Media Mentions

While you don’t want to get too far into the weeds, you can ask for the sources of data that the system is being trained on, says Ann Skeet, senior director of leadership ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and coauthor of Ethics in the Age of Disruptive Technologies: An Operational Roadmap. “[Directors] can also advise proactively choosing an AI system that has an identifiable training data set.”

Ann Skeet, senior director, leadership ethics, quoted by Chief Executive Magazine.

The timing of the most recent civil grand jury report, "Irreconcilable Differences," is critical of the Santa Clara City Council majority, makes many claims of misconduct, and according to John Pelissero, Ethics Center director of government ethics, only adds to the "besmirched reputation" of the Santa Clara City Council.

Pelissero acknowledged that codes of conduct laying out ethical behavior are often vague, but added that they are “ethically aspirational.” 

“These codes are often designed to reinforce ways of managing positive conflict so that the Council can act in the interests of people of the city,” he said. “The majority don’t seem to understand the virtue of having ethical discourse. It isn’t in the public interest to have a dysfunctional city council.”

John Pelisssero, director, government ethics, quoted by The Silicon Valley Voice.

If we are bringing prolific liars live on an election debate, our responsibility to truth-telling and truth-determination requires that we make a sincere attempt to vet their claims within a few minutes of them being aired. This is when the audience of millions is in the frame of comparing candidates. And when those claims are dubious, it is an act of ethical journalism to intervene to ask its promoters to defend with actual evidence, or call them out.

Subramaniam Vincent, director, journalism and media ethics, published by Forbes.

The Fresno Bee reports that police officer Jordan Wamhoff’s attempt to gain concessions from the city over Fresno Chief Paco Balderrama’s affair with his wife does not rise to the level of extortion or appear to cross legal lines. John Pelissero, Ethics Center director, government ethics, weighed in.

“You have a leader of the police department who’s violated his oath of office and engaged in inappropriate behavior with one of his subordinates’ spouses,” he said in a phone interview with The Bee. “But the issue here, at the end of the day is really, who’s looking out for the public’s interest here rather than the private interest of the chief? He clearly put his personal interests ahead of serving the public here.”

John Pelissero, director, government ethics, quoted by The Fresno Bee (paywall) and republished by Yahoo News.

Is generative AI a “personal productivity tool,” as some tech executives have argued, or primarily a destroyer-of-trust-in-tech-companies device?

In the process of rushing to deploy products, however, those companies are not just disrupting themselves. By hyping their generative AI products beyond recognition and pushing for their adoption by people who don’t understand the limitations of those products, they are disrupting our access to accurate information, our privacy and security, our communication with other humans and our perception of all the various organizations (including government agencies and nonprofits) that are adopting and deploying flawed generative AI tools.

Irina Raicu, director, Internet ethics, published by The Mercury News.

Five councilmembers rejected a ballot measure that would have improved the city’s ethics commission, which is currently investigating cases involving current and former lawmakers.

Eli Wolf, reporting for The Oaklandside, asks, "Is it a conflict to have lawmakers decide the budget of a watchdog agency that has the power to investigate and penalize them?"

“In most cities the council is the one that has got to approve the budget, and that budget is just part of their legislative authority,” says John Pelissero, director, government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.

John Pelisssero, director, government ethics, quoted by The Oaklandside.

Nothing comes close to a flashpoint like Forbes’ recent accusation about Perplexity AI. This is a unique moment because it is about journalistic labor and form.

"What’s missing in all the back and forth about the adequacy, or not, of citations, traffic referrals, and rights is a discussion on a fundamental question: What is the future of the journalistic form? Paywalled or not, are we headed to a future where journalists are merely laboring to supply tokens (pun intended) to large language models and their applications?"

Subbu Vincent, director, journalism and media ethics, published in Forbes.

According to Ann Skeet, senior director at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University and author of the book Ethics in the Age of Disruptive Technologies, Anthropic has an organizational structure that differentiates it from other startups. of AI. “They established themselves as a public benefit corporation [PBC, a corporation created to generate benefits for society and operate in a responsible and sustainable manner]. This allows them to consider other interests when making decisions, in addition to investor profits,” Skeet told Época NEGÓCIOS. Furthermore, they introduced a compliance structure with five members with no financial interest in the company, who appoint and dismiss some of the board members.

“With this, they intend to align corporate governance with the mission of developing AI aimed at the well-being of society”, explains the expert. 

Ann Skeet, senior director, leadership ethics, quoted by Época NEGÓCIOS. (The original article is in Portuguese. Select English for translation.)