Author: Jeremy Pitt

Gender Equality in Engineering: An Institutional Reflection

By on February 28th, 2024 in Articles, Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

We identified five key issues to prioritize when addressing gender equality: Reaching critical mass; Improving lived and living experience (maintaining critical mass); Selection and resource-allocation criteria; The misconception of merit in academia; Beyond gender equality.

The End of Exploring

By on January 25th, 2024 in Social Implications of Technology

If I knew what made for a successful academic career, I would have bottled and sold it a long time ago. There probably is no silver bullet, and with the organizational/individual duality, it is probably impossible to solve all of the problems or optimize all of the criteria, at all of the different levels, for all of the different people, all at the same time. Focus on those arenas that you can affect and inspire.

ChatSh*t and Other Conversations (That We Should Be Having, But Mostly Are Not)

By on November 3rd, 2023 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming people’s access to and attitudes toward knowledge. It is an extremely powerful technology, but this transformation presents numerous social, environmental, political, and educational considerations.

A 13-year-old girl is using her smartphone in the dark room.

Toxic Technology

By on March 16th, 2023 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Communication Technology, Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Health & Medical, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Technology has always been about more than simply a route to increased productivity and economic growth; technology also provides the opportunity to enhance, enrich, and empower—basically, to improve shared qualitative values or people’s quality of life (however that is measured). On the flip side, technology also provides the opportunity to develop and project organizational control, which itself can be weaponized to quantitatively determine human value as an asset to that organization, or to reinforce asymmetric power relationships.

Against Modern Indentured Servitude (“I’m Spartacus”)

By on July 12th, 2022 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

The term “modern indentured servitude” did not originate with this workshop, but we hope that this special issue has highlighted many of the different shapes and processes it can take, some more insidious than others. We would like to think that, if each paper could talk, they would get up one after the other and say, “No, I’m Spartacus.” In these dark times, each of us needs the courage to be Spartacus.

The Digital Transformation and Modern Indentured Servitude

By on June 22nd, 2022 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Privacy & Security, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

It would be good if whenever a client connected to an http server, or indeed any app connected with a central server, the server responded with a corresponding acknowledgment of data, along the lines of “Before we begin our session this morning, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owner of the data which is being transferred, and respect rights to privacy, identity, location, attention and personhood.”

Knowing the Unknowable: Soft Laws and Hard Decisions

By on January 16th, 2022 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Case Studies, Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

If it were possible to formulate laws involving vague predicates and adjudicate them, what would be the implications of such minimalist formulations for soft laws and even for “hard” laws? The possible implications are threefold: 1) does possibility imply desirability; 2) does possibility imply infallibility; and 3) does possibility imply accountability? The answer advanced here, to all three questions, is “no.”

The Need for Public Interest Technology

By on September 7th, 2021 in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Systems can be designed using methodologies like value-sensitive design, and operationalized, to produce socio-technical solutions to support or complement policies that address environmental sustainability, social justice, or public health. Such systems are then deployed in order to promote the public interest or enable users to act (individually and at scale) in a way that is in the public interest toward individual and communal empowerment.

AI vs “AI”: Synthetic Minds or Speech Acts

By on June 10th, 2021 in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Just as the “autonomous” in lethal autonomous weapons allows the military to dissemble over responsibility for their effects, there are civilian companies leveraging “AI” to exert control without responsibility.

And so we arrive at “trustworthy AI” because, of course, we are building systems that people should trust and if they don’t it’s their fault, so how can we make them do that, right? Or, we’ve built this amazing “AI” system that can drive your car for you but don’t blame us when it crashes because you should have been paying attention. Or, we built it, sure, but then it learned stuff and it’s not under our control anymore—the world is a complex place.

Governing in Bad Faith: Suppressing Democracy in Pretense of “Saving Democracy”

By on April 19th, 2021 in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Understanding the societal trajectory induced by AI, and anticipating its directions so that we might apply it for achieving equity, is a sociological, ethical, legal, cultural, generational, educational, and political problem.

The BigTech-Academia-Parliamentary Complex and Techno-Feudalism

By on September 24th, 2020 in Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

With techno-feudalism, what is paid and permitted in a digital space is decided by asymmetric power, not mutual consent. Political approval for funding priorities, education programs and regulation all favor Big Tech.

From Trust and Loyalty to Lock-In and Digital Dependence

By on March 25th, 2020 in Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Robotics, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Mega-platforms have, with the addition of one extra ingredient, combined lock-in and loyalty to create a grave, and perhaps unexpected, consequence. The extra ingredient is psychology; and the unexpected consequence is what might be called digital dependence.

photo of moon landing

Deepfake Videos and DDoS Attacks (Deliberate Denial of Satire)

By on February 19th, 2020 in Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Democracy itself is under (yet another) threat from deepfake videos … deepfake videos could be used to create compromising material of politicians: for example, the digitally-altered video2 of U.S. House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi appearing to slur drunkenly was viewed millions of times and tweeted by the U.S. President, and although the video is demonstrably a hoax, the tweet remains undeleted.

Being Human in the Days/Daze of Big Data

By on November 28th, 2019 in Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Technology for Big Data, and its brother-in-arms Machine Learning, is at the root of, and is the facilitator of, deliberate string-pulling design choices. These design choices are made by people, and so the question actually becomes, do the design choices enabled by Big Data and Machine Learning have the capacity to alter, diminish and perhaps actually “destroy” what it means to be fundamentally human.