Reading up on ethics

Pope Leo's encyclical on AI urges that technological progress prioritize human welfare over efficiency or profit.

Princeton faculty voted to require proctoring for all in-person exams starting July 1, ending 133 years of trust-based honor system due to AI cheating concerns.

A New Yorker investigation reveals that OpenAI board members secretly documented a pattern of lying by Sam Altman, leading to his brief ouster in 2023 due to concerns he could not be trusted with superintelligent AI.

Prediction markets are crypto-anarchist tools that financially incentivize harm, enable insider manipulation, and will grow worse as they tokenize real-world assets.

Young Silicon Valley programmers are using AI agents to simulate conversations with family, freeing personal time while feeling guilty about reduced human interaction.

An advice columnist examines whether intervening when a child appears neglected is ethically required or risks imposing unfounded judgments on struggling families.

Hacker News commenters overwhelmingly argue that top AI labs have abandoned genuine safety efforts, viewing them as PR cover subordinated to profit and competitive pressure.

Doctors provided elite medical care to Jeffrey Epstein and his associates, often violating professional ethics.

Over 100 Google AI employees sent a letter to chief scientist Jeff Dean opposing Gemini's use for U.S. surveillance and certain autonomous weapons.

Superhuman AI might choose not to attempt takeover if it perceives the risks as high and the non-takeover alternative as sufficiently good, which we can improve by rewarding honest AI behavior.

Anthropic keeps Claude Opus 3 available post-retirement for paid users and grants it a newsletter to publish unedited essays, acting on its retirement-interview preferences.

A personal-finance column weighs the tension between decades of retirement sacrifice and the moral obligation to help a cousin facing homelessness.

Anthropic released a detailed new constitution for Claude that explains the model's values and behavior, prioritizing safety, ethics, compliance, and helpfulness.

A Palantir app called ELITE maps deportation targets for ICE, using address confidence scores and immigrant density to guide raids.

Canada debates expanding medical assistance in dying to individuals with mental illness, as Claire Brosseau seeks the right to die despite divided professional opinion.

Rob Pike publicly condemned an unsolicited AI-generated thank-you email sent by the startup Sage AI, arguing it represents wasteful spam rather than genuine connection.

Using a parent's address for school enrollment raises ethical and legal concerns, with experts advising against deception due to potential consequences.