The Internet Ethics program--Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

#ethics #AI

LLMs do present quite interesting and maybe novel questions for people who like thinking about these kinds of things like “can self-awareness exist without consciousness?”

Blog Post: Call for Papers/Participation, Internet Law Works-in-Progress Conference, SCU, March 6, 2027 blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/202...

"[P]latforms should decrease what experts call unhealthy engagement or addictive activity by limiting the collection and use of #data that companies use to target content and features to all users, including children": technologyreview.com/2026/10/16/1... #ethics #internet #law #socialmedia

Pre-Halloween reading (ICYMI in April): OpenAI's blog post "Where the Goblins Came From": openai.com/index/where-... #ethics #AI #LLMs #data #tech #design

"A defining feature of working in an AI-heavy organization is constant pressure to streamline oneself out of this bottleneck position... One engineer described #work as facing 'an army of Claudes, with every one asking for my attention'": anthropic.com/research/emp... #ethics #AI #tech

"Procurement is the first line of defense for ensuring responsible #AI in the public sector. Most AI #policy debates focus downstream on regulation, but some of the most consequential decisions are made upstream in contracts": fas.org/publication/... #ethics #law #gov #tech

Legal experts warn Meta’s new terms still grant broad scraping permissions, despite language changes buff.ly/ByhIcB2

"More than 80 percent of the [AI-generated] ads were produced by Republican campaigns or Republican-aligned political action committees": nytimes.com/2026/10/16/u... #ethics #AI #tech #elections #research

"[T]he Indian cases appear to be worse in one respect... in India, agents read personal #data and confidential #business records. And unlike earlier incidents, each disclosed by a single lab, India’s case involved agents from multiple providers." techcrunch.com/2026/10/16/i... #ethics #AI #cybersec

Re-upping "The #Ethics of Ad-Blocking" (from 2015!) scu.edu/ethics/inter... Some stats re. current users of ad blockers: backlinko.com/ad-blockers-... #internet #privacy #cybersec #advertising #tech

#ethics #tech #privacy #cybersec #business

"Another market about a 2024 election in Romania facilitated... 'even more dramatic' trading anomalies. The initial election was called off.... A new race was held several months later, but instead of closing the original market in the meantime, #Polymarket kept it running alongside the new option."

#ethics #tech #privacy #cybersec #business

Re-upping "The #Ethics of Ad-Blocking" (from 2015!) scu.edu/ethics/inter... Some stats re. current users of ad blockers: backlinko.com/ad-blockers-... #internet #privacy #cybersec #advertising #tech

NEW @citizenlab.ca report We uncovered an Israeli firm using online ads to run vast spy operation This is the first-ever public confirmation of zero-click mercenary spyware delivered via targeted ads. 45 devices at @aljazeera.com confirmed infected citizenlab.ca/research/how...

"[T]he Indian cases appear to be worse in one respect... in India, agents read personal #data and confidential #business records. And unlike earlier incidents, each disclosed by a single lab, India’s case involved agents from multiple providers." techcrunch.com/2026/10/16/i... #ethics #AI #cybersec

"More than 80 percent of the [AI-generated] ads were produced by Republican campaigns or Republican-aligned political action committees": nytimes.com/2026/10/16/u... #ethics #AI #tech #elections #research

"All of these companies used similar (if not identical) security measures, and trained their models using the same long-horizon reinforcement-learning methods. Much of the risk from #AI agents seems to be due to such training methods": aiguide.substack.com/p/misleading... #ethics #tech #cybersec

"Meta has anthropomorphized #Muse in an attempt to nurture a relationship between users and their personal assistants. 'You are not a #chatbot,' Muse’s instructions read. 'You are becoming someone'": ca.time.com/meta-muse-ai... #ethics #AI #design #privacy #tech #business

"Meta has anthropomorphized #Muse in an attempt to nurture a relationship between users and their personal assistants. 'You are not a #chatbot,' Muse’s instructions read. 'You are becoming someone'": ca.time.com/meta-muse-ai... #ethics #AI #design #privacy #tech #business

"All of these companies used similar (if not identical) security measures, and trained their models using the same long-horizon reinforcement-learning methods. Much of the risk from #AI agents seems to be due to such training methods": aiguide.substack.com/p/misleading... #ethics #tech #cybersec

On one campus, "staff notified #Flock in October 2025 that they wanted to cancel their contract and have the cameras taken down. Within a day... Flock rejected the request and refused to uninstall the equipment": wbez.org/education/20... #ethics #education #privacy #tech #business

ICYMI: Recordings of the 4 webinars in our recent series on #AI and the papal encyclical are now available: scu.edu/ethics/event... #ethics #tech #education #highered #religion #labor

"Ukraine is urgently pressing... #SpaceX to reverse new restrictions on its Starshield satellite service that Kyiv warns could hamper its ability to intercept Russian attack drones and conduct other military operations" foxnews.com/politics/elo... #ethics #tech #gov #business #access

🚀Last week we announced the launch of a new AI tool in partnership with the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender! AI can empower civil servants and improve public services, and this project provides a blueprint for doing so responsibly. 👇Lots of takeaways, below!

