Ethics Assignment
AI Image and Voice Software Programs
Why is it unethical?
The advancement of image, audio, and video manipulation through the use of artificial intelligence have made it increasingly simple to create imagery and audio of people saying or doing things that have not happened. Deep fakes are not necessarily a bad thing, they can enhance video games and other forms of entertainment, they can allow family members to hear a diseased loved one's voice again, they are being used to advance medical research and much more. It has many positive uses, but the issue is when it is used without a person's consent. Deep fakes can be used in negative ways such as blackmail, humiliation, and intimidation. Deep fakes can be used in political campaigns to sway voters a certain way or another by creating harmful imagery of their chosen candidate. There is an increasing concern about cybersecurity when it comes to sharing confidential information through phone calls. Older generations are at an increased risk of falling prey to digital scams and fraud. The most prevalent issue with deep fakes though is the creation of AI-generated pornographic images. 90% of deep fake images are pornographic. AI is being used for the creation of adult and child pornography. Through the combination of data from photographs of abused and non-abused children, realistic sexual images of children who do not exist but may resemble an actual living child are being put on the internet. Detecting deep fakes is getting increasingly difficult as the technology that creates them is getting more sophisticated. If we cannot separate truth from fiction, and it is difficult for even professionals in the AI category to separate real from fake, the question arises, how do we ensure that laws are enforced?
What is the problem?
The issue with deep fakes is the product behavior after creation, being used for illegal purposes. This prompts the question though, is it ethical for engineers to continue to create and advance this technology with that the knowledge that 90% of the time, the technology will be used for harmful and illegal purposes? Is the 10% that is legally acceptable truly used for a good cause that it could outweigh the 90%?
Addictive Apps (Instagram, TikTok, X, Gambling Games)
Why is it unethical?
An app's main prerogative is to keep users on said app for as long as possible, as the more users an application has, the more financial gains that the app is able to procure to benefit stakeholders. Ads are sprinkled all over most commercial applications, and the longer a user is on the application, the more ads they come across, increasing the visibility of the advertisement and the money that that company will receive for having that advertisement on their platform. Because of this common mission to obtain and maintain their user base, many applications utilize addictive application infrastructures. These infrastructures take advantage of the science of the brain and the addictive nature of short-term or immediate gratification. For example, with social media applications, the infinite amount of content that you can consume in a short time frame with the "refresh page" feature and the unending downward flow of many of these applications can cause users to spend indulgent amounts of time on these applications and combining that with features like likes, subscribers, and comments for the content that the user has created and posted onto their own account, this can really suck them into the digital space with its ability to trigger dopamine responses in the brain. Additionally, most applications of any genre use push notifications as a constant reminder to the user of the application's existence and the promise of the gratification that the app can provide, dragging the user back onto that application's platform.
What is the problem?
The issue with addictive apps is that they often have some sort of "paywall" aspect, can lead to reduced productivity and social isolation. These apps typically target vulnerable populations such as children and young adults, they even include popular social media platforms. It may seem obvious to blame the engineer who designs the application to be "addicting" because the application would not exist without them, but often times these engineers work at large companies and would simply be replaced by someone else who is willingly to write the code. The behaviors of the app itself is largely managed by the software engineers but once again also heavily depend on the owner of the application which is not always the software engineer. For these reasons, I believe that the owner of the application and the design of the application itself, which is typically approved by the owner, are the problem with these applications.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/trapped-the-secret-ways-social-media-is-built-to-be-addictive-and-what-you-can-do-to-fight-back
Search Engine Bias (Google, Safari, Bing, Yahoo, etc.)
Why is it unethical?
We rely on search engines to provide results to things we are looking for. When a search engine becomes biased, it no longer returns things that are that are only similiar to our searches, but it also returns results that are seemingly planted. This is unethical for a few different reasons, but the biggest one is user manipulation. When a search engine returns sponsered results, or results that are better optimized to the engine, it can pursuade or manipulate users to select one site over another. This sort of thing gives many people/companies an unfair advantage in the world of search engines. Imagine a small company producing an authentic product, but a larger company rips off their design and begins selling a similar product. When the product is searched for online, the larger company will likely be the top result, overshadowing the small company. Another unethicality of search engines is sterotypical results based on collected information about the user. For example, if a white person were to search for job opportunities, a search engine may provide higher paying opportunities, rather than if a black person were to search for the same thing. Or if you search for Asian women, it's likely that the engine will return results related to pornography.
What is the problem?
Most things on the internet are found by the help of a search engine. Usually, people assume that when they search something up on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. they're getting an unbias spread of results, but this isn't entirely true. In recent times, you may have noticed that when you search something using a search engine, there may be bias towards results. For example, Google will display ads for websites related to your search before others, or if you search something with a slight relation to Google, Google-related results will be displayed first. This is an issue, as these massive search engines are inadvertently steering our results toward something that we're not necessarily looking for, which doesn't seem too harmful at first. However, since we depend heavily on these search engines, we are being unknowingly controlled by them. Surely in the beginning, most engineers would have hoped to develop an unbias search engine. However, with search engine algorithms becoming more and more complex and the internet becoming highly profitable in so many ways, it seems that engineers have knowingly added bias into the engine. Also, with the uprise of using AI in search engines, it's also likely that bias is created by what AI deems clickable to the user. This leads to search engine bias being created by software engineers and the product that they have created.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-search/
https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2019/8/4-unethical-uses-ai