Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

example of ethical action among
An
occurred at Google in 2018, when
technologists
engineers went on strike in protest of
4,000
company’s involvement in defence-related
the
technologies (Project Maven), which were
AI
used to interpret video images of drone
being
After the employee strike, Google did
strikes.
renew its involvement in the Pentagon
not
were the main points of the engineers’
These
letter.
protest
Google should not be involved in the
•
of war”.
“business
Project Maven was using artificial
•
to collect and interpret data,
intelligence
was passed to the US Ministry of
which
Defense.
Various employees had expressed concerns
•
the company’s involvement in the
about
The company had addressed these
•
in part by explaining that
concerns
technology would not be directly
the
in warfare; that is, to operate
employed
The employees were not satisfied with this
•
technology was still being
response—the
for military purposes and therefore
utilized
the potential to inflict lethal damage.
had
By engaging in the weaponization of
•
Google was risking its reputation
technology,
the machine mind free from the biases that
Is
the human mind? Does it look at us all
plague
a neutral lens or would we find human
through
buried within the lines of code?
prejudices
company’s ability to recruit the best
the
and continue to succeed in
employees
Google should not want to be categorized
•
other companies who had chosen to
with
Google’s motto “Don’t Be Evil” set it apart
•
other companies. The company must
from
and uphold its core values above
protect
else, or else lose the trust of
everything
engineers cited Google’s moral
The
and the potential damage to the
responsibility
Ultimately, they requested that Google
brand.
cancelled the project with immediate
(a)
and (b) issued a policy stating that the
effect
would never be involved in the
company
terms: Google
Search
of war open letter
Business
2016 study (Bolukbasi et al) reported that
A
trained on Google News voiced sexist
software
When asked to complete the statement,
views.
is to computer programmer as woman is
“Man
X”, the software replied “homemaker”. The
to
stated:
researchers
3IV. Ethics
Case study
engineers strike over AI use
Google
military tasks
in
programme.
project.
business.
work more directly in the warfare industry.
itsusers.
drones or launch weapons.
creation of warfare technology.
Follow the link to read the original letter:
as a trusted brand. This would damage
IV.4 Can AI be unethical?
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