Media Mentions

The creation of jobs is an essential part of business service to the common good," wrote Pope Francis in Laudato Si', where he lamented the practice of "laying off workers and replacing them with machines."

Business leaders can embrace this vocation by permitting unions and honoring work as fundamental to human dignity. "Remember that you are leading people, not technology," says Ann Skeet, senior director of leadership ethics.

Ann Skeet, senior director, leadership ethics, quoted by National Catholic Reporter.

Democrats are using a liberal dark money group to fund Democratic influencers and keep up with the changing media landscape. 

Ethics Center Executive Director Don Heider says that the outlined restrictions violate ethical norms. “If the contract for getting money from a particular interest group says you can’t disclose it, then it’s pretty simple, you can’t take the money,” he says. “We’re living in an era where a lot of powerful people have basically taken the rule book and thrown it out the window.”

Executive Director, Don Heider, quoted by WIRED.

PennLive reports Dauphin County fired an information technology employee after he was convicted of computer crimes — yet since then, the county has paid his company nearly $700,000 to serve as an IT contractor.

“This case, to me, represents exactly what government ethics rules were trying to prevent, which is the use of public positions for private gain,” said Davina Hurt, director of government ethics.

“When the same entity that gives you a loan also gives you contracts, that’s not economic development. That raises conflict of interest concerns,” Hurt said.

Davina Hurt, director, government ethics, quoted by PennLive.

Last year, AI-generated voices of some of the victims slain in the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High mass shooting in Parkland, Florida were used for a robocall campaign urging voters to demand Congress undertake gun reform.

But even if the goal is to serve a good cause, when it comes to such AI avatars, "there's a right way to do it and the wrong way to do it," said Brian Patrick Green, director of technology ethics at Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

Green said that broadly speaking, it is understandable that parents of children killed in a mass shooting would find such AI advocacy "to be a good memorialization of their child."

However, he noted, "the child can't be asked their consent for it, because they're gone."

As a result, said Green, there is "a risk of violation here, which is that we owe something to the dead. ... We owe respect to the dead. We owe respect to future generations. We have this idea of respecting other people around us right now. But we tend to think of that in terms of space, not time."

Brian Green, director, technology ethics, quoted by The Pilot.

Polling shows most Americans want AI regulated. Rachel Myrow, KQED reports.

Some of Silicon Valley's wealthiest companies and investors are putting more than 100 Million dollars into Political Action Committees to lobby against AI regulation, claiming a "vast force" is trying to control AI deployment.

Irina Raicu, director, internet ethics, says "That vast force out there are American citizens. People are very worried about the pace and kind of integration of AI that we are seeing."

Irina Raicu, director, internet ethics, quoted by KQED.

Columbia Journalism Review asked newsroom leaders and ethicists what they’re keeping or changing in an era of Trump, “fake news,” AI, and industry decline.

Subbu Vincent, director, media and journalism ethics, joined a panel of distinguished contributors in answering the questions, and offered the following perspective.

Every news organization has what’s called the “house brew,” like the house-brew coffee when you go to a coffee shop. The “house brew” is what I call the built-in code of ethics. The Economist has one; if you go to the New York Times, they have one. Codes of ethics are usually articulated at the level of the article—things like: “No conflicts of interest,” “You will diversify your sourcing,” and so on and so on. But news organizations are almost never asking: “What are our news values? How are we as a news organization determining factions? How are we determining what are the sides to a dispute? What is the purpose of diversifying sourcing?”

Subbu Vincent, director, media and journalism ethics, quoted by the Columbia Journalism Review.

A major deal between technology chip giant, Intel, and the federal government raises ethical questions about government involvement in private business. NBC Bay Area's Scott Budman reports.

"The stake in Intel is being taken in the interest of the American taxpayer and citizen. The concern going forward is they go to far. That they start to require companies like Nvidia and AMD to use Intel's manufacturing capabilities."

Ann Skeet, senior director, leadership ethics, quoted by NBC Bay Area.

Ann Skeet, senior director, leadership ethics, highlights the ethical failures of the Theranos Fraud and identifies conditions that make it more likely for ethics to be used within organizations.

Skeet highlights a key condition, “a set of ethical deliberation practices,” including, “thinking about downstream effects, things that could go wrong, anticipating those, and then, whenever possible, sharing the thinking behind decisions that are made.”

Ann Skeet, senior director, leadership ethics, quoted by CFO Brew.