Skip to main content

Resources & Media

Read

  • Everyone in Your Organization Needs to Understand AI Ethics

  • If Your Company Uses AI, It Needs an Institutional Review Board

  • A Practical Guide to Building Ethical AI

  • Four steps for drafting an ethical data practices blueprint

  • Ethics and AI: 3 Conversations Companies Need to Have

  • How to Monitor Your Employees — While Respecting Their Privacy

  • Why Blockchain’s Ethical Stakes Are So High

  • Building Transparency into AI Projects

  • Why You Need an AI Ethics Committee

  • When — and Why — You Should Explain How Your AI Works

  • The Risks of Empowering Citizen Data Scientists

  • How to Avoid the Ethical Nightmares of Emerging Technology

  • Generative AI-nxiety

  • The EU’s AI Act and How Companies Can Achieve Compliance

Watch

Listen

  • Does AI Ethics in Business Make Sense?

    Does AI Ethics in Business Make Sense?

    People want AI developed ethically, but is there actually a business case for it? The answer better be yes since, after all, it’s businesses that are developing AI in the...

  • Does AI Undermine Scientific Discovery?

    Does AI Undermine Scientific Discovery?

    Automation is great, right? It speeds up what needs to get done. But is that always a good thing? What about in the process of scientific discovery? Yes, AI can...

  • The Power of Technologists

    The Power of Technologists

    Behind all those algorithms are the people who create them and embed them into our lives. How did they get that power? What should they do with it? What are...

  • AI is Uncontrollable

    AI is Uncontrollable

    People in the AI safety community are laboring under an illusion, perhaps even a self-deception, my guest argues. They think they can align AI with our values and control it...

  • A Culture of Online Manipulation

    A Culture of Online Manipulation

    Developers are constantly testing how online users react to their designs. Will they stay longer on the site because of this shade of blue? Will they get depressed if we...

  • AI Risk Mitigation is Insanely Complex

    AI Risk Mitigation is Insanely Complex

    There’s a picture in our heads that’s overly simplistic and the result is not thinking clearly about AI risks. Our simplistic picture is that a team develops AI and then...

  • Did You Say "Quantum" Computer?

    Did You Say "Quantum" Computer?

    From the best of season 1: Microsoft recently announced an (alleged!) breakthrough in quantum computing. But what in the world is quantum computer, what can they do, and what are...

  • What Psychologists Say About AI Relationships

    What Psychologists Say About AI Relationships

    Every specialist in anything thinks they should have a seat at the AI ethics table. I’m usually skeptical. But psychologist Madeline Reinecke, Ph.D. did a great job defending her view...

  • Am I Wrong About Agentic AI?

    Am I Wrong About Agentic AI?

    A fun format for this episode. In Part I, I talk about how I see agentic AI unfolding and what ethical, social, and political risks come with it. In part...

  • What Do VCs Want to Know About AI Ethics?

    What Do VCs Want to Know About AI Ethics?

    Jaahred Thomas is a VC friend of mine who wanted to talk about the evolving landscape of AI ethics in startups and business generally. So rather than have a normal...

  • The Peril of Principles in AI Ethics

    The Peril of Principles in AI Ethics

    From the best of season 1: The hospital faced an ethical question: should we deploy robots to help with elder care?Let’s look at a standard list of AI ethics values:...

  • Innovation Hype and Why We Should Wait on AI Regulation

    Innovation Hype and Why We Should Wait on AI Regulation

    From the best of season 1: Innovation is great…but hype is bad. Not only has all this talk of innovation not increased innovation, but it also creates a bad environment...

  • Businesses are afraid to say “ethics”

    Businesses are afraid to say “ethics”

    “Sustainability,” “purpose/mission/value driven”, “human-centric design.” These are terms companies use so they don’t have to say “ethics.” My contention is that this is bad for business and bad for society...

  • We’re Getting AI and Democracy Wrong

    We’re Getting AI and Democracy Wrong

    Democracy is about how we ought to distribute power in society and, more specifically, it’s the claim that people ought to have a significant say in how they are ruled....

  • Why Copyright Challenges to AI Learning Will Fail and the Ethical Reasons Why They Shouldn’t

    Why Copyright Challenges to AI Learning Will Fail and the Ethical Reasons Why They Shouldn’t

    From the best of season 1. Well, I didn’t see this coming. Talking about legal and philosophical conceptions of copyright turns out to be intellectually fascinating and challenging. It involves...

  • Evolving AI Governance

    Evolving AI Governance

    My guest and I have been doing AI governance for businesses for a combined 17+years. We started way before genAI was a big thing. But I’d say I’m more a...

  • What’s Wrong With Loving an AI?

    What’s Wrong With Loving an AI?

    People, especially kids under 18, are forming emotional attachments with AI chatbots. At a minimum, this is…weird. Is it also unethical? Does it harm users? Is it, as my guest...

  • Rationally Believing Conspiracy Theories

    Rationally Believing Conspiracy Theories

    You might want more online content moderation so insane conspiracy theories don’t flourish. Sex slaves in Democrat pizza shops, climate change is a hoax, and so on. But is it...

  • AI Understands. A Little. Part 2

    AI Understands. A Little. Part 2

    From the best of season 1. Part 2 of my conversation with Alex. There’s good reason to think AI doesn’t understand anything. It’s just moving around words according to mathematical...

  • ChatGPT Does Not Understand Anything Part 1

    ChatGPT Does Not Understand Anything Part 1

    From the best of season 1. Part 1 of my conversation with Alex Grzankowski.It looks like ChatGPT understands what you’re asking. It looks like ChatGPT understands what it’s saying in...

  • Tyranny of the One Best Algorithm

    Tyranny of the One Best Algorithm

    One person driving one car creates a negligible amount of pollution. The problem arises when we have lots of people driving cars. Might this kind of issue arise with AI...

  • How AI Ends Legal Uncertainty

    How AI Ends Legal Uncertainty

    With so many laws and so much case law, it’s virtually impossible for the layperson to know what’s legal and illegal. But what if AI can synthesize all that information...

  • Is Tech a Religion that Needs Reformation?

    Is Tech a Religion that Needs Reformation?

    Author of the new book “Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation” discusses, well, what do you think? It’s right...

  • Should We Care About  Data Privacy?

    Should We Care About Data Privacy?

    From the best of season 1: You might think it's outrageous that companies collect data about you and use it in various ways to drive profits. The business model of the...

  • The AI Mirror

    The AI Mirror

    We use the wrong metaphor for thinking about AI, Shannon Vallor argues, and bad thinking leads to bad results. We need to stop thinking about AI as being an agent...

  • Holding AI Responsible for What It Says

    Holding AI Responsible for What It Says

    Canada Air blamed the LLM chatbot for giving false information about their bereavement fare policy. They lost the law suit because of course it’s not the chatbot’s fault. But what...

  • Deepfakes and 2024 Election

    Deepfakes and 2024 Election

    California just signed a bill to drastically decrease deepfakes on social media. The worry, of course, is that they are already being used to unjustifiably sway voters. In this episode,...

  • Ethics for People Who Work in Tech

    Ethics for People Who Work in Tech

    What does it look like to integrate ethics into the teams that are building AI? How can we make ethics a practice and not a compliance checklist? In today’s episode...

  • Calm the Hell Down : AI is Just Software that Learns by Example and No, It’s Not Going to Kill Us All

    Calm the Hell Down : AI is Just Software that Learns by Example and No, It’s Not Going to Kill Us All

    Doesn’t the title say it all? This is for anyone who wants the very basics on what AI is, why it’s not intelligent, and why it doesn’t pose an existential...

  • Does Social Media Diminish Our Autonomy?

    Does Social Media Diminish Our Autonomy?

    Are we dependent on social media in a way that erodes our autonomy? After all, platforms are designed to keep us hooked and to come back for more. And we...

  • Choosing Who Should Benefit and Who Should Suffer with AI

    Choosing Who Should Benefit and Who Should Suffer with AI

    From the best of season 1: I talk a lot about bias, black boxes, and privacy, but perhaps my focus is too narrow. In this conversation, Aimee and I discuss what...

  • We’re Doing AI Ethics Wrong

    We’re Doing AI Ethics Wrong

    Is our collective approach to ensuring AI doesn’t go off the rails fundamentally misguided? Is our approach too narrow to get the job done? My guest, John Basl argues exactly...

  • Can AI Do Ethics?

    Can AI Do Ethics?

    Many researchers in AI think we should make AI capable of ethical inquiry. We can’t teach it all the ethical rules; that’s impossible. Instead, we should teach it to ethically...

  • We Don’t Need AI Regulations

    We Don’t Need AI Regulations

    It’s common to hear we need new regulations to avoid the risks of AI (bias, privacy violations, manipulation, etc.). But my guest, Dean Ball, thinks this claim is too hastily...

  • When Biased AI is Good

    When Biased AI is Good

    Everyone knows biased or discriminatory AI bad and we need to get rid of it, right? Well, not so fast.I’m bringing one of the best episodes from Season 1 back....

  • The Secret Life of Data

    The Secret Life of Data

    Data about us is collected, aggregated, and shared in more ways than we can count. In some cases, this leads to great benefits. In others, a great deal of harm....

  • The Necessary Imperfections of AI Content Moderation

    The Necessary Imperfections of AI Content Moderation

    With the ocean of social media content we need AI to identify and remove inappropriate material; humans just can’t keep up. But AI doesn’t assess content the same way we...

  • AI Armageddon is Unlikely

    AI Armageddon is Unlikely

    AI + nuclear capacities sounds like a recipe for disaster. Some people think it could cause mass extinction. While it’s easy to let our imaginations run wild, insight into how...

  • Could AI Undermine Informed Consent?

    Could AI Undermine Informed Consent?

    AI holds a lot of promise in making faster, more accurate diagnoses of our ailments. But if they are too influential, might they undermine our doctors’ ability to understand the...

  • Data Privacy Isn’t as Important as You Think

    Data Privacy Isn’t as Important as You Think

    Privacy is important. But I think we mostly misconceive the nature of privacy and data privacy. I argue we should rethink data privacy so that we can both focus better...

  • Existentialist Risk

    Existentialist Risk

    Technologist’s are racing to create AGI, artificial general intelligence. They also say we must align the AGI’s moral values with our own. But Professors Ariela Tubert and Justin Tiehen argue...

  • Is Equity Always Valuable?

    Is Equity Always Valuable?

    Of course, decreasing racial disparities in healthcare is ethically imperative. But does it sometimes require too great a moral sacrifice? If it costs more lives than an non-equitable distribution of...

  • The Moral Weight of Online Sexual Assault

    The Moral Weight of Online Sexual Assault

    Could online sexual assault be as morally bad as in-person sexual assault? Honestly, that initially struck me as a bit crazy. But Professor John Danaher makes some very compelling arguments.Advertising...

  • Welcome to Ethical Machines

    Welcome to Ethical Machines

    Welcome to Ethical Machines—a weekly podcast from author and ethicist Reid Blackman. Episodes drop June 27th.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy