Ethics for Nerds

Hello everybody,

Tomorrow, we will have our first exam. There are a few things that you should do before the exam comes around:

1. Read, sign and upload the Exam Signature Form. It’s just one page and mostly very straightforward stuff, but you have to sign and upload it in order to be able to hand in any exam solutions.
2. Check out the Exam FAQ if you have not already done so.
3. f you forgot to register in the dcms, but want to take the exam, write an email to sterz@depend.uni-saarland.de.

The exam will be made available tomorrow at 10:00 (CEST) in the Materials section of the dcms. After that, you can start working on it right away. If you have any more questions, get in touch!

Best wishes,
Sarah

Essay Results

We just uploaded the essay results! Please make sure to check out your individual feedback on your personal status page.

Congratulations to everybody who has passed! We read many great essays and were able to give out more bonuses than ever before this year. Well done! 👏

But maybe a word of warning: with the correction of the essays we are usually more relaxed than with the corrections of the actual exams. If you, for example, were sloppy in the application of a moral theory in your essay we charitably read over that, but we will not be able to do the same in the exam – just so you cannot say that you have not been warned.

Exam Registration (super important!)

Now that you know whether you are admitted, you have to make sure that you register properly! For most of you, this will mean that you have to register in the LSF. If you are not properly registered, we are not allowed to have you write the exam!

Also, please register in the dcms on your personal status page. You will only be able to upload your solution if you are properly registered.

Other Exam Stuff

If you did not see it already, there is an Exam FAQ in the dcms. Also, I have uploaded a mock exam from 2020 in the materials. It was not a take-home exam, so expect our exam to be considerably different.

Hello everybody,

Today at 18:00 we will have our second Nerd Night. You can ask us questions, work on your essay with your classmates, and chat with others. The event is very informal, and you can drop by and leave at any time.

The Nerd Night will take place in wonder.me, which is a spatial voice and video chat where you can get together in groups. There are designated areas for different activities to make it easier for you to find others with the same interests, but you can also gather outside of those areas.

Link to our space: https://www.wonder.me/r?id=9a8c174d-f4b7-440a-b38d-6e209a1b5791
Password: E4N

(In order to reject all cookies, you have to check and then uncheck one of the boxes in the cookie dialogue. Then, the Accept-All button will turn into a Save-and-Exit button.)

We’re looking forward to tonight! 🍕

Hello everybody,

Today at 18:00 we will have our first Nerd Night, where you can work on your essays with others, ask us questions, get to know your class mates, and maybe even play some games. The event is very informal, and you can drop by and leave at any time.

The Nerd Night will take place in wonder.me, which is a spatial voice and video chat where you can get together in groups. There are designated areas for different activities to make it easier for you to find others with the same interests, but you can also gather outside of those areas.

Link to our space: https://www.wonder.me/r?id=9a8c174d-f4b7-440a-b38d-6e209a1b5791
Password: E4N

(In order to reject all cookies, you have to check and then uncheck one of the boxes in the cookie dialogue. Then, the Accept-All button will turn into a Save-and-Exit button.)

We’re looking forward to tonight! 🍕

Since we assume that most of you are diligently preparing for exams, finishing up your essays and milestone quizzes, this will be the last edition of our newsletter! Here is our collection of interesting pieces of information we came across lately:

• Probably you heard of the race to space. (Technology Review) Is this the first step to democratizing access to space or will space travel just be another status symbol for the rich? And can we travel to space sustainably? Here are some insights into that question (LA Times)

• This article about the economy in MMO games raises some interesting questions about property and ownership in the digital world and linked to this article about venezuelans making a living with playing old video games. (Bloomberg.com)

• A chinese company (which is also affiliated with the military) is collecting data of pregnant women from around the world. At the same time the chinese government already imposed some policies to prevent data of their citizens (regarding health, but also e. g. autonomous driving) from leaving the country. (tagesspiegel.de, Article in German)

• Another interesting project is planning to implement Universal Basic Income for people around the globe, if they scan their irises. Many details are still unknown. (Vox.com)

Dear everybody,

As you may have already seen, the second assignment has been corrected. If you wondered how each exercise was marked, look at this forum post.

Also, you can find an Exam FAQ here that should answer your most pressing questions.

The office hours on Thursdays have been cancelled, but were replaced by two Nerd Nights.

There are two Nerd Nights on Monday, July 19 and Tuesday, July 27, starting at 18:00. On Nerd Nights, you can come together in an informal setting, chat with your fellow students and us, write on your essay, discuss, and maybe play some games. It also is an excellent opportunity to get some discussion protocols, if you are missing any. (The deadline for the fourth discussion protocol will be extended for those groups who attend the second Nerd Night.) We will meet in a wonder.me space where you can talk in small groups and freely move from one circle to another. The link will be provided in time. (Usually, there would also be free pizza. But since everything is digital this time, we can only give you digital pizza: 🍕)

Lastly, please fill in the course evaluation until July 15. It won’t take long and you will greatly help us and future students of the course:
https://qualis.uni-saarland.de/eva/?l=130551&p=7tnv09

Best wishes,
Your Ethics for Nerds team

There are various ways in which minorities can be disadvantaged in Big Tech. Here are two examples:

• If less data is available about minorities, which is likely the case in many applications, the predictions made for these groups are worse. (Technology Review)

• We still see a racial gap in the employment of black workers at Big Tech companies. (NY Times)

What are your thoughts on tackling these problems?

This week some interesting approaches are made to regulate Big Tech:
    • by the German Kartellamt which investigates Apple´s significance across markets
    • and also by the Congress in the U.S.: the „American Innovation and Choice Online Act“ and the „Ending Platform Monopolies Act“ will be voted on later this week. For an interesting podcast on the topic click here. Unsurprisingly, not everyone is happy with these proposals. If you want to know more about the topic of antitrust in the age of the digital, check out Amy Klobuchars Book "Antitrust", reviewed here.

Also interesting in the context of Filter Bubbles, Social Media and Fake News: private messengers are an increasingly important source of information for many persons. Why this can be problematic and what potential countermeasures could look like is described here.
 

Hello everybody,

The results for the first assignment have been uploaded! You can see them on your personal status page.

• If you have any questions about the correction, please come to the office hours or write us.
• Make sure to study our feedback in detail, even if you received many points on your submission.
• For team submissions: one person in your team has a pdf with the correction and with comments. Please make sure to get the pdf from them.
• There will be a sample solution for the assignment once the Late Deadline is over.
• For most of you, the dcms shows “not passed” in the Assignments section on your personal status page. Don’t worry! As long as the second assignment has not been corrected, you have to read that as “not passed yet”.

Best wishes,
your Ethics-for-Nerds Team

• The usage of synthetic data is increasing. This article sheds light on some possible consequences. (MIT Technology Review)
• Meanwhile in Germany, a new law was passed: „Bundestag gibt Staatstrojaner für Geheimdienste und Bundespolizei frei“ (Bundestag releases state Trojan for intelligence services and federal police) (heise.de, Article in German)

• The interaction between humans and AIs is becoming more and more complex. Recently an incident was reported, which might be the first attack of an autonomous weapon on a human (spiegel.de, Article in German).
• Hundreds of criminals have been caught because they used an app that was advertised as secure but has been closely monitored by the police. (tagesschau.de, Article in German)

Sometimes it is worth taking one step back and look at the bigger picture. How are computer science and also the ethical questions we discuss here embedded in the broader context of different societies? In Europe, NGOs filed a complaint against Clearview because of its use of facial recognition technology. (Bloomberg) In other parts of the world, even more intrusive technologies are tested on minorities, who barely have anyone to advocate for their rights and privacy. A recent example of this is an emotion recognition system the Chinese government is testing on the Uyghur minority (Click here for a short overview from netzpolitik.org in German and here for a more detailed article from BBC in English). An older example is the employment of biometric data for identification of recipients of humanitarian aid (Süddeutsche, Article in German)

In this talk Moshe Y. Yardi makes a case for more policy in addition to ethical discussions in the tech industry.

What we program can have severe impact on the lives of many people. This week we saw various alarming examples of this:

• a hacker attack on big US Pipelines (NY Times)
• a hacker attack on the Irish health system (tagesschau.de, Article in German)
• Israel is going to use AI in warfare (stern.de, Article in German)

But, with good ideas, lifes can also be saved. (spiegel.de, Article in German)

Apologies to our English speaking students for the majority of German sources in this edition, but with deepl.com you should be able to get a smooth translation.

Hello everybody,

The dcms will let you change your submissions of the Milestone Quizzes until July 25. We will gradually correct your Milestone Quizzes in the meantime already such that you get timely feedback on them. So, you can change your submission, but once we corrected your submissions, further changes will not be taken into account anymore. The same will hold for Assignments that are submitted after the regular deadline.

Best wishes!
Your Ethics for Nerds team

• Here comes some update on the Facebook vs. Trump issue!

• Signal had some cool idea to show instagram users which of their personal data is used in targeting ads. However, their ads were blocked by facebook. Anyone else feels slightly reminded of „The Circle“?

• Ethiopia is going to introduce a blockchain-based national student and teacher ID.

  What is your opinion on this? Does it solve pressing problems or do you agree with this reddit user, stating that this could be the first step towards very effective state surveillance? Or both?

• You have heard of the „Tragedy of the Commons“ and of Dual Use: Starlink might play a role in both (Spektrum, Article in German)

• Tomorrow, Facebook will decide if Trump will be allowed to return to his social media accounts. If not, he will have to continue sending emails. (NY Times)

• Cartoon: What would runaway nanobots do? And who is Eliezer Yudkowsky?

   

Every now and then we receive tips about incoherencies, ambiguities or even tangible errors in the slides and videos or we receive queries in the office hours or via mail that make it clear to us that we have explained something sub-optimally or simply did not think to add an explanatory example or the like. Due to the lecture mode caused by the current situation, we cannot simply address such things in the next session. Instead, we have decided to create a page for this in the dCMS that you can find here.

Furthermore, you can find new discussion questions for the part on deontological theories on the Discussions page.

We wish you a nice week, hopefully full of insights and interesting discussions!

Hello there,

here is your weekly digest of news from the real world.

Bad News: Many business models of Social Media sites are problematic. If you want to learn more about this, we recommend you to watch the 2020 documentary „The Social Dilemma“, which provides interesting insights into various topics which will be covered later in this lecture.
Good News? These business models might be changing: so Apples new features threatens facebooks business model, forcing them to adapt.
News from Saarland University: This human eye webcam was developed. What is your opinion on it?
News from the EU: EU outlines wide-ranging AI regulation, but leaves the door open for police surveillance
News from around the world (given a Saarlandian perspective): The Indian government asked Twitter to censor tweets concerning India's handling of the pandemic.

Have a nice week!

Hello everybody,

Apparently, there has been some confusion over the grouping process.

You need to be in a group in order to get the exam admisson. Check on your personal status page in the dcms whether you are in a group and whether you are in the group that you want to be in. If anything is wrong, please send me an email by the end of tomorrow.

You will receive an email by the end of this week with the email adresses of your team mates. This way, you can get in contact with the other team members in case that you did not already find each other via MS Teams.

Speaking of MS Teams: The implementation of MS Teams is very suboptimal. Some of you have a private channel in our team, but MS Teams does not allow for more than 30 private channels in one team. So, some of you will have to use a private chat outside of the team. (But, as far as we can tell, these does not lack any of the functionalites that a private channel has.)

Best wishes,
Sarah

The topics of this lecture are concerned with your future or current work and its impact. There are abundant examples of where ethical considerations are of importance in "the real world". So with this newsletter we want to provide you with some interesting additional reading material. You guessed it as soon as I said "additional":  none of this is exam-relevant. But you are invited to reflect on these topics, also with your group, to figure out what is problematic about certain pieces of information or practices. 

• Maybe you have heard of the "Apple Card" that supposedly gives men a higher credit limit than women? Here is some newer article stating that this might actually is not the case.
• Many terms in our language evolve over time to become more inclusive. This is also an ongoing debate in Computer Science and Programming languages: "‘Master,’ ‘Slave’ and the Fight Over Offensive Terms in Computing" (NY Times)
• Some regional news: The city of "Bitche" was blocked on Facebook, probably because of a slight similarity with another English word. (Saarbrücker Zeitung, Article in German)
• Cartoon: What is the difference between AI and AGI?

Hello everybody,

You can now see in which group you are. Just go on your personal status page and you will see who you are grouped with. If you are not in the group that you expected to be, get in touch with Sarah. Also, remember that you will not be able to get the exam admission if you do not have a group! So, write us if anything is amiss, and we will make sure that you will end up in a group.

Your group will get a private channel in MS teams. Some of you already have their channel. However, we ran into unexpected MS-Teams-problems (the number of private channels is capped at 30). When this issue is resolved, we will notify you.

You can find the form for the discussion protocols in the Materials section. Also, there is a page called “Discussions” in the dcms now. It contains general information on your discussion group meetings and it is also where we will publish inspiration for discussion questions each week.

Best wishes,
Sarah

Hello everybody,

Thanks for joining Ethics for Nerds! We’re happy that all of you are here and we’re looking forward to a great (yet remote) semester with you.

Kick-Off Meeting
There will be a kick-off meeting on Wednesday, 14 April, at 14:15 in our team in the university's MS Teams. We will walk you through everything you have to know about the course, answer your questions, and probably have some fun with trains. While we look forward to getting to know you all, attendance in the kick-off session is completely optional. Everything that is important will also be on the General Information page. So, don’t worry if you can’t make it.

Grouping Process
You will be part of a group of three to five people. You will have to discuss with your group members and you can solve assignments together. You can either find a group by yourselves, or you will be grouped by us based on your time slot preferences. (Once you are grouped, you can change meeting times as you wish. We suggest an hour per week.)

If you want to be grouped by us: just indicate your time preferences to us on your personal status page in the dcms by April 17. In this case, we will assume that you want to discuss in English.

If you want to find a group by yourself: one team member has to send us an email with the names of the all team members and your meeting time by April 17. Make sure to pick a meeting time that is ok for all group members. You can use the Forum to find a group, e.g. if you prefer to discuss in a language other than English.

The first week
The lecture officially starts with our kick-off on Wednesday and the first batch of lecture materials will be uploaded after our meeting. If you don’t want to wait that long, feel free to check out the first lecture module in the Materials section of the dcms. It will spawn on Monday morning.

General Information
You can find all kind of information on the dcms page called General Information. Be sure to check it out some time, as it tells you what you have to do to succeed in Ethics for Nerds.

We are looking forward to an exciting semester!
Your Ethics for Nerds team