Justin Vanessus 02 http://feed.informer.com/digests/0KHJWMMJWS/feeder Justin Vanessus 02 Respective post owners and feed distributors Tue, 24 May 2016 21:13:03 +0000 Feed Informer http://feed.informer.com/ Are $100K H-1B Visas a Good Idea? https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/09/are-100k-h-1b-visas-good-idea.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:b1b64cee-0123-1692-aa73-881d5cc3b3d9 Mon, 22 Sep 2025 10:38:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">President Trump seems to think so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The H-1B visa was intended to be used by foreigners wishing to work in the United States in "an occupation that requires theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge" and typically requires a bachelors' degree or higher.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>When President Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990 creating the H-1B as we know it today, it established a quota of persons to be admitted and required that companies hiring such people fill out a Labor Condition Application, which showed that it was unusually hard to find such qualified individuals in the existing U. S. labor pool.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">On the face of it, the H-1B visa sounds like a good idea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If we are going to allow immigration at all (a question that is more debatable now than it has been in the past), it would make sense to choose those immigrants who are more capable of contributing to the economy in employment sectors where there are presently shortages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But there are always unintended consequences for any law, and lately there have been accusations that the H-1B system has been abused by companies simply wanting to hire cheaper foreign workers for jobs that they could fill with better-paid U. S. workers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Evaluating the truth of that accusation is something I'm not personally prepared to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But the current H-1B visas are allocated largely by lottery, plus a nominal fee of a few hundred dollars, and a recent article in the <i>Los Angeles Times</i> indicates that companies have been gaming the lottery system by putting in multiple applications for the same person or position.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Authorities claim they have changed the rules to reduce such abuse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But clearly there is room for improvement in the way the H-1B visa is administered.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">President Trump's solution to these problems is to raise the annual fee for an H-1B visa holder to at least $100,000, with a variety of more expensive visas for which the main qualification is that you're already rich and can pay a million dollars or more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Some statistics cited by the <i>LA Times</i> indicate that many H-1B visa holders may be earning as little as $60,000 a year, which is both an indication that the prevailing wages in the high-tech industry are not being paid as they should be for these visa holders, and that slapping a $100K surcharge on such visas will simply make most of them disappear, along with the current visa holders.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">There are two main groups of stakeholders in this situation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>One group consists of high-tech U. S. firms wanting to hire the best workers at the lowest wages they can get by with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Another group (or set of groups) are foreign workers who are qualified to do high-tech jobs, and would like to do them in the U. S.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Over 70% of H-1B visa holders are from India, it turns out, but there are other countries involved as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Adam Smith's invisible hand would let these workers in at whatever wage they would accept, which would be way below the prevailing U. S. wage scale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>While Smith's rule about trade barriers (namely, the fewer the better) was intended for goods, not people, extending it to free immigration is in the spirit if not the letter of his ideas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In the free-for-all of illegal immigration we have seen over the last few years before Trump came into office, high-tech companies have not benefited as much as they might have, because even with troops of lawyers at their disposal they would find it difficult to blatantly violate immigration law on a large scale, in contrast to the thousands of construction and other more menial jobs that most illegal immigrants find to do, at least at first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">On the other extreme, you have people such as President Trump and my late friend Steve Unger, who was a classic "leftie" of the old school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Two more different personalities can scarcely be imagined, but on this issue I think they would agree:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>keep out them durn foreigners so that U. S. workers can make higher wages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">If you take this principle to an extreme, we would halt all immigration of whatever kind, even for temporary student visas, which are a kind of back-door way that many well-qualified foreigners get here in the first place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>From personal experience, I can tell you that would be an unmitigated disaster for U. S. higher education, which depends on non-U. S. citizens for a large fraction of its students and ultimately professors, who have to start out as students. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Would wages for high-tech jobs and graduate students go up?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Perhaps some, but that assumes other things are equal, and after a while they wouldn't be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It's easy to forget that the world's most important resource is people, not rare-earth minerals or oil or even water and air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>We are a nation of immigrants, and historically we have turned that into a unique strength by means of converting all kinds of immigrants to something called the American Way.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But if the American Way turns into something that people from other countries either can't afford, or can't buy into for some other reason, be it political, ethnic, or what have you, then the future of this country is dim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>We have had practically open borders with toleration of scofflaws for far too long, and it makes sense to reform the system so that the rule of law becomes more respected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But it should be a rule of law, not a rule of men, or of one man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And laws, or rules, that change with the whims of one energetic guy in the White House are hard to have respect for.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">In sum, the hundred-thousand-dollar H-1B visa looks a lot like the tariff situation or the random roundups by masked ICE enforcers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It's flashy, attracts a lot of attention and support from President Trump's base, but makes little logical sense in the greater scheme of things if you look at it from a practical view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Not only the H-1B visa system, but the whole immigration process needs a major overhaul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But in a republic, the ideas for the overhaul should originate with the public who is concerned, as well as stakeholders such as high-tech companies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That's not being done, and until it is done, we can expect further chaos and distress among highly qualified people who are here to contribute to our economy and just want to better their lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The <i>Los Angeles Times</i> carried the article "India expresses concern about Trump's move to hike fees for H-1B visas" at <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-09-20/india-expresses-concern-about-trump-plan-to-hike-fees-on-h-1b-visas-that-bring-tech-workers-to-us">https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-09-20/india-expresses-concern-about-trump-plan-to-hike-fees-on-h-1b-visas-that-bring-tech-workers-to-us</a> on Sept. 20, 2025.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I also referred to the Wikipedia article on the H-1B visa</p><p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> Data Centers On the Grid: Ballast or Essential Cargo? https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/09/data-centers-on-grid-ballast-or.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:f2a9d575-89f2-f439-bcc4-f2225262497a Mon, 15 Sep 2025 10:35:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Back in the days of sailing ships, the captain had a choice when a storm became so severe that it threatened to sink the ship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>He could throw the cargo overboard, lightening the ship enough to save it and its crew for another day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But doing that would ruin any chance of profiting from the voyage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">It was a hard decision then, and an equally hard decision is facing operators of U. S. power grids as they try to cope with increasing demand for reliable power from data centers, many of which are being built to power the next generation of artificial-intelligence (AI) technologies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">An Associated Press report by Marc Levy reveals that one option many grid operators are considering is to write into their agreements with new data centers an option to cut off power to them in emergencies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Texas, which is served by a power grid which is largely independent of the rest of the country's networks, recently passed a law that prescribes situations in which the grid operator can disconnect big electricity users such as semiconductor-fab plants and data centers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This is not an entirely new practice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For some years, large utility customers have taken the option of being disconnected in emergencies such as extremely hot or cold days that put a peak strain on the grid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Typically they receive a discount for normal power usage when they allow the grid operator to have that option.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But according to Levy, the practice is being considered in other parts of the country as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A large grid operator called PJM Interconnection serves 65 million customers in the mid-Atlantic region.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>They have proposed a rule similar to the one adopted in Texas for their data-center customers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But an organization called the Digital Power Network, which includes data-center operators and bitcoin miners, another big energy user class, complained that if PJM adopts this policy, it may scare off future investment in data centers and cause them to flee to other parts of the U. S.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Another concern is rising electricity prices, which some attribute to the increased demand by data centers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>These prices are being borne by the average consumer, who in effect is subsidizing the gargantuan power needs of data centers, which typically pay less than residential consumers per kilowatt anyway.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">In a way, this issue is just an extreme example of a problem that power-grid operators have faced since there were power grids:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>how to handle peak loads.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Historically, electricity has to be generated at the same time it's consumed, although there is some progress recently in battery storage of electricity, though not enough to make much of a large-scale difference yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This immediacy requires a power grid to have enough generating capacity to supply the peak load—the most electricity they will ever have to supply on the hottest (or coldest) day under worst-case situations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The problem with peak loads from an economic view is that many of those generating facilities sit idle most of the time, not producing a return on their investment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>So it's always been a tradeoff between taking a chance that your grid will manage the peak load and scrimping on capacity, versus spending enough to make sure you have margin even with the worst peak load imaginable, but having a lot of useless generators and network stuff on your hands most of the time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">When the electric utility business was highly regulated and companies had a guaranteed rate of return, they could build excess capacity without being punished by the market.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But since the deregulatory era of the 1970s, and especially in hyper-free-market environments such as Texas, the grids no longer have this luxury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This is one reason why load-shedding (the practice of cutting off certain big customers in emergencies) looks so attractive now:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>instead of building excess capacity, the grid operator can simply throw some switches and pull through an emergency while ticking off only a few big customers, rather than cutting it off to everybody, including the old ladies who might freeze or die of heat exhaustion without power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Understandably, the data-center operators are upset.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><i>They</i> don't want to spend the money on backup generators that they would rather the grid operators spend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But the semiconductor manufacturers have learned how to do this already, and build costs for giant emergency-generation facilities into their budgets from the start.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Some data-center operators are starting to build their own backup generators so that they can agree to go off-grid in emergencies without interrupting their operations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>After all, it's a lot easier to restart a data center after a shutdown than a semiconductor plant, which could suffer extreme damage after a disorganized shutdown that could put it out of action for months and cost many millions of dollars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Compared to plants that make real stuff, data centers can easily offload work to other centers in different parts of the country, or even outside the U. S.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>So if there is a regional power emergency, and a global operation such as Google has to shut down one data center, they have plenty more to take up the slack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">It looks to me like the data centers don't have much of a rhetorical leg to stand on when they argue that they shouldn't be subjected to load-shedding agreements like many other large power users tolerate already.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>We are probably seeing the usual huffing and puffing that accompanies an industry-wide shift to a policy that makes sense for consumers, power-grid operators, and even the data centers themselves, if they agree to take more responsibility for their own power in emergencies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">If electricity gets expensive enough, data-center operators will have an incentive to figure out how to do what they do more efficiently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>There's plenty of low-power technology out there developed for the Internet of Things and personal electronics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>We all want cheap electricity, but if it's too cheap it leads to inefficiencies that are wasteful on a large scale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Parts of California in the 1970s had water bills that were practically indistinguishable from zero.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>When I moved out there to school in 1972 from water-conscious Texas, I was amazed to see shopkeepers cleaning their sidewalks every morning, not with a broom, or a leafblower, but with a spray hose, washing down the whole sidewalk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I don't think they do that anymore, and I don't think we should guarantee all data centers that they'll never lose power in an emergency either.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Marc Levy's article "US electric grids under pressure from power-hungry data centers" appeared on the Associated Press website on Sept. 13 at <a href="https://apnews.com/article/big-tech-data-centers-electricity-energy-power-texas-pennsylvania-46b42f141d0301d4c59314cc90e3eab5">https://apnews.com/article/big-tech-data-centers-electricity-energy-power-texas-pennsylvania-46b42f141d0301d4c59314cc90e3eab5</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> The Fading Glory of Subsidiarity https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-fading-glory-of-subsidiarity.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:9c00ef93-2796-c1aa-7b7e-888f5fe95fba Mon, 08 Sep 2025 10:56:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I'll get to subsidiarity in a minute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>First, here is why I'm writing about it this morning.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">For many years, I have subscribed to the <i>Austin American-Statesman</i>, first in its hard-copy paper form, and then when that got insupportably expensive, in its digital form only.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Already by then, it was owned by a large media conglomerate called the Cox Media Group, but the operations and editorial control of the paper remained in Austin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>An outfit called GateHouse Media bought it from Cox in 2018, but relatively little changed when the owners of GateHouse bought the company that ran <i>USA Today</i>, Gannett Media, and moved the <i>Statesman</i> under the Gannett umbrella.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That caused some changes, but they were tolerable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Back in February 2025, however, Gannett sold the <i>Statesman</i> to Hearst Communications, another media conglomerate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">This may or may not have anything to do with what happened to me this week, but I suspect it does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I've been accustomed to propping my iPad on the breakfast table and reading the "e-edition" of the <i>Statesman</i> along with having my cereal and orange juice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The software worked reasonably well most of the time, and until Wednesday of this week (Sept. 3) everything went smoothly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Suddenly on Wednesday, I was asked for a password, and the system rejected it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>After futilely trying to reset the password and getting no response from the paper's system, I called a help number and got connected to a man who said there was a software problem, and I should uninstall the <i>Statesman</i> app on my iPad and reinstall it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I tried that Thursday, but it didn't help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Then I tried pretending I was a new subscriber (although I had found a place online which said my subscription was paid up until December of 2025), and tried to subscribe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><i>That</i> didn't even work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Finally, I called the help line again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I spoke to one person, who silently connected me to another person, who sounded like she was working in a boiler room with fifteen other people crowded into a space the size of a VW bus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">She tried to identify me by name and phone number, and all those records had been lost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>(This was also the case when I called the day before).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Finally, she could locate me by street address, but it said I wasn't a subscriber.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I asked if she could look up my subscription record to tell when it expired.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>She said because of the transfer to Hearst they didn't have that information, and would I like to subscribe now?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Seeing no other option, I said yes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I'd already spent about half an hour on the phone, and I figured this was the only way to get my paper back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It took about twenty minutes for her to take my information and put it in the system, and I could hear her asking for help in the background.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Then it took another twenty minutes for me to log on and get my new subscription going, and we never could change the password they started me with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The entire megilla cost me an hour of time I was not planning to spend, and $360 for a year's subscription to the e-edition only, which was the price point that made me cancel the hard-copy edition a few years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>We've had some inflation since then, but not that much.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">If there is anybody under 40 reading this, you are probably wondering why this old guy is insisting on paying that much money for stuff that I could get for free.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Well, while I disagree with the editorial positions of the <i>Statesman </i>staff on most matters, it is still an edited entity that does a fairly good job of telling me what's been going on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And for another thing, you can't find that many comics all in one place on the internet for free, or if you can I don't know where to go.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Now for subsidiarity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It is a term from Catholic social teaching which describes the principle that "issues should be dealt with at the most immediate or local level that is consistent with their resolution."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That's according to Wikipedia, and while that source is slanted on some matters, they are right on with this definition.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Going straight to my problem with the <i>Statesman</i>, most of the paper is written and edited thirty-five miles away up in Austin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The issue of my e-edition was a local issue, not going any farther in principle than Austin and San Marcos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The principle of subsidiarity says that the problem with my subscription, and the list of when I've subscribed, and my credit balance which has apparently vanished into the bit void, and my passwords, and whatever other stuff is relevant to the problem <i>including the authority to do something about it</i>, should all be right there in Austin, and not stuck in some anonymous server farm in Seattle and controlled from a boiler-room operation in God knows where, and owned by a corporation based in Manhattan which clearly doesn't give a flip about how it treats its new customers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Simply because technology did not yet permit otherwise, newspaper operations prior to about 1970 had to be local, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If my father had a problem with his subscription to the <i>Fort Worth Star-Telegram</i>, he'd get on the phone and call their office downtown.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A human being less than 20 miles away would answer the phone, and flip through physical pages of paper until he or she found the hand-written subscription records, and the issue would be resolved, or not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>People made mistakes with paper records too, but they were more easily resolved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I have no idea what's gone wrong with my subscription to the <i>Statesman</i>, but again, only God knows exactly what the problem is, where all the loose ends are, and whether and how it can be resolved, because it's now so complex and involves incompatible computer systems and who knows what else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I don't have an answer to this problem, except to point out that if we try moving toward systems that are more in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, a lot of these kinds of problems might take care of themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I referred to the Wikipedia articles on subsidiarity and the <i>Austin American-Statesman</i></p><p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> Will AI Doom A Good Chunk of Hollywood? https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/09/will-ai-doom-good-chunk-of-hollywood.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:0627fc93-8d32-14c6-62d3-1b443f56700e Mon, 01 Sep 2025 11:03:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">This week's <i>New Yorker</i> carries an article by Joshua Rothman about what artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to do to the arts, broadly speaking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I'd like to focus on one particularly creepy novelty that AI has recently empowered:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>the ability of three guys (one in the U. S., one in Canada, and one in Poland) to produce fully realized short movies without actors, sets, cameras, lights, or any of the production equipment familiar to the motion-picture industry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The collaborators, who call themselves AI OR DIE, use only prompts to their AI software to do what they do.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I spent a few minutes sampling some of their wares.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Their introductory video appears to show what a camera sees while it progresses through a mobile-home park, into one home, where the door opens, another door opens, and finally a piece of toast appears, floating in the air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Another one-minute clip shows a big guy pretending to be a karate-type expert knocking down smaller harmless people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If all the characters in that clip were creations of AI without any rotoscoping or other involvement of real humans or their voices, we are very far down a road that I wasn't aware we were even traveling on.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Software from a firm called Runway is not only used by AI OR DIE, but by commercial film production companies in mainstream films as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But so far, nobody has produced an entire successful feature film using only AI.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But it's only a matter of time, it seems to me.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Rothman quotes the AI OR DIE collaborators as saying how thrilled they are when they can have an idea for a scene one day, and then start making it happen the next day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>No years in production hell, fundraising, hiring people, and all the other pre-production hassles that conventional filmmaking entails—just straight from idea to product.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>So far, most of what they've done are what Rothman calls "darkly surrealistic comedies."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If the samples I saw were representative, it reminds me of an afternoon I spent at Hampshire College in the 1990s, I think it was, in Massachusetts, where a screening of student animations was held.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Early in the development of any new medium, you will come across works that were made simply to exploit the medium, without much thought given to what ought to be said through it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The short animations we saw that afternoon were like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The students were thrilled to be able to express themselves in this semi-autonomous way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Chuck Jones, the famous Warner Brothers animated-film director, once said that animators are the only artist who "create life."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Most of the time they let their thrills outweigh their judgment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A good many of the films we saw back in Massachusetts that afternoon were in the category of the classic "Bambi Meets Godzilla."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This film, which I am not too surprised to learn was No. 38 in a book of fifty classic animated films, at least meets the Aristotelian criteria of unities of action, time, and place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>There is one principal action, it happens over less than a 24-hour period, and it happens in only one location.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>We see the fawn Bambi, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, browsing peacefully among flowers to idyllic background music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Suddenly a giant foot—Godzilla's, in fact—drops into the frame and squashes Bambi flat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>End of story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Most of the other films were like that:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>a silly, stupid, or even mildly obscene idea, realized through the painful and tedious process of sole-author animation.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Just as our ability to manipulate human life technologically has led us to face fundamental questions about what it means to be human, the ability to only a few people to digitally synthesize works of art that formerly required the intense collaboration and technology-aided actions of hundreds of people will lead us to ask, "What is art?"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And here I'm going to fall back on some classical sources.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Plato posed that the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty are things that lie at the roots of the universe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>According to theologian and philosopher Peter Kreeft, art is the cultivation of beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Filmmaking is a type of storytelling, one in which the way the story is told plays as much of a role as the story itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And it's obvious that AI can now replace many more expensive older ways of doing moviemaking without compromising what are called production values.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The authentic quality of the AI OR DIE clips I saw would fool anybody not thoroughly familiar with the technology into thinking those were real people and real mobile homes.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But AI is in the same category as film, cameras, lights, microphones, technicians, and all the other paraphernalia we traditionally associate with film.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>These are all means to an end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And the end is what Kreeft said:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>the cultivation of beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I think the biggest change that the use of AI in film and animation is going to make will be economic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Just as the advent of phototypesetting obsoleted entire technology sectors (platemaking, Linotyping, etc.), the advent of AI in film is going to obsolete a lot of technical jobs associated with real actors standing in front of real scenery and being photographed with real cameras.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Will we still have movie stars?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Well, is Bugs Bunny a movie star?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>You can't get his autograph, but nobody would deny he's famous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And he's just as alive as he ever was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Before we push the panic button and write off most jobs in Hollywood, bear in mind that live theater survived the advents of radio, film, and television.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It was no longer something you could find in small towns every week, but it survived in some form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I think film production with real actors in front of cameras will survive in some form too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But the economic pressures to use AI for more chunks of major-studio-produced films will be so immense that some companies won't be able to resist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And if the creatives come up with a way to make a film that cultivates beauty, and also uses mostly AI-generated images and sounds, well, that's the way art works.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Artists use whatever medium comes to hand to cultivate beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But it's beauty that must be cultivated, not profits or gee-whiz dirty jokes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And unfortunately, the dirty jokes and the profits often win out.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Jonathan Rothman's "After the Algorithm" appeared on pp. 31-39 of the Sept. 1-8, ,2025 issue of <i>The New Yorker</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I also referred to Wikipedia articles on "Bambi Meets Godzilla," and the software company Runway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Peter Kreeft's ideas of art as the cultivation of beauty can be found in his <i>Doors In the Walls of the World</i> (Ignatius Press, 2018).</p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> RAND Says AI Apocalypse Unlikely https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/08/rand-says-ai-apocalypse-unlikely.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:8a545383-3a9b-0188-b329-54da0daa12fe Mon, 25 Aug 2025 10:44:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">In 2024, several hundred artificial-intelligence (AI) researchers signed a statement calling for serious actions to avert the possibility that AI could break bad and kill the human race.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In an interview last February, Elon Musk mused that there is "only" a 20% chance of annihilation from AI.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>With so many prominent people speculating that AI may spell the end of humanity, Michael J. D. Vermeer of the RAND Corporation began a project to explore just how AI could wipe out all humans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It's not as easy as you think.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">RAND is one of the original think tanks, founded in 1948 to develop U. S. military policies, and has since studied a wide range of issues in quantitative ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As Vermeer writes in the September <i>Scientific American</i>, he and his fellow researchers considered three main approaches to the extinction problem:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>(1) nuclear weapons, (2) pandemics, and (3) deliberately-induced global warming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">It turns out that nuclear weapons, although capable of killing billions if set off in densely-populated areas, would not do the job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>There would be little remnants of people scattered in remote places, and they would probably be enough to reconstitute human life indefinitely.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The most likely scenario that would work is a combination of pathogens that together would kill nearly every human who caught them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The problem here ("problem" from AI's point of view) is that once people figured out what was going on, they would invoke quarantines, much as New Zealand did during COVID, and entire island nations or other isolated regions could survive until the pandemic burned itself out.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Artificially-induced global warming was the hardest way to do it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>There are compounds such as sulfur hexafluoride which have about 25,000 times the global-warming capability of carbon dioxide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And if you made a few million tons of that and spread it around, it could raise the global average temperature so much that "there would be no environmental niche left for humanity."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But factories pumping megatons of bad stuff into the atmosphere would be hard to hide from people, who naturally would want to know what's going on.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">So while an AI apocalypse is theoretically possible, all the scenarios they considered had common flaws.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In order for any of them to happen, the AI system would first have to make up its mind, so to speak, to persist in the goal of wiping out humanity until the job was actually done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Then it would have to wrest control of the relevant technology (nuclear or biological weapons, chemical plants) and conduct extensive projects with them to execute the goal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It would also have to obtain the cooperation of humans, or at least their unwitting participation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And finally, as civilization collapsed, the AI system would have to carry on without human help, as the few remaining humans would be useless for AI's purposes and simply targets for extinction.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">While this is an admirable and objectively scientific study, I think it overlooks a few things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">First, it draws an arbitrary line between the AI system (which in practice would be a conglomeration of systems) and human beings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Both now and in the foreseeable future, humans will be an essential part of AI because it needs us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Let's imagine the opposite scenario:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>how would humans wipe out all AI from the planet?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If every IT person in the world just didn't show up for work tomorrow, what would happen?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A lot of bad things, certainly, because computers (not just AI, but increasingly systems involving AI) are intimately woven into modern economies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Nevertheless, I think issues (caused by stupid non-IT humans, probably) would start showing up, and in a short time we would have a global computer crash the likes of which have never been seen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>True, millions of people would die along with the AI systems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But I'm not aware of any truly autonomous AI system of any complexity and importance that has <i>no</i> humans dealing with it in any way, as apparently was the case in the 1970 sci-fi film "Colossus:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The Forbin Project." </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">So if an AI-powered system showed signs of getting out of hand—taking over control of nuclear weapons, doing back-room pathogen experