Ethics and Computer Science
CIS3250
Syllabus, lectures, and other materials — Spring 2020

From Oxford Online, we find these definitions:

   philosophy: The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.

   ethics: Moral principles that govern a person's behaviour or the conducting of an activity.

Syllabus and schedule

Syllabus

Assignments

Writing Assignment 1

Writing Assignment 2

Class notes

Reading assignment for lecture 1

Baase, chapter 1 "Unwrapping the Gift"

Plato's Euthyphro (audio version is available here.)

Consequentialism

Excerpt from Mill's On Liberty

Excerpt from Kant's Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals

Reading assignment for lecture 2

Baase, chapter 2 "Privacy"

Reading assignment for lecture 3

Baase, chapter 3 "Freedom of Speech"

Reading assignment for lecture 4

Baase, chapter 4 "Intellectual Property"

Baase, chapter 5 "Crime and Security"

Other material

Obligatory xkcd collection:

1390:

Research Ethics


1455:

Trolley Problem


1613:

The Three Laws of Robotics


Various Ethics-oriented Resources

Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science

Collection of ethical code URLs from NC State

Computer and Information Ethics (in particular, see the Uniqueness debate between Maner and Johnson)

Virtue Ethics

Deontological Ethics

Consequentialism

Bynum: Computer ethics: Its birth and its future

Nick Bostrom: Superintelligence

Isaac Asimov: I, Robot

Norbert Weiner: The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (abbreviated HUHB in the notes.)

Other

Excerpt from The Grand Design episode of "Yes, Prime Minister"


News Items

2017-01-09: Do you own your own fingerprints?

2017-01-09: Makers of Self Driving Cars Ask What to Do With Human Nature

2017-01-09: Driverless Cars: Who Gets Protected

2017-01-09: The social dilemma of autonomous vehicles

2017-01-09: Save the Driver or Save the Crowd?

2017-01-09: Dallas Shooter Killed By Bomb Robot In Policing First

2017-03-27: The End of Labor: How to Protect Workers from the Rise of Robots

2017-03-29: Automation is set to hit workers in developing countries hard (Fourth Industrial Revolution)

2017-03-29: WhatsApp must be accessible to authorities, says Amber Rudd

2017-03-29: No 10 Repeats Rudd's call for authorities to access encrypted messages

2017-03-29: The Importance of Strong Encryption to Security

2017-04-10: Vigilanteism: How to force manufacturers to take IOT security seriously

2017-04-10: Autonomity: Robot Surgeon Bests Human Surgeons

2017-04-10: Hand-to-hand cyberwar

2017-04-10: If animals have rights, should robots also?

2017-04-10: World Economic Forum's Top 9 Ethical Issues in Artificial Intelligence

2017-04-10: Machine Ethics: The Robot's Dilemma

2017-04-11: The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI

2017-04-11: China Moves to Further Tighten Regulation of Digital Information

2017-04-11: Chinese Firm Cuts Costs by Hiring Army of Robots

2017-04-12: Computing and Moral Responsibility

2017-04-14: Russian Humanoid Robots Learns to Shoot

2017-04-17: Can Liberty Survive the Digital Age?

2017-04-17: United States Air Force Demonstrates Autonomously Controlled F16

2017-04-17: OpenRobotEthics

2017-04-17: Autonomous Weapons

2017-04-17: Rules for Robots?

2017-04-17: Should Autonomous Cars Be Forced to Save Lives?

2017-04-17: Robots and Agriculture

2017-04-19: Hajime, mo

2017-04-19: Apple Removes New York Times Apps from Its Store in China

2018-08-27: An artist warns of our robot-ruled future. Or is it our present?

2018-08-29: Botched CIA communications system help blow cover of Chinese agents

2018-08-31: Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

2018-09-05: City of Tallahasse Ethics Board

2018-09-05: City introduces new ethics ordinances

2018-09-05: City of Tallahassee Code of Ethics

2018-09-14: Gizmodo: Google is helping the Pentagon build AI for drones

2018-09-14: BuzzFeed's coverage of the Google ethics quandaries

2018-09-14: Academia speaks out about Project Maven

2018-09-14: Google's code of ethics for its participation in AI projects

2018-09-14: Google and Project Maven

2018-09-14: The Intercept's Dragonfly article

2018-09-14: New York Times: Google tried to change China; will China instead change Google?

2018-09-14: Telepathy with drone swarms

2018-09-17: Artificial Intelligence: The revolution has not happened yet

2018-09-19: Menlo Report: Ethical Principles Guiding Information and Communication Technology Research

2018-09-19: Ethical Considerations in Network Measurement Papers

2018-09-19: SAP's Ethics and AI Stance

2018-09-19: Microsoft's Approach to AI

2018-09-19: The Ethics of Data Flow

2018-09-20: At the farm, the boss is an AI-powered algorithm

2018-09-21: DARPA wants brain interfaces for able-bodied warfighters

2018-09-24: Leave no dark corner

2018-09-24: China's use of big data might actually make it less big brother-ish

2018-09-24: China's social credit system seeks to assign citizens scores, engineer social behavior

2018-09-26: China's Orwellian social credit system is expanding overseas

2018-10-01: Don't get distracted

2018-10-01: No cash needed at this cafe

2018-10-03: Cornell food researcher's downfall raises larger questions for science

2018-10-05: Nurse by phone

2018-10-05: AI and healthcare (Wired article)

2018-10-05: Humans need not apply?

2018-10-16: Gartner Picks Digital Ethics and Privacy as a Strategic Trend for 2019

2018-10-23: International Privacy Conference

2018-10-24: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the "data industrial complex"

2018-10-25: Europe's new copyright law could change the web worldwide

2018-10-25: Europe considers a new copyright law

2018-10-25: Legal AI?

2018-10-25: AI generates portraits and profits

2018-10-25: Responsible technology? Who decides?

2018-10-25: Future warfare: no human needed (Do we need a new definition of warfare?)

2018-10-25: Future of Life Institute

2018-10-29: A living hard drive: this GIF was stored in the DNA of bacteria

2018-10-29: Baidu's AI can do simultaneous translation between any two languages

2018-10-29: Duplication-correcting codes for data storage in the DNA of living organisms

2018-10-31: Ethical implications of artificial and the role of governmentts

2018-10-31: DOD official highlights value of artificial intelligence to future warfare

2018-10-31: Project Maven to deploy computer algorithms to war zone by year's end

2018-10-31: Robot Wars

2018-11-05: Tool does not work

2018-11-07: Facial recognition advances

2018-11-07: Facebook admits that it was used to incite violence in Myanmar

2018-11-07: Gait recognition

2018-11-16: AI for APTs

2018-11-16: 'I don't really want to work for Facebook' say some computer science students

2018-11-26: Dawn of the Code War

2018-11-26: How I changed the law with a github pull request

2018-11-26: Open Law Library?

2018-11-27: We are Google employeess, Google must drop Dragonfly

2018-11-28: Google attacks mosquito-borne disease

2018-11-28: Inside Sellafield's death zone with the nuclear clean-up robots

2018-11-28: Some Googlers support Project Dragonfly

2018-12-05: Chatbots: Civic Danger?

2018-12-05: Computations as Propaganda?

2018-12-05: Big Brother becomes Big Algorithm?

2018-12-05: Is ethical technology a farce?

2018-12-07: Alphazero shedding new light on chess, shogi, and go"

2018-12-07: Science article on Alphazero's superhuman successes

2019-01-11: Humans need not apply (original link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU)

2019-01-14: Facebook executive swatting sends significant police response to his home

2019-01-14: Tokyo cafe to use robot waiters operated by people with physical disabilities

2019-01-15: The reason that software remains insecure

2019-01-16: Harris on Wired's dangerous internet entities?

2019-01-16: Stingrays in Florida

2019-01-16: Florida Cops' Secret Weapon: Warrantless Cellphone Tracking

2019-01-16: Florida Committe Passes Bill to Ban Warrantless Stingray Spying

2019-01-16: Stingray Secret Surveillance Programs

2019-01-16: When Chinese hackers declared war on the rest of us

2019-01-17: What would a world without pushbuttons look like?

2019-01-18: Giving algorithms a sense of uncertainty could make them more ethical

2019-01-18: IBM Service Platform with Watson

2019-01-22: Google lies about me

2019-01-24: Age of Social Credit

2019-01-25: Why China's Social Credit Systems are Surprisingly Popular

2019-01-28: Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

2019-01-28: The case for taking AI serioiusly as a threat to humanity

2019-01-28: Alphastar beats professionals at Starcraft II

2019-01-29: Automation at Davos

2019-01-30: The Research Pirates of the Dark Web

2019-01-30: AI Encroaching on Financial Advice Services?

2019-01-30: Blackrock's Engagement with AI

2019-01-30: AI powers Emma Hedge Fund

2019-01-31: Why ethical robots might not be such a good idea after all

2019-01-31: AI Principles from the Future of Life Institute

2019-02-01: Robot plays Jenga

2019-02-01: Why you should not fear slaughterbots

2019-02-01: Why you should fear slaughterbots

2019-02-01: Future of Life Institute on Autonomous Weapons Ban

2019-02-01: Lethal autonomous drones

2019-02-01: China's Propaganda App (Minitrue comes true?)

2019-02-04: Good data possible?

2019-02-04: Harvard does ethics

2019-02-05: Crimes and misdemeanors in the age of automation

2019-02-06: Achieving and maintaining cyberspace superiority

2019-02-06: Security researcher assaulted over vulnerability disclosure

2019-02-06: Money machines

2019-02-06: Moral decision making tested

2019-02-13: IBM Debater loses to Harish Natarajan

2019-02-13: AI debates Human

2019-02-13: AI debates Human (Vox)

2019-02-13: The CRISPR machines that can wipe out entire species

2019-02-14: Self driving vehicles might have different priorities

2019-02-14: The ethics of soma in the 21st century

2019-02-14: Humane technology?

2019-02-14: Humane technology in (re)action?

2019-02-14: Machine gets high marks for diagnosing sick children

2019-02-14: Google CAPTCHA's woes

2019-02-14: Has Google began censoring Russian search results?

2019-02-14: How to fight the surveillance economy

2019-02-14: This person does not exist (GANs at work)

2019-02-18: Ethics in action? Researchers, scared by their own work, hold back "deepfakes for text" AI

2019-02-18: How OpenAI's deepfake technology works

2019-02-18: Digital ethics concerns for Parliament?

2019-02-20: Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations

2019-02-20: Farming robot revolution beckons new age of agriculture technology

2019-02-20: Prepare for the rise of the farm bots

2019-02-22: Patent Exhaustion

2019-02-27: Computer Software (reasonably early discussion of personal agents and AI)

2019-03-04: Is ethical AI even possible?

2019-03-04: Older work on hoax detection

2019-03-04: Project Maven and Google

2019-03-06: Cybersecurity firm Darkmatter request to be trusted root CA raises concerns

2019-03-06: Surveillance firm asks Mozilla to be included in Firefox's certificate whitelist

2019-03-06: Cyber-mercenary groups should not be trusted in your browser or anywhere else

2019-03-06: What's the purpose of humanity if machines can learn ingenuity?

2019-03-07: AI "creates" art: who gets the credit?

2019-03-07: Executive Order on Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence

2019-03-07: New Work Summit Questions

2019-03-11: The world's first robot "citizen"

2019-03-14: Copyright in the age of Open Access (FSU content)

2019-03-14: Japan's government white paper on AI and the ethics of its interaction with humans

2019-03-28: Barking drones replace sheep dogs

2019-03-28: Robot picks apples

2019-03-29: Edward Snowden: national security whistleblowing and civil disobedience

2019-04-01: April 1st? AI start-up has found a new source of cheap labor

2019-04-05: How China turned a city into a prison

2019-04-08: Camera above the classroom

2019-04-10: Australia's new social media law

2019-04-10: The age of robot farmers

2019-04-10: Apple Music censors songs in China

2019-04-11: Automating Ethics

2019-04-12: Feeling Safe in the Surveillance State

2019-04-15: Police Sock Puppets (related link: It's legal to do so

2019-04-17: Facial recognition in New York City

2019-04-17: Cyberinsurance?

2019-04-22: US wants to use facial recognition on air travelers leaving the country

2019-04-22: Can science writing be automated?

2019-04-24: Made in China, Exported to the World: The Surveillance State

2019-04-23: Facial recognition creeps up on a JetBlue passenger and she hates it

2019-04-24: Cameras help targeted advertising

2019-04-24: G7 wants to tame the Internet

2019-04-25: How artificial intelligence systems could threaten democracy

2019-04-26: AXON products and ethical development

2019-04-26: Patent application 0180121738: SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR SUPPLEMENTING CAPTURED DATA

2019-04-26: Body cameras with facial recognition

2019-05-15: Will China Export Its Illiberal Innovation?

2019-05-15: Life inside China's total surveillance state

2019-05-17: China's Algorithms of Repression

2019-05-20: America Under Watch

2019-05-20: 10 Rules for mission critical code

2019-05-22: Self driving trucks will carry mail in the U.S. for the first time

2019-05-22: Social Credit System to Restore Morality

2019-05-22: FSU Board of Trustees Code of Ethics

2019-05-24: Theresa May reprise King Canute

2019-05-24: Privacy and technoloyg companies

2019-05-24: Amazon is working on a weable device to read human emotions

2019-05-29: On Technological Liberty

2019-05-29: The challenge of crafting intelligible intelligence

2019-05-30: AI in action: Who is to blame?

2019-05-30: Drones autonomity extends to weapon systems?

2019-05-31: Gaming Disorder

2019-05-31: The web goes ethical?

2019-05-31: The WEF wants to develop global rules for AI

2019-05-31: AI Ethics Boards?

2019-06-05: Tesla and software developlment

2019-06-07: Airline privacy

2019-06-10: Does China suddenly care about AI ethics and privacy?

2019-06-14: I used to work for Google. I am a conscientious objector.

2019-06-14: Robot surveillance

2019-06-19: Boeing allegedly to make changes in physical testing regimen

2019-06-28: Second U.S. City Bans Facial Recognition Technology

2019-06-28: Second Florida City Pays Hackers, Third Faces Breach

2019-07-08: Welcome to the K-12 Surveillance State

2019-07-08: The Ramanujan Machine

2019-07-08: Soon, satellites will be able to watch you everywhere, all of the time

2019-07-09: Firms that promise high-tech ransomware solutions almost always just pay the hackers

2019-07-10: An experiment in human generosity

2019-07-11: Brainco

2019-07-11: Brainco brags

2019-07-11: Brainco in the schools: "Chinese parents want students to wear brainwave detecting headbands"

2019-07-11: NASA spinoff: Brainwaves and Brainco

2019-07-11: Neurable

2019-07-12: AI plays poker

2019-07-12: The surveillance trade

2019-07-12: The surveillance trade, part 2

2019-07-12: Delhi rolls out massive surveillance network

2019-07-16: How WeChat Censors Private Conversations Automatically in Real Time

2019-07-19: Kazakhstan does MITM

2019-07-19: Kazakhstan does MITM

2019-07-19: Kazakhstan and human rights

2019-07-19: Ban Facial Recognition

2019-07-19: The next generation of programming tools

2019-07-19: Asia's AI Agenda: The ethics of AI

2019-07-19: The moral side of cloud-based data science

2019-07-22: Kazhakstan in the news

2019-07-24: Facial recognition legislation proposed in U.S. Congress

2019-07-24: A controversial artwork created by AI has sold for $435,000

2019-07-24: Augmentation in the world of software development

2019-07-25: The Brains for tomorrow's AI?

2019-07-25: Intel's neuromorphic machinery

2019-07-29: Facebook and encryption

2019-12-25: AI Built-in to Nuclear Response?

2019-12-25: AI Built-in to Nuclear Response?

2019-12-25: Vice on Political Repression of the Uighur : Dystopia

2020-01-07: Teenagers without cell phones

2020-01-07: Export rules for geospatial imagery software

2020-01-08: Technology will soon give us precise control over our brains and genes

2020-01-08: Should colleges really be putting smart speakers in dorms?

2020-01-08: OMB Memo on AI Regulation

2020-01-08: Summary of above AI regulation memo

2020-01-09: Personalized information for the masses

2020-01-09: Ethics of technology needs more political philosophy

2020-01-09: Can AI own intellectual property?

2020-01-10: Hong Kong's discussion of smart lamppost technology

2020-01-10: The Invention of "Ethical AI"

2020-01-10: How does a new generation of researchers perceive Sci-Hub?

2020-01-10: Vigilant Solutions

2020-01-10: Chinese court rules that AI written articles are copyright protected

2020-01-13: Colleges are turning students' phones into surveillance machines

2020-01-13: Moffitt Cancer Center CEO, Center Director resign after compliance review

2020-01-13: Florida Joins Government Probing Foreign Ties of Researchers

2020-01-13: Senate Report: Threats to the U.S. Research Enterprise: China's Talent Recruitment Plans

2020-01-13: Can a machine learn to write for the New Yorker?

2020-01-14: Scientists build first living robots

2020-01-15: Scalable living machines

2020-01-22: With Great Tech Comes Great Responsibilities

2020-01-22: Just four years ago, we thought that humans would still control the battlefield of autonomous weapons

2020-01-22: Hypersonic Missiles

2020-01-22: Hypersonic Missiles

2020-01-22: Clearview, privacy, and facial recognition

2020-01-22: Fight over facial recognition dividing Detroit

2020-01-24: An ethical futuore for brain organoids takes shape

2020-01-27: This is how a popular free antivirus program sells your data

2020-01-29: How the world's largest democracy shuts down the Internet

2020-01-31: An honorable mention for the Uehiro Prize 2020: Should we take moral advice from our computers?

2020-01-31: More on the question about "Could it happen here?" raised on Wednesday

2020-01-31: UK police will soon be able to search through U.S. data without asking a judge

2020-01-31: Foreign police want to bypass privacy lawans and courts by getting data from abroad

2020-02-03: California Privacy Notice

2020-02-10: Free email apps spy on you

2020-02-10: PLA personnel charged with Equifax hacking

2020-02-10: Crypto AG was actually the CIA

2020-02-13: ICE contract and Github: Some developers protest

2020-02-13: Huawei and spying access

2020-02-14: North Korea Cryptocurrency Mining

2020-02-14: Handshake network reprises DNS

2020-02-17: China's Surveillance State in December 2019

2020-02-21: UCLA and facial recognition

2020-02-21: UCLA cancels on campus facial recognition?

2020-02-21: UCLA and other schools

2020-02-21: Pan-european police facial recognition database

2020-02-24: United States Constitution

2020-02-24: North Korea's ultra-secretive ways can make the regime easier to track online

2020-02-26: Surveillance-style shopping

2020-02-26: Big Data Provides Personalized Pricing

2020-02-26: Personalized Pricing in Action

2020-02-26: Personalized medicine?

2020-02-27: Personalized traffic fines

2020-02-27: Facial recognition and the benefits and costs of personalized surveillance

2020-02-27: London police go to live facial recognition

2020-03-02: Let's Encrypt Issues Billionth Certificate Today

2020-03-02: Facial recognition turned upside down

2020-03-02: Rome Call for AI Ethics

2020-03-04: Coronavirus detecting CCTV cameras coming to UK workplaces

2020-03-04: Mastercard is pioneering new payment technology

2020-03-06: Clearview AI has a history

2020-03-06: Landmark proof in computer science

2020-03-22: China coronavirus surveillance

2020-03-31: Zoom is facing question about how private or secure it really is

2020-03-31: Zoom's privacy problems are growing as platform explodes in popularity

2020-03-31: Coronavirus: countries tracking citizen's phones

2020-03-31: Coronavirus: United States and phone location data

2020-03-31: Coronavirus: UK and phone tracking

2020-04-03: Google's mobility reports website

2020-04-03: Google's March 29th mobility report for the state of Florida

2020-04-07: EFF: Governments' not-so-secret plan to scan every message online

2020-04-07: Senator backing anti-crypto bill calls out Zoom's lack of end-to-end crypto

2020-04-08: Japan looks to protect intellectual property in Wagyu beef cattle

2020-04-08: Deepmind's AI 57 learns to play 57 Atari games

2020-04-08: Trustworthy AI is a frame to help manage unique risk

2020-04-15: How Apple and Goole are tacking their covide privacy problem

2020-04-15: How to manage a pandemic

2020-04-15: MIT gets into the act with PACT

2020-04-15: Contact tracing in the real world

2020-04-15: EFF: The challenge of proximity apps for COVID-19 contact tracing

2020-04-15: ACLU: Limits of location tracking in an epidemic

2020-04-22: The meaning of money: How the pandemic makes the case for "public Venmo"

2020-04-22: Ring cameras may someday scan license plates and faces as leak of new surveillance features reveals

2020-04-22: We need a law to save us from dystopia