Addressing Artificial Intelligence, Privacy, Cybersecurity, and the Broader Online Ecosystem
If you are interested in Internet ethics-related issues and live in the Bay Area, you are hereby invited to any of the outstanding events listed below. (Most of them are co-sponsored by the High Tech Law Institute, one is co-sponsored by SCU’s Department of Philosophy, and, in one case, the primary organizer is Mozilla.)
On January 26 at noon, Kate Starbird, assistant professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington, will address “Online Rumors, Conspiracy Theories, and Disinformation.” Drawing on research on online rumors in the context of crisis response, her talk will explore what alternative narratives of crisis events (such as natural disasters or mass shootings) reveal about “fake news,” political propaganda, and disinformation online. More details and registration here. For some background reading on this topic, see “Information Wars: A Window into the Alternative Media Ecosystem.”
On January 30 at noon, Professor Ed Felten (who is the founding director of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy and has served as the Federal Trade Commission’s first chief technologist and as Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer) will discuss “The Future of Artificial Intelligence.” More details here. For background reading, see his three recent blog posts on the topic: “Why the Singularity is Not a Singularity,” Singularity Skepticism 2: Why Self-Improvement Isn’t Enough,” and “Singularity Skepticism 3: How to Measure AI Performance.”
On February 2, Santa Clara Law will host a full-day conference: “Content Moderation and Removal at Scale.” This conference will explore how key Internet companies implement the moderation and removal of content generated by their users. The companies have long argued that moderating and removing content is difficult and expensive; this conference will detail the operational challenges and illustrate how various Silicon Valley companies address them. More details and registration information here. Note: there is a waiting list currently for registration, and this is the only one of the events that is not free for the public (though several categories of attendees do get free or discounted admission).
On February 13 at 7 p.m., Wendell Wallach will present “Minimizing AI Risks: An Agile Ethical/Legal Model for the International and National Governance of AI.” An expert in the ethics of robotics and AI, Wallach is a scholar at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and a senior adviser to The Hastings Center; he has also advised the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. More details and registration information here.
On February 15 at 3 p.m., the Ethics Center’s Business Ethics program hosts a two-panel event on Cybersecurity Ethics (followed by a reception). Experts from Cisco, EY, Symantec, and more will discuss what companies should do to respond ethically to data breaches and to the ethical challenges created by the Internet of Things. The first panel is titled “Responding to a Breach”; the second, which starts at 4:15, is titled “If You Can’t Secure It, Don’t Connect It.” More details and registration information here.
Finally, on February 27 at 6 p.m. SCU will host Mozilla’s February Privacy Lab event: “Employee/Applicant Data: The Interplay between Privacy and Diversity Efforts.” In the U.S., many companies believe that promoting diversity justifies the collection of certain information; however, the laws or norms in other countries may not allow or may severely restrict such collection and use. How do companies address this potential conflict? Moreover, if they can collect such information, how do they protect it, and how do they give people control over information about themselves? Panelists will address those questions and related ones. More details and registration information here.
Register and join us for any and all of those events—and please send us your feedback!
Photo by Florent Lamoureux, used without modification under a Creative Commons license.