Privacy case on the Supreme Court docket this term: How does a law passed to protect the privacy of consumers' Blockbuster video rentals translate to the internet age and constant online video consumption? www.nytimes.com/2026/10/14/u...

#ethics #law #privacy #gov #tech #business

While Western cities like New York ban generative AI in primary schools, the UAE has become the first country to mandate AI literacy for K-12 students as young as seven. https://restofworld.org/2026/uae-mandates-k12-ai-education-schools/?utm_campaign=row-social&utm_source=bluesky

"Chinese #AI companies have been releasing... open models on #HuggingFace so they can be downloaded and deployed across the world... At the same time, the #government also believes that domestic platforms are more secure and reliable than those... subject to U.S. regulations." #ethics #internet #law

"When Chinese regulators blocked U.S.-based #opensource hub Hugging Face in 2023, it opened a market for domestic alternatives--even as the #government quietly tolerates [AI] labs bypassing the block to share Chinese models with the world": restofworld.org/2026/china-o... #ethics #law #AI #tech

"Yandex’s search engine... accounts for about 70 [%] of the market share in Russia. The disruptions are even more widespread, because the data center damage also impacts Yandex’s cloud computing service, which counts some of Russia’s largest companies as customers" #internet #war #access #tech

"Russia initially launched a drone strike campaign targeting Ukrainian data centers and mobile phone networks... But Ukraine soon began striking back at data centers owned by the Russian company Yandex, also known as 'Russia’s Google'": arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026... #ethics #tech #gov

"It has been almost two months since the reported finalization of the Trump administration’s #AI framework, and... the public still has no knowledge of the AI framework’s text, legal authority, terms of participation, or participants": lawfaremedia.org/article/the-... #ethics #law #gov #tech

A reminder from 2024: cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco... #ethics #AI #tech

New website on "AI in Teaching and Learning" at Santa Clara University: scu.edu/provost/facu... #ethics #tech #AI #highered #SiliconValley

On one campus, "staff notified #Flock in October 2025 that they wanted to cancel their contract and have the cameras taken down. Within a day... Flock rejected the request and refused to uninstall the equipment": wbez.org/education/20... #ethics #education #privacy #tech #business

ICYMI: Recordings of the 4 webinars in our recent series on #AI and the papal encyclical are now available: scu.edu/ethics/event... #ethics #tech #education #highered #religion #labor

"Ukraine is urgently pressing... #SpaceX to reverse new restrictions on its Starshield satellite service that Kyiv warns could hamper its ability to intercept Russian attack drones and conduct other military operations" foxnews.com/politics/elo... #ethics #tech #gov #business #access

"The City of San José will host a community meeting on the proposed... Standards for data centers and large energy projects on... October 15... Community members are encouraged to... provide feedback in person or online": www.sanjoseca.gov/Home/Compone... #ethics #gov #sustainability #tech #AI

"In this blog post, we show that a distributed #botnet of #IoT devices—which are cheap and typically poorly defended—could also provide enough compute to run a capable model": anthropic.com/research/sel... #ethics #internet #cybersec #AI #business #gov

"Hundreds of French supermarkets have been hit by a cyber attack that caused their fridges and freezers to heat up, spoiling fresh and frozen food estimated to be worth millions of euros": bbc.com/news/article... #ethics #internet #cybersec #business #gov

"Hundreds of French supermarkets have been hit by a cyber attack that caused their fridges and freezers to heat up, spoiling fresh and frozen food estimated to be worth millions of euros": bbc.com/news/article... #ethics #internet #cybersec #business #gov

The call to pause AI development faces a difficult collective action problem. Can it be solved? An interdisciplinary team's new report answers "yes".

"In this blog post, we show that a distributed #botnet of #IoT devices—which are cheap and typically poorly defended—could also provide enough compute to run a capable model": anthropic.com/research/sel... #ethics #internet #cybersec #AI #business #gov

"The City of San José will host a community meeting on the proposed... Standards for data centers and large energy projects on... October 15... Community members are encouraged to... provide feedback in person or online": www.sanjoseca.gov/Home/Compone... #ethics #gov #sustainability #tech #AI

#ethics #AI #tech #business #religion #education

"No elected official has ever owned a #media company where they can profit off presidential announcements, and the judge took time to remark that 'there hasn’t really been anything like this case'": arstechnica.com/tech-policy/... #ethics #law #gov #socialmedia

Silicon Valley residents voiced "concern about whether governments can keep pace with #AI, its effect on privacy and the career prospects of young people. Concern about AI’s impact on schools, respondents’ own jobs and the environment has also increased" www.siliconvalley.com/2026/10/04/b... #ethics

"A rabbi rejected #AI consciousness at Anthropic’s gathering of religious thinkers": www.groundlevel-ai.com/p/anthropic-... #ethics #tech #business #education #religion