Senior researcher & lecturer at the Human-IST institute (University of Fribourg)
Associated researcher at the HIIG Berlin
Science & technology #STS | #DigitalSociety | #AIpolicy #AIgovernance #AIethics | Internet & society
President of the Swiss Federal Media Commission #EMEKCOFEM
| Personal website | https://annajobin.com/ |
| Personal blog | https://sociostrategy.com/ |
| Opinions | my own but if you like them you are free to adopt them, too |
| Pronouns | she/her |
Hey, AoIRfriends, in case you're wondering, aoir.social won't be allowing a bunch of AI-based accounts to set up here to experiment with trying to change your minds about anything.
And I'm sure none of us would seek to do that to other fediverse instances!
Natürlich auch online: https://www.20min.ch/story/emek-chefin-anna-jobin-social-media-dringender-handlungsbedarf-fuer-die-grundrechte-103334882
Es geht um die vom Bundesrat kürzlich aufgeschobene Plattformregulierung und die verpasste Chance, Nutzerrechte zu stärken.
In response to news of this unethical study, @sarahgilbert, @michaelzimmer, and I have published a statement:
- calling on ethics review boards, journal editorial boards, & reviewers to be extra vigilant to uphold ethics when generative AI research is still relatively recent
- calling on regulators & the technology industry to support transparency for digital experiments conducted on the public
We're grateful to ChangeMyView for bringing it to everyone's attention.
On April 26, moderators of r/ChangeMyView, a community on Reddit dedicated to understanding the perspectives of others, revealed that academic researchers from the University of Zürich conducted a large-scale, unauthorized AI experiment on their community. The researchers had used AI bots to secretly impersonate people for experiments in persuasion. Crucially, this experiment was carried out … Continue reading A Case For Ethical and Transparent Research Experiments in the Public Interest
Heute ist offensichtlich mein Medientag 😅
Hier sogar mit Foto und Namen auf der Titelseite 😱 (neben Döner, ChatGPT, 1. Mai und Viking Festival).
Interestingly, I have learned in another context, that Swiss journalists have a hard time finding researchers at Swiss institutions willing to comment on the record -- which surprises me and I wonder why. (Because of ill-placed collegiality? Because of UZH's institutional power? Or ...?)
Isn't it important to have conversations about both research ethics and digital ethics, including publicly? I fear that avoiding these might errode even further the already fragile public trust in academia...
Obviously, the deception and disregard for community norms is shocking. In addition, from a big picture view, it also hints towards another huge problem: academic research is concerned with ethical standards, whereas commercial platforms can analyze and influence their users without any ethical oversight, BUT: this does by no means excuse unethical research. On the contrary, it underlines how urgently we need more ethics and care in all digital spaces!
(in German: https://dnip.ch/2025/05/01/unautorisiertes-reddit-ki-cmv-experiment-verdaechtiges-institut-uzh/ )
Ok, a few of my thoughts on the infamous UZH Reddit-CMV AI experiment are now on the record🤖
Thanks to https://chaos.social/@adfichter for publishing my perspective on DNIP (in German): https://dnip.ch/2025/05/01/unautorisiertes-reddit-ki-cmv-experiment-verdaechtiges-institut-uzh/
[ETA correct user name]
1.97K Posts, 524 Following, 3.61K Followers · Swiss Investigative Journalist of the Year 2020, 2021 and 2024. Investigative Tech-Reporter Republik & Dnip.ch Interests: #Netzpolitik #Privacy #InfoSec #DigitaleEthik #Technology And: #cats #chess #music #redwine
We are delighted to share the publication of Risky Research: An AoIR Guide to Researcher Protection and Safety 2025, the culmination of over two years of collaborative effort by the AoIR Risky Research Working Group.
#ResearchEthics #DigitalEthics “Community-level experiments impact communities, not just individuals.”
For me, one of the most important sentences in an overall thoughtful declaration by reddit moderators (available here https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1k8b2hj/meta_unauthorized_experiment_on_cmv_involving/)whose community was not only studied by UZH researchers, but also unethically manipulated by their undisclosed, egregious AI-bots.
More infos [in German] here: https://dnip.ch/2025/04/28/reddit-user-mit-ki-bots-getaeuscht-das-fragwuerdige-experiment-der-universitaet-zuerich/
Instance Coffee
J. Nathan Matias 🦣
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