- Feb 2020
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www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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With clicks come profit: a man running a string of fake news sites from Los Angeles told National Public Radio that he made as much as US$30,000 a month from advertising that rewards high traffic.
This idea of fake news outlets making money off of spreading false or misleading information ties to the principle of Nonmalelicence. This ethical principle talks about doing no harm to people with your online interactions. This is exactly what these people are doing, they are taking advantage of social media and how quickly information can spread so that they can make a good profit. They are using people as a means to an end. People who believe this false news are the ones who fall victim to these outlets. Social media applications need to do a better job of vetting fake news before it spreads too far and gets too out of control. Facebook has already started adding warning to people that certain post might be fake news. More applications need to do this to help with this fake news outbreak.
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harvardmagazine.com harvardmagazine.com
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In marketing, familiar uses of big data include “recommendation engines” like those used by companies such as Netflix and Amazon to make purchase suggestions based on the prior interests of one customer as compared to millions of others. Target famously (or infamously) used an algorithm to detect when women were pregnant by tracking purchases of items such as unscented lotions—and offered special discounts and coupons to those valuable patrons. Credit-card companies have found unusual associations in the course of mining data to evaluate the risk of default: people who buy anti-scuff pads for their furniture, for example, are highly likely to make their payments.
The way companies are using big data nowadays is very good for predicting buying behavior and what kind of person someone is. But this use of big data in marketing is walking the line with the ethical idea of respect for privacy. Target got in trouble for sending a girl dipper coupons before she had told her father that she was pregnant. It’s scary to think that a company can know just about everything about you and you haven’t told them anything. There needs to be more regulations and laws in this use of big data because it is crossing the line of respecting privacy. I know that it can help companies target the right people for ads and promotions but it would be bad if this information got into the wrong hands.
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www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au
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Consequently, we’ve begun to realise that humans might not be the best at thinking. If machines can outsmart us at some thought processes, is there an ‘existential risk’ that machines will take over completely? Could we lose our sense of who we are on a personal level? If we’re not at the apex of a thinking society, then what or who is, and how might we rate?
Floridi brings up a very good point in this paragraph which I think ties slightly to the idea of personal intellectual property. If there are machines that can out smart us or if one day machines that can walk and talk like one of us, does the person who created that machine own that machine or because that machine free from being intellectual property? I don’t think we are too many years away from running into this issue. I also believe that if not controlled these machines could one day control us because they “outsmart us at some though processes”.
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colig.github.io colig.github.io
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The ethical principle that I have chosen is Eminent Domain vs. Rights of the Land Owner. Eminent Domain is the government's power to acquire private property against the will of the property owner as long as that land is necessary for public use. There are many examples of eminent domain throughout history and some cases of eminent domain have even made it to the Supreme Court. Eminent Domain challenges the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which guarantees Americans the right to own private property. Eminent Domain does state that the land owner will be fairly compensated, but private property owner often times do not want to sell in the first place. As long as the eminent domain is justified for "public use" the government may seize any private property that it needs to.
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learningfutures.github.io learningfutures.github.io
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Technology can’t be value neutralbecause people aren’t value neutral. All of our goals and purposes and actionsare subject to social interpretation and moral judgment.
I think this idea of values and morals in technology really relates to Anil Dash talking about Uber and how it affected the taxi industry. He said that tech companies have adopted this stance that values don’t apply. I think this is very true in today’s world. Companies are just looking for the next big thing that will make them money and don’t care about who they trample in their path to richest. So many industries are affected negatively by technological inventions or innovations and that can cause a lot of people’s jobs and ruin a lot of lives. I think that technology and values need to go hand in hard or we as a society are just going to fall victim to our own sword.
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Defining what precisely counts as technology is not easy.
I think this part of the reading really relates to the idea that Anil Dash discusses of how technology has no ethical curriculum because there is no history or “before time”. So it is hard to define what exactly counts as technology because there isn’t an extensive history of what counts and what doesn’t. We are living in the growth of technology and are the ones that have to make that distinction. There is no laws or guidelines from 200 years ago that we can look at to decide on what counts as technology and what doesn’t. We are the ones that have to create those guidelines and laws now for the people of the future.
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