The Grey Hoodie Project: Big Tobacco, Big Tech, and the Threat on Academic Integrity

Abdalla, Mohamed; Abdalla, Moustafa

doi:10.1145/3461702.3462563

Cited by 45 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…An interesting question in this regard is how do managers instrumentalize AI ethics or build on information asymmetries to pursue their own career goals? Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook role has recently received critical attention (Abdalla & Abdalla, 2020;Zuboff, 2021). Thus, agency theory raises questions, such as: how does machinewashing impact agency cost?…”

Section: Micro-level Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Greenwashing to Machinewashing: A Model and Future Directions Derived from Reasoning by Analogy

Seele

Schultz

2022

J Bus Ethics

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This article proposes a conceptual mapping to outline salient properties and relations that allow for a knowledge transfer from the well-established greenwashing phenomenon to the more recent machinewashing. We account for relevant dissimilarities, indicating where conceptual boundaries may be drawn. Guided by a “reasoning by analogy” approach, the article addresses the structural analogy and machinewashing idiosyncrasies leading to a novel and theoretically informed model of machinewashing. Consequently, machinewashing is defined as a strategy that organizations adopt to engage in misleading behavior (communication and/or action) about ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI)/algorithmic systems. Machinewashing involves misleading information about ethical AI communicated or omitted via words, visuals, or the underlying algorithm of AI itself. Furthermore, and going beyond greenwashing, machinewashing may be used for symbolic actions such as (covert) lobbying and prevention of stricter regulation. By outlining diverse theoretical foundations of the established greenwashing domain and their relation to specific research questions, the article proposes a machinewashing model and a set of theory-related research questions on the macro, meso, and micro-level for future machinewashing research. We conclude by stressing limitations and by outlining practical implications for organizations and policymakers.

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Section: Micro-level Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Greenwashing to Machinewashing: A Model and Future Directions Derived from Reasoning by Analogy

Seele

Schultz

2022

J Bus Ethics

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“…However, that task is significantly undermined when Big Tech pays for its own research. Abdalla and Abdalla (2021) draw a comparison between Big Tech and Big Tobacco, who as a result of increasing pressure began to sponsor academic research in the medical and biological sciences in order to influence policy makers and the general public regarding the health effects of smoking. The same is happening with Big Tech regarding academic research: “the funding of academic research as a tool used by Big Tech to put forward a socially responsible public image, influence events hosted by and decisions made by funded universities, influence the research questions and plans of individual scientists, and discover receptive academics who can be leveraged.” To measure the influence of sponsored academic research the authors examine the funding of tenure-track researchers in the “computer science department at 4 R1 (top PhD granting) universities: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), UofT, Stanford, and Berkeley.…”

Section: Democratic Renewal: a Democratic “Arms Race” In Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Educational futures after COVID-19: Big tech and pandemic profiteering versus education for democracy

Norris

2022

Policy Futures in Education

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To address the dramatic economic contraction brought on by the global pandemic, governments at all levels have taken on tremendous debt in order to provide economic stability and prevent a more dramatic collapse. It is likely that, as the initial phase of the pandemic passes, familiar neoliberal austerity claims about the necessity to trim education budgets will gain greater force and acceptance. However, I suggest that these neoliberal policies demand sacrifices of the wrong constituency: Given that Big Tech has amassed huge sums of money over the course of the pandemic, how is it morally justifiable that tech companies benefit from the pandemic while educational institutions shoulder the financial fallout of pandemic government spending? In this paper, I first outline how Big Tech profits from the education sector during the pandemic even as it undermines the democratic function of education in doing so. I then situate these more specific critiques within a broader consideration of the role technology plays in undermining a democratic society. In conclusion, I argue that a pandemic profiteering tax for Big Tech represents the best short-term solution to get ahead of the “austerity curve” and ensure that the COVID-19 crisis serves as an opportunity to deepen our commitments to promoting the democratic function education. Without such commitments, the pandemic will become the turning point at which Big Tech effectively coopts public education for its own ends, to the detriment of democracy. My underlying claim is that technology is in conflict with both democracy and education. This runs against the widespread notion that technology will help promote learning, and that technology helps inform and connect people and therefore helps promote democracy. In what follows I dispel such notions.

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“…While greenwashing refers to the discrepancy between the claims companies make about the environmental impact of their products/services and their actual environmental impact (Voinea and Uszkai 2020), ethics washing denotes the proclaimed adherence to ethical standards by AI companies in order to escape regulation and to reassure customers and other stakeholders of their ethical commitment (Bietti 2020;Wagner 2016;Peukert and Kloker 2020;Rességuier and Rodrigues 2020). Besides in the creation of AI working groups meant to issue guidelines for ethical AI, ethics washing is also manifested in ethics partnerships for AI, such as in the employment by industry of in-house philosophers and ethicists with little or no influence on design processes or business operations (Bietti 2020), and also in the funding by Big Tech of academic work on responsible or ethical AI, which is really meant to obscure problems regarding business practices or the political implications of AI systems (Abdalla and Abdalla 2021;Ebell et al 2021).…”

Section: From Ethics Washing To the Bureaucratization Of Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The emperor is naked

Vică¹,

Voinea²,

Uszkai³

2021

InfTars

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With AI permeating our lives, there is widespread concern regarding the proper framework needed to morally assess and regulate it. This has given rise to many attempts to devise ethical guidelines that infuse guidance for both AI development and deployment. Our main concern is that, instead of a genuine ethical interest for AI, we are witnessing moral diplomacies resulting in moral bureaucracies battling for moral supremacy and political domination. After providing a short overview of what we term ‘ethics washing’ in the AI industry, we analyze the 2021 UNESCO Intergovernmental Meeting of Experts (Category II) tasked with drafting the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and show why the term ‘moral diplomacy’ is better suited to explain what is happening in the field of the ethics of AI. Our paper ends with some general considerations regarding the future of the ethics of AI.

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The Grey Hoodie Project: Big Tobacco, Big Tech, and the Threat on Academic Integrity

Cited by 45 publications

References 18 publications

From Greenwashing to Machinewashing: A Model and Future Directions Derived from Reasoning by Analogy

From Greenwashing to Machinewashing: A Model and Future Directions Derived from Reasoning by Analogy

Educational futures after COVID-19: Big tech and pandemic profiteering versus education for democracy

The emperor is naked

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