ethics

Reflections on “As bomb threats keep targeting HBCUs, 64 higher ed groups tell Congress to act” [Spitalniak]

On 02/17/2022, in 21st century, colleges, ethics, political science, society, sociology, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

As bomb threats keep targeting HBCUs, 64 higher ed groups tell Congress to act — from highereddive.com by Laura Spitalniak

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

More than a dozen HBCUs have been forced to clear campuses and cancel in-person classes following bomb threats this year. Fisk University, in Tennessee, issued a shelter-in-place order Monday after receiving a series of threats. The same day, Howard University, in Washington, D.C., received a bomb threat for the fourth time since the beginning of January and told students and employees to stay indoors.

All-clear notices have since been issued for both Fisk U and Howard U.

‘You’re Not Safe as a Black Person’: New Round of Bomb Threats Rattles HBCUs — from chronicle.com by Oyin Adedoyin

Excerpt:

The recent string of bomb threats across a handful of historically Black colleges and universities has sparked fear within higher education’s Black community. “This is probably one of the clearest examples of hate crimes based on race,” said Paulette Granberry Russell, the president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education.

From DSC:
Some of the institutions I saw mentioned were:

Bowie State University, Howard University, Albany State University, Bethune-Cookman University, Southern University and A&M College, and Delaware State University

Can you imagine if this happened at Harvard, Yale, Northwestern, Stanford, and/or similar institutions? You and I both know that if students there kept having to put up with bomb threats and having their in-person classes canceled, there would be hell to pay! There would be a lot more heat in the kitchen. A lot more noise. A lot more overall societal concern.

For me, the bottom line is that this situation is horribly wrong. It’s downright evil. I hope it gets resolved soon, though I have to say that I’m not as hopeful as I’d like to be in this 21st century of ours here in the United States…where I continue to be amazed at our lack of unity, respect, compassion, and caring for other people. The amount of racism and hate crimes in our country is just horribly wrong.

On somewhat related notes, see:

Where HBCU grads are thriving — from linkedin.com by McKenna Moore

Excerpt:

Promotion rates for graduates of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) rose 4.94% in 2021 from the previous year, according to insights from LinkedIn’s data on over 600,000 HBCU alumni. The industries that outperform others in promoting HBCU grads include energy and mining, software and IT services, hardware and networking, finance and manufacturing. And the specific job functions that lead to the best chance of promotion for these alumni are program and project management, marketing, human resources, business development and accounting.

Black talent on the fast track: these 10 paths stand out for HBCU graduates — from linkedin.com by George Anders

Excerpt:

All told, more than 600,000 graduates of HBCUs such as Spelman have profiles on LinkedIn. That makes it possible for LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team to analyze the career paths that these alumni have chosen – and to extract insights about promotion rates by job types, gender and in comparison to non-HBCU graduates.

The overall picture that emerges from this data includes a wide list of career paths where HBCU alumni are thriving, as well as signs that overall gaps between HBCU graduates’ promotion rates and non-HBCU trends haven’t yet closed.

Giving to Community Colleges and HBCUs Soared Last Year — from philanthropy.com by Dan Parks

Addendum on 2/19/22:

Morgan State, Southern Poverty Law Center leaders testify on bomb threats against HBCUs — from highereddive.com by Laura Spitalniak

How I use Minecraft to help kids with autism [Duncan]

On 02/14/2022, in 24x7x365 access, 3D, A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, attention, communications, communities of practice, creativity, digital learning, digital storytelling, distance education, education, education reform, education technology, educational games / serious games, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, ethics, hearts -- matters of the heart, homeschooling/homeschoolers, ideas, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, library / librarians, love of learning, Metaverse, Microsoft, morals/values, online learning, online media, parents/guardians, participation, passions, platforms, play, productivity / tips and tricks, psychology, remote teaching and learning, social learning / networks, special needs, storytelling, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching online, technologies for your home, tools, UK, United States, vendors, web-based collaboration, youth, by Daniel Christian

How I use Minecraft to help kids with autism — from ted.com by Stuart Duncan; with thanks to Dr. Kate Christian for this resource

Description:

The internet can be an ugly place, but you won’t find bullies or trolls on Stuart Duncan’s Minecraft server, AutCraft. Designed for children with autism and their families, AutCraft creates a safe online environment for play and self-expression for kids who sometimes behave a bit differently than their peers (and who might be singled out elsewhere). Learn more about one of the best places on the internet with this heartwarming talk.

Below are two excerpted snapshots from Stuart’s presentation:

The Future of Education | Gerd Leonhard

On 02/08/2022, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), Canada, career development, change, changing business models, creativity, education, education reform, emerging technologies, Emotion, ethics, Europe, future, future of higher education, heutagogy, higher education, India, instructional design, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), pace of change, real-world assignments, reinvent, robotics, skills, society, staying relevant, STEAM-related, student-related, trends, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vocational / trades, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, workplace, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

???

As seen/accessible from this page.

A brief insert from DSC:
Another futurist Thomas Frey has some thoughts along this same line.

#Canada #education #future #trends #careerdevelopment #change #paceofchange #automation #robotics #education #AI #learnhowtolearn #unlearn #learningecosystems #lifelonglearning #endofroutine #experientiallearning

Machines are for answers. Humans are for questions.

Also relevant/see:

Next-Gen Skills Essential To Fill In The Curriculum Gap For Modern World Education — from edtechreview.in by Ravi Bhushan
5 tips to avoid “foresight burnout” — from thefuturesschool.com

A positive and a negative example of the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

On 01/31/2022, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Apple, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), emerging technologies, ethics, Facebook / Meta Platforms, legislatures / government / legal, policy, privacy, UK, United States, by Daniel Christian

Both of the items below are from Sam DeBrule’s Machine Learnings e-newsletter:

AI can predict signs of a heart attack within a year — from a routine eye test — from studyfinds.org
Excerpt:
A team from the University of Leeds believes this AI tool opens the door to a cheap and simple screening program for the world’s number one killer. Their tests find the computer can predict patients at risk of a heart attack in the next 12 months with up to 80 percent accuracy.
Opinion: Facial-recognition technology is one of the biggest threats to our privacy — from marketwatch.com by Jurica Dujmovic
Excerpt:
Companies including Apple and Facebook, and governments worldwide, can misuse our facial images and unwittingly pass them on to hackers and other bad actors

Also see:

It’s Not Just the IRS—the US Government Wants Your Selfies — from wired.com by Tom Simonite
A controversial new program that uses facial recognition is part of a national effort to verify identities and reduce fraud.

Isaiah 1:17

On 01/17/2022, in Access to Justice (A2J), ethics, faith, law schools, legal reform, legislatures / government / legal, policy, relationships, religion, society, sociology, United States, by Daniel Christian

Isaiah 1:17

Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.

From DSC:
This verse especially caught my eye as we have severe access to justice issues here in the United States.

Reflections on “AI-powered chatbots, designed ethically, can support high-quality university teaching”

On 01/14/2022, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, bots, Canada, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, ethics, Europe, faculty, India, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Natural Language Processing (NLP), teaching & learning, teaching online, United States, user experience (UX), user interface design, using teams, vendors, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, by Daniel Christian

DC: The staff from Teaching & Learning Centers as well as the IT/AV staff would likely collaborate on creating/maintaining this type of database.#teachingandlearning #AV #IT #AI #NLP #highereducation https://t.co/Vs3RQJwrrH

— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) January 13, 2022

A Move for ‘Algorithmic Reparation’ Calls for Racial Justice in AI [Johnson]

On 01/10/2022, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), computer science, data related items, emerging technologies, ethics, platforms, programming, society, sociology, United States, by Daniel Christian

A Move for ‘Algorithmic Reparation’ Calls for Racial Justice in AI — from wired.com by Khari Johnson
Researchers are encouraging those who work in AI to explicitly consider racism, gender, and other structural inequalities.

Excerpt:

FORMS OF AUTOMATION such as artificial intelligence increasingly inform decisions about who gets hired, is arrested, or receives health care. Examples from around the world articulate that the technology can be used to exclude, control, or oppress people and reinforce historic systems of inequality that predate AI.

“Algorithms are animated by data, data comes from people, people make up society, and society is unequal,” the paper reads. “Algorithms thus arc towards existing patterns of power and privilege, marginalization, and disadvantage.

The biggest tech trends of 2022, according to over 40 experts — from fastcompany.com by Mark Sullivan
Startup founders, Big Tech execs, VCs, and tech scholars offer their predictions on how Web3, the metaverse, and other emerging ideas will shape the next year.

We asked startup founders, Big Tech execs, VCs, scholars, and other experts to speculate on the coming year within their field of interest. Altogether, we collected more than 40 predictions about 2022. Together, they offer a smart composite look at the things we’re likely to be talking about by this time next year.

From DSC:
As I looked at the article below, I couldn’t help but wonder…what is the role of the American Bar Association (ABA) in this type situation? How can the ABA help the United States deal with the impact/place of emerging technologies?

Clearview AI will get a US patent for its facial recognition tech — from engadget.com by J. Fingas
Critics are worried the company is patenting invasive tech.

Excerpt:

Clearview AI is about to get formal acknowledgment for its controversial facial recognition technology. Politico reports Clearview has received a US Patent and Trademark Office “notice of allowance” indicating officials will approve a filing for its system, which scans faces across public internet data to find people from government lists and security camera footage. The company just has to pay administrative fees to secure the patent.

In a Politico interview, Clearview founder Hoan Ton-That claimed this was the first facial recognition patent involving “large-scale internet data.” The firm sells its tool to government clients (including law enforcement) hoping to accelerate searches.

As you might imagine, there’s a concern the USPTO is effectively blessing Clearview’s technology and giving the company a chance to grow despite widespread objections to its technology’s very existence.

Privacy, news, facial recognition, USPTO, internet, patent,
Clearview AI, surveillance, tomorrow, AI, artificial intelligence

From DSC:
From my perspective, both of the items below are highly-related to each other:

Let’s Teach Computer Science Majors to Be Good Citizens. The Whole World Depends on It. — from edsurge.com by Anne-Marie Núñez, Matthew J. Mayhew, Musbah Shaheen and Laura S. Dahl

Excerpt:

Change may need to start earlier in the workforce development pipeline. Undergraduate education offers a key opportunity for recruiting students from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic, gender, and disability groups into computing. Yet even broadened participation in college computer science courses may not shift the tech workforce and block bias from seeping into tech tools if students aren’t taught that diversity and ethics are essential to their field of study and future careers.

Computer Science Majors Lack Citizenship Preparation
Unfortunately, those lessons seem to be missing from many computer science programs.

…and an excerpt from Why AI can’t really filter out “hate news” — with thanks to Sam DeBrule for this resource (emphasis DSC):

The incomprehensibility and unexplainability of huge algorithms
Michael Egnor: What terrifies me about artificial intelligence — and I don’t think one can overstate this danger — is that artificial intelligence has two properties that make it particularly deadly in human civilization. One is concealment. Even though every single purpose in artificial intelligence is human, it’s concealed. We don’t really understand it. We don’t understand Google’s algorithms.

There may even be a situation where Google doesn’t understand Google’s algorithms. But all of it comes from the people who run Google. So the concealment is very dangerous. We don’t know what these programs are doing to our culture. And it may be that no one knows, but they are doing things.

Note:Roman Yampolskiy has written about the incomprehensibility and unexplainability of AI: “Human beings are finite in our abilities. For example, our short term memory is about 7 units on average. In contrast, an AI can remember billions of items and AI capacity to do so is growing exponentially. While never infinite in a true mathematical sense, machine capabilities can be considered such in comparison with ours. This is true for memory, compute speed, and communication abilities.” So we have built-in bias and incomprehensibility at the same time.

From DSC:
That part about concealment reminds me that our society depends upon the state of the hearts of the tech leaders. We don’t like to admit that, but it’s true. The legal realm is too far behind to stop the Wild West of technological change. The legal realm is trying to catch up, but they’re coming onto the race track with no cars…just as pedestrians walking or running as fast as they can….all the while, the technological cars are whizzing by.

The net effect of all of this is that we are more dependent upon the ethics, morals, and care for their fellow humankind (or not) of the C-Suites out there (especially Facebook/Meta Platforms, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Apple) than we care to admit. Are they producing products and services that aim to help our societies move forward, or are they just trying to make some more bucks? Who — or what — is being served?

The software engineers and software architects are involved here big time as well. “Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.” But that perspective is sometimes in short supply.

Over 60,000 Fake Applications Submitted in Student Aid Scheme, California Says [Patel]

On 11/15/2021, in community colleges, ethics, funding / grants, United States, by Daniel Christian

Over 60,000 Fake Applications Submitted in Student Aid Scheme, California Says — from nytimes.com from Vimal Patel
It was unclear how much money, if any, was disbursed to the suspicious students. The federal Education Department said it was investigating the suspected fraud.

Excerpt:

According to Mr. Perry, fraud of this nature is easier to pull off at community colleges than at four-year institutions, because the two-year institutions don’t have admissions committees vetting applicants. And while colleges have had some fully virtual components for many years, the pandemic — which forced many colleges to operate entirely online — has provided the conditions for such schemes to flourish. “Somebody trying to perpetuate this would think this was a more likely time to try to get away with this,” Mr. Perry said.

He added that the next step for federal investigators should be to determine how widespread this conduct is and whether colleges elsewhere should be on the lookout.

Timnit Gebru Says Artificial Intelligence Needs to Slow Down — from wired.com by Max Levy
The AI researcher, who left Google last year, says the incentives around AI research are all wrong.

Excerpt:

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCHERS are facing a problem of accountability: How do you try to ensure decisions are responsible when the decision maker is not a responsible person, but rather an algorithm? Right now, only a handful of people and organizations have the power—and resources—to automate decision-making.
…
Since leaving Google, Gebru has been developing an independent research institute to show a new model for responsible and ethical AI research. The institute aims to answer similar questions as her Ethical AI team, without fraught incentives of private, federal, or academic research—and without ties to corporations or the Department of Defense.

“Our goal is not to make Google more money; it’s not to help the Defense Department figure out how to kill more people more efficiently,” she said.

From DSC:
What does our society need to do to respond to this exponential pace of technological change? And where is the legal realm here?

Speaking of the pace of change…the following quote from The Future Direction And Vision For AI (from marktechpost.com by Imtiaz Adam) speaks to massive changes in this decade as well:

The next generation will feature 5G alongside AI and will lead to a new generation of Tech superstars in addition to some of the existing ones.

In future the variety, volume and velocity of data is likely to substantially increase as we move to the era of 5G and devices at the Edge of the network. The author argues that our experience of development with AI and the arrival of 3G followed by 4G networks will be dramatically overshadowed with the arrival of AI meets 5G and the IoT leading to the rise of the AIoT where the Edge of the network will become key for product and service innovation and business growth.

Also related/see:

AI’s Smarts Now Come With a Big Price Tag — from wired.com by Will Knight
As language models get more complex, they also get more expensive to create and run. Some companies are locked out.

Supporting Student Accessibility: Digital Equity | Special Needs & More [Tech & Learning]

On 11/09/2021, in accessibility / UDL, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), bots, digital learning, digital textbooks, distance education, e-books, e-publishing related items (EPUB and more), e-readers, education, education technology, ethics, experimentation, face-to-face, funding / grants, ideas, innovation, instructional design, K-12 related, languages and translation, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, remote teaching and learning, special needs, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Supporting Student Accessibility: Digital Equity | Special Needs & More — from Tech & Learning | November 2021

Radar trends to watch: November 2021 — from oreilly.com by Mike Loukides
Developments in AI, Security, Quantum Computing, and More

Artificial Intelligence: Should You Teach It To Your Employees?— from forbes.com by Tom Taulli

Excerpt:

“If more people are AI literate and can start to participate and contribute to the process, more problems–both big and small–across the organization can be tackled,” said David Sweenor, who is the Senior Director of Product Marketing at Alteryx. “We call this the ‘Democratization of AI and Analytics.’ A team of 100, 1,000, or 5,000 working on different problems in their areas of expertise certainly will have a bigger impact than if left in the hands of a few.”

New Artificial Intelligence Tool Accelerates Discovery of Truly New Materials — from scitechdaily.com
The new artificial intelligence tool has already led to the discovery of four new materials.

Excerpt:

Researchers at the University of Liverpool have created a collaborative artificial intelligence tool that reduces the time and effort required to discover truly new materials.

AI development must be guided by ethics, human wellbeing and responsible innovation — from healthcareitnews.com by Bill Siwicki
An expert in emerging technology from the IEEE Standards Association describes the elements that must be considered as artificial intelligence proliferates across healthcare.

Learning Ecosystems

Reflections on “As bomb threats keep targeting HBCUs, 64 higher ed groups tell Congress to act” [Spitalniak]

A positive and a negative example of the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Isaiah 1:17

Reflections on “AI-powered chatbots, designed ethically, can support high-quality university teaching”

The biggest tech trends of 2022, according to over 40 experts [Sullivan]

What is the role of the American Bar Association (ABA) in this? [Christian]

Over 60,000 Fake Applications Submitted in Student Aid Scheme, California Says [Patel]

Timnit Gebru Says Artificial Intelligence Needs to Slow Down [Levy]

Radar trends to watch: November 2021 [Loukides]

“AI: Should You Teach It To Your Employees?” + other AI-related resources from Sam DeBrule (@SamDeBrule)

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