Why people say they care about ethical shopping but often buy differently
https://phys.org/news/2026-02-people-ethical-buy-differently.html
> Many Canadians say they care about ethical products. They want coffee that supports farmers, chocolate made without child labor and everyday goods that are better for the environment.
We literally can’t hardwire #ethical laws into #machine_learning, any more than we can hardwire ethics into human kids, because, by definition, modern #AIs are adaptive rather than logic machines — they learn the culture around them.
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/chasing-the-mirage-of-ethical-ai/
Cory Doctorow, a fellow #Canadian, writes a lot of interesting stuff. I agree with his positions on many things, but not all. For example, I'm about ten thousand percent behind his opposition to anti-circumvention laws; I was one of the thousands of Canadians who wrote to the government opposing the introduction of the law many years ago.
However, his blog on Thursday, staking out the position that opposition to "AI" (LLM) is just geeky #purity culture is somewhere between "flat-out wrong" and "disingenuous at best".
My position against #LLM #slop everywhere is both because of #ethical #concerns and practical ones. There does not exist an LLM right now that was built and trained ethically; they are all statistical plagiarism machines, and speaking as someone whose #prose and #code has been plagiarized by every single one of them, that pisses me off, royally.
That's a show-stopper for me, but even if it wasn't, the #practical concerns - that the output is #untrustworthy, that the #references can't be checked, that the #code is #insecure and #unmaintainable, that the #licensing status is unclear, that it's a #copyright violation - are *also* enough to rule out #LLMs at present.
He then presents a #strawman argument - all tech is fruit of the poisoned tree, the #transistor was invented by a racist, etc. But William Shockley is not designing or manufacturing any of the transistors / #ICs I use today.
So, @doctorow - I gotta say I disagree. And that's fine.
(1/2) #Petition in #Canada to pass legislation that recognizes #animals as the sentient beings they are, rather than mere property.
Under current #Canadian #Law, animals are not considered sentient beings, and are classified as property;
Sentience is the ability to experience feelings and sensations, and is an #ethical basis for determining that animals deserve #moral consideration;
https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-6955
#SCOTUS Adopts ‘New’ Process To Avoid #ConflictsOfInterest 20 Years Too Late
The justices announce conflict-checking #software & new filing rules that lower #courts have used forever.
Only the #SupremeCourt could announce a bare minimum #ethical #guardrail that lower courts have used since the George W. Bush administration & act like it’s a bold blow against the appearance of impropriety.
#law #LegalEthics
https://abovethelaw.com/2026/02/supreme-court-adopts-new-process-to-avoid-conflicts-of-interest-20-years-too-late/
I gave Ars Technica the benefit of the doubt and put their half-assed, opaque response down to it happening outside of work hours. With Monday being a holiday, I gave them another day to post a proper response.
They didn't.
So I #cancelled my Ars subscription, and wrote them again. If you have an #Ars subscription and care at all about transparency in journalism, or about the ethics of undisclosed use of "AI" / LLMs in *writing* said #journalism, I encourage you to do the same.
My message today:
> [...] The article contained fabricated quotes from Shambaugh and was itself obviously the product
> of an LLM.
>
> I said that if you did not publish a proper correction, with full transparency about how your editorial
> standards were violated and what you were going to do to prevent this sort of ethical and journalistic
> lapse from reoccurring, I would cancel my subscription. A proper correction involves leaving the
> original text intact (so that the error can be seen) and adding a prominent notice of what was wrong,
> and what the correct version is.
>
> You have chosen not to do this. Instead, the original article was silently yanked, and you posted a
> mealy-mouthed half-admission of what happened, with no transparency into what part of your
> processes failed, who was responsible, or what is being done to prevent this from happening again.
>
> I have thus cancelled my subscription.
#ArsTechnica #AI #LLM #transparency #correction #ethics #ethical #failure
Nationwide Building Society (70),
Cumberland Building Society (72) and
Co-operative Bank (74)
Triodos Bank (Ethiscore (96/100)
https://ethicalrevolution.co.uk/better-banking/
#BeTheChange = more #Ethical #money + more #Ethical #Banks
Switching accounts is an easy process nowadays, taking just 7 working days from instruction.
Today's job search matches:
* "AI"
* "AI"
* "AI"
* "AI"
* algorithmic trading
* gambling
* weird non-engineering management role
* 3 x duplicate posting of the previous
* "innovative financial product", i.e. how to milk more fees from poor people
* Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft ... and laughably underpaid for a Principal Engineer role
* "FinOps and AI"
* "AI"
* Weirdly aggressive "If this isn't you, don't bother." at top of job description
* trying to replace human therapist with software
[...]
Every single one of those is in blatant contradiction with my personal ethical code, with the possible exception of the weird non-engineering role (which isn't described well) and the all-Microsoft shop one, which isn't my wheelhouse.
My industry has gone to shit.
#software #engineering #SoftwareEngineering #ethics #ethical #unethical #enshittification
David W. Jones
Poujol 𝖱𝗈𝗌𝗍 ✅
C.
NotDennisBonvie 🇨🇦
Nonilex
Collective Truth
Winston Smith
Life Japan