’s Day snapshot allagedly taken by Prince William. Somehow the couple didn’t consider the modern reality that digital sleuths are everywhere, and quickly those annoying common troublemakers discovered that tell-tale signs of photo manipulation were afoot. You can see the various smoking guns above.

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“It Wasn’t Our Fault! That Bad Robot Did It!”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Hey, Canada Air! Can you say, “accountability?” How about “responsibility”? Sure you can.

Jake Moffat needed to fly from Vancouver to Toronto to deal with the death of his grandmother. Before he bought the tickets for his flights, he checked to se whether Air Canada had a bereavement policy, and the company’s website AI assistant told him he was in luck (after telling him it was sorry for his loss, of course.) Those little mechanical devils are so lifelike!

The virtual employee explained that if he purchased a regular priced ticket, he would have up to 90 days to claim the bereavement discount. Its exact words were:”If you need to travel immediately or have already traveled and would like to submit your ticket for a reduced bereavement rate, kindly do so within 90 days of the date your ticket was issued by completing our Ticket Refund Application form.” So Moffatt booked a one-way ticket to Toronto to attend the funeral, and after the family’s activities a full-price passage back to Vancouver. Somewhere along the line he also spoke to a human being who is an Air Canada representative—at least she claimed to be a human being— confirmed that Air Canada had a bereavement discount. He felt secure, between the facts he had obtained from the helpful bot and the non-bot, that he would eventually pay only $380 for the round trip after he got the substantial refund on the $1600 non-bereavement tickets he had purchased.

After Granny was safely sent to her reward, Jake submitted documentation for the refund. Surprise! Air Canada doesn’t have a reimbursement policy for bereavement flights. You either buy the discounted tickets to begin with, or you pay the regular fare. The chatbot invented the discount policy, just like these things make up court cases. A small claims adjudicator in British Columbia then enters the story, because the annoyed and grieving traveler sought the promised discount from the airline.

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Comment of the Day: “Second Most Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Cal)”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Posting today has been a real chore, because I began it with a funeral and a Catholic Mass, both of which always exhaust me, and the old friends I saw there (most of them, anyway) looked so much older than the last time I saw them that I am afraid to look in the mirror.

That makes two reasons I’m grateful for Humble Talent’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Second Most Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Cal).” I’m exhausted, and the ethics issue he raises is a crucial one without an obvious solution.

Here it is:

***

The horrible thing about this conversation is that people like Lee have this nugget of truth, uncleverly hidden inside the fragrant package of their bullshit proposals, and that is that we need a plan going forward for labor. Workplace participation is going down, wages have been stagnant, cost of living is increasing, food back participation and foreclosure rates are rising… “Stock line goes up” be damned, the bottom seems to be falling out.

I don’t know what you realistically do about this. A “$50 minimum wage” seems like the kind of toddler thinking Democrats are good at: Address the problem by treating the most surface level of symptoms, realities of the market be damned.

Because the reality is that automation is already stealing jobs, and increasing the cost of labor just makes automation investment that much more appealing. That spirals into a situation where I think the average person is going to be unemployed.

And I don’t have the answer. This is a topic that keeps me up at night.

Frankly, I think that the decent into a laborless economy is unavoidable, it’s just a matter of time, regardless of whether or not we speed up the process with stupid policy. Right now, “Truck Driver” is the most common job in 29 out of the 50 states. As technology gets cheaper and as labor gets more expensive, eventually, I don’t think it’s impossible that in 20 years, self-driving vehicles will have made that job obsolete. What do you think that does to the market?

I think the fight that’s coming up is going to be whether we purposefully throttle innovation in order to preserve jobs, or we accept that the majority of people aren’t going to labor physically, and we start to conceptualize what that looks like. And again… Thoughts that keep me up: Even if we throttle our technology our adversaries won’t, so I don’t think that choice is viable, and I think the alternative is a deeply taxed, deeply controlled form of socialism. Which is obviously undesirable, but what else does capitalism look like when your average person owns nothing, and has no prospect to move forward with?

If Elephant Seals Can Learn To Be Ethical, Surely Humans Can…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Right? Hello? Buhler?

A report published last month in the journal Marine Mammal Science relates what scientists, specifically wildlife biologists and seal specialists, had never observed before, or even thought possible. In January of 2022, a male elephant seal, all two tons of him, galumphed into the surf to rescue a seal pup from drowning. “The rising tide had pulled the pup out to sea and, too young to swim, it was struggling to stay afloat. The [pup’s mother] was still on the beach, answering the pup’s plaintive cries with calls of her own, which attracted the attention of a nearby male….he gave the female a sniff and then ‘charged out into the surf’…When he reached the pup, he used his body to gently nudge it back to the beach — probably saving its life.”

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More Evidence California Doesn’t Get That First Amendment Thingy…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

It’s not the only one, but still…

Assembly Bill 1831, introduced by California Assemblyman Marc Berman (D–Palo Alto) this month, would expand the state’s definition of child pornography to include “representations of real or fictitious persons generated through use of artificially intelligent software or computer-generated means, who are, or who a reasonable person would regard as being, real persons under 18 years of age, engaging in or simulating sexual conduct.”

Does Berman comprehend why the possession of child pornography is a crime in the first place? Clearly not. Somebody please explain to him that the criminal element in child porn is the abuse of living children required to make it. The theory, which I have always considered something of a stretch but can accept the ethical argument it embodies from a utilitarian perspective, is that those who purchase or otherwise show a proactive fondness for such “art” in effect aid, abet, encourage and make possible the continuation of the criminal abuse and trafficking of minors. It is not that such photos, films and videos cause one to commit criminal acts on children. That presumption slides down a slippery slope that would justify banning everything from Mickey Spillane novels to “The Walking Dead.”

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Florida Becomes the First Bar to Issue Ethics Guidance on the Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Practice of Law

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

After seeking comments last fall on a proposed advisory opinion to its members on the ethical use of artificial intelligence by lawyers in the practice of law, the Florida Bar’s review committee has voted unanimously to issue Florida Bar ethics opinion 24-1, the first such opinion by any U.S. jurisdiction about the assuredly revolutionary changes in legal practice and the concomitant perils that lie ahead as a result of AI technology. The advisory opinion’s summary:

“Lawyers may use generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) in the practice of law but must protect the confidentiality of client information, provide accurate and competent services, avoid improper billing practices, and comply with applicable restrictions on lawyer advertising. Lawyers must ensure that the confidentiality of client information is protected when using generative AI by researching the program’s policies on data retention, data sharing, and self- learning. Lawyers remain responsible for their work product and professional judgment and must develop policies and practices to verify that the use of generative AI is consistent with the lawyer’s ethical obligations. Use of generative AI does not permit a lawyer to engage in improper billing practices such as double-billing. Generative AI chatbots that communicate with clients or third parties must comply with restrictions on lawyer advertising and must include a disclaimer indicating that the chatbot is an AI program and not a lawyer or employee of the law firm. Lawyers should be mindful of the duty to maintain technological competence and educate themselves regarding the risks and benefits of new technology.”

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“Ick or Ethics” Ethics Quiz: The Robot Collaborator

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

As Jackie Gleason, aka. “The Great One,” used to say to begin his popular variety show on CBS (“Jackie Gleason? Who’s he?”), “And awaaaaay we GO!”

Rie Kudan, accepting the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for promising new Japanese writers, told the audience that her novel, “The Tokyo Tower of Sympathy,” was co-authored by ChatGPT and other AI programs. She revealed that her novel, which is about artificial intelligence, had approximately 5% of its dialogue composed by the popular bots and added by her “verbatim” to the text. “The Tokyo Tower of Sympathy” has met with unanimous raves by critics: “The work is flawless and it’s difficult to find any faults,” said Shuichi Yoshida, a member of the prize judging committee. “It is highly entertaining and interesting work that prompts debate about how to consider it.”

It seems clear that the author’s public admission (“I made active use of generative AI like ChatGPT in writing this book. I would say about five per cent of the book quoted verbatim the sentences generated by AI.”) was designed to fuel that debate.

I think we can all agree that this was shrewd on the author’s part. But is what she admitted to ethical?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is having an AI program write all or part of your book or novel ethical, or merely something that feels wrong right now that we’ll eventually accept?

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Update: We Can’t “Trust the Science” Because We Can’t Trust the Scientists

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

…or the politicians and untrustworthy elected officials who use both for unethical ends.

Further reinforcing his Ethics Alarms status as an Ethics Villain, the now retired Dr. Anthony Fauci blithely told lawmakers on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic this week that “social distancing guidelines”—warning the public to keep six feet apart from anyone else supposedly to limit the spread of the Wuhan virus — “sort of just appeared” without scientific input, and was “likely not based on scientific data.”

Oh! That’s nice! Schools remained closed well into 2021 substantially as a result of the social distancing guidelines that he stood by and allowed to be issued without scientific data. I was screamed at in several public places because I knew the social distancing edicts were garbage from the beginning, just like the “don’t touch your face!” nonsense and 95% of all masks. My sister has been a phobic about physical contact ever since March of 2020: she has yet to allow me into her house, and will only speak to me at my home ten feet away on the front yard. Research studies and other health officials pooh-poohed the social distancing mandates early on while media scaremongers—-after all, it was vital to wreck the Trump economy if he was going to be brought down—were quoting some “experts” saying that we should all wear masks and socially distance forever. Fortunately my pop culture addiction served me well: I recognized all of the CDC recommendations from the 2011 pandemic movie “Contagion.” They were exactly the same, proving to me that “social distancing” and the rest were just boiler plate “Do something!” measures off the CDC shelf. (They didn’t work in the film, either.)

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Ethics Quiz: Trump’s “Dome”

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Here is part of what Donald Trump said in Iowa:

“I didn’t like it when Ronald Reagan suggested it because we didn’t have the technology. We do have the technology now, and we’re going to build a giant dome over our country to protect us from a hostile source. And I think it’s a great thing, and it’s going to all be made in the United States, and that’s something that I consider productive. You know, when I watch, uh, our guys operate those things, it’s unbelievable. Missile coming in, missile coming in. These geniuses sit down. Most of them are, you know, they’re from MIT. But they sit down, bing! bing! bing! bing! boom! ph-sheee! It’s gone, it’s amazing! I think we could use…do you like that? I mean, isn’t that better than giving other countries billions of dollars? Billions! We’re going to get billions of dollars out of the country and so they can build a dome, but we don’t have a dome ourselves! We’re going to have the greatest dome ever!”

Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay…

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day goes like this…

Is it responsible to vote for someone who talks like this the power of the American Presidency?

…because, to be brutally frank, I’d have hesitated to vote for a student candidate for president of the 8th grade in junior high who gave a speech like that. Wouldn’t you? It bothers me that Trump would say all that, it bothers me that he thinks it’s going to win votes by saying it, it bothers me that he obviously doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, and it bothers me that he has such a low opinion of the American public.