Gen AI Ethics – Material for Undergrad classes

Undergrad-Friendly Readings, Podcasts, & Videos for Discussions on LLM (‘AI’) Ethics 

How LLMs (Gen AI) work: 

  1. ’Generative AI exists Because of the Transformer: This is how it works’ – Financial Times Visual StoryTelling Team and Madhumita Murgia 
  2. ‘How AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Bard work – visual explainer’ – Seán Clarke, Dan Milmo, & Garry Blight 
  3. ‘Watch an AI learn to write by reading nothing but ________’ – by Aatish Bhatia 
  4. A jargon-free explanation of how AI large language models work – Timothy B. Lee & Sean Trott
  5. Tiktok – chatgpt doesn’t know anything – mor10web 
  6. Evaluating Large Language Models Using “Counterfactual Tasks” – Melanie Mitchell

Ethics in Education: 

  1. ‘AI can do your homework. Now what? Students and teachers grapple with the rise of the chatbots.’ – Joss Fong, Vox
  2. Opinion: AI-assisted Writing is close to becoming as standard as spell-check. Here’s the catch. – Jane Rosenzweig
  3. ‘Four Rules for Writing in the Age of AI’ – Jane Rosenzweig
  4. ‘In Defense of the Blank Page. Why Generative AI Should Not Replace Writer’s Block – Vincent Carchidi
  5. ‘AI-Detectors Biased Against Non-Native English Writers’ – Andrew Myers
  6. Our Obsession with Cheating is Ruining Our Relationship with Students – Marc Watkins

Summary of ethical issues:

  1. AI IMPACT RISK – An acronym to remember generative AI downsides – Jon Ippolito
  2. ‘AI Causes Real Harm. Let’s Focus on That over the End-of-Humanity Hype’ – Alex Hanna & Emily M. Bender
  3. ‘AI is dangerous, but not for the reasons you think’ – Sasha Luccioni
  4. ‘Limitations of Chat-GPT’ – Radical AI podcast with Emily M. Bender & Casey Fiesler

Current Examples of AI Gone Wrong:

These are some (primarily 2024) examples of Generative AI gone wrong to discuss in the classroom. 

  1. The antithesis of the Olympics: Using AI to write a fan letter – Linda Holmes, NPR
  2. Elon Musk’s X pushed a fake headline about Iran attacking Israel. X’s AI chatbot Grok made it up – Matt Binder, Mashable
  3. NYC’s AI Chatbot Tells Businesses to Break the Law – Colin Lecher, The Markup
  4. AI-Powered World Health Chatbot is Flubbing Some Answers – Jessica Nix, Bloomberg
  5. Facebook’s AI Told Parents Group It Has a Gifted, Disabled Child – Jason Koebler, 404 Media
  6. A car dealership added an AI chatbot to its site. Then all hell broke loose – Katie Notopoulos, Business Insider
  7. Google is paying Publishers to Test an Unreleased Gen AI platform – Mark Stenberg, Adweek
  8. A news site used AI to write articles. It was a journalistic disaster – Paul Farhi, Washington Post
  9. AI Invents Quote From Real Person in Article by Bihar News Site: A Wake-up Call? – Karan Mahadik, The Quint
  10. Trump supporters target black voters with faked AI images – Mariana Spring, BBC
  11. Carl T. Bergstrom: AI generated illustrations in a scientific paper — rat balls edition
  12. Eating disorder helpline disables chatbot for ‘harmful’ responses after firing human staff – Chloe Xiang, Vice

Anthropomorphization of Machines & Dehumanization of Humans:

  1. ‘Talking about large language models’ – Murray Shanahan  
  2. ‘Resisting dehumanization in the age of AI’ – Emily Bender, at the International Cognitive Science Society Conference

Information Literacy: 

Both of these web articles report on a research article by Shah & Bender about the potential issues with using LLMs as search engines.

  1. ‘Chatbots could one day replace search engines. Here’s why that’s a terrible idea.’ – Will Douglas Heaven
  2. ‘All-knowing machines are a fantasy: Beware the human-sounding ChatGPT’ – Emily M. Bender & Chirag Shah

Misinformation, Online Ecosystem, & Elections: 

  1. Bots, Ballots, and You – Jon Ippolito for the 2024 Maine Town Hall with Michael Socolow
  2. OpenAI deactivates ChatGPT accounts linked to Iranian disinformation operation – Sam Sabin, Axios
  3. ‘Computers just got a lot better at writing’ – Vox 
  4. ‘AI platforms like Chat-GPT are easy to use but also potentially dangerous’ – Gary Marcus 
  5. ‘When AI Chatbots Hallucinate’ – Karen Weise and Cade Metz

Bias: 

  1. Covert Racism in LLMs – Gary Marcus, based on paper from Hofmann, Kalluri, Jurafsky, & King
  2. ‘How AI reduces the world to stereotypes’ – Victoria Turk
  3. ‘How I’m fighting bias in algorithms’ – Joy Buolamwini
  4. ‘Jazmia Henry: Building Inclusive NLP’

Labor (in creating LLM models): 

  1. ‘Exclusive: OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic’ – Billy Perrigo
  2. The Hidden Workforce that Helped Filter Violence and Abuse out of Chat-GPT – Karen Hao

Labor (effect on workforce/copyright): 

  1. ‘“AI” Hurts Consumers and Workers – and Isn’t Intelligent’ – Alex Hanna & Emily Bender
  2. ‘Call the AI Quack Doctor’ – Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 – Alex Hanna & Emily Bender
  3. ‘Beware the Robo-Therapist’ – Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 – Alex Hanna & Emily Bender ft. Hannah Zeavin
  4. ‘How LLMs are Breaking the News’ – Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 – Alex Hanna & Emily Bender ft. Karen Hao
  5. ‘Is AI art actually art?’ – Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 – Alex Hanna & Emily Bender ft.  Johnathan Flowers, Jennifer Lena, & Negar Rostamzedeh
  6. How AI is Changing the Music Industry – Scott Tong interviewing Professor Ben Camp

Environment: 

  1. ‘AI is dangerous, but not for the reasons you think’ – Sasha Luccioni
  2. Generative Ai is a Climate Disaster – Tech Won’t Save us Podcast – Paris Marx ft Sasha Luccioni
  3. A ‘thirsty’ AI boom could deepen Big Tech’s water crisis – CNBC International, citing research from Shaolei Ren
  4. Electricity Grids Creak as AI demands soar
css.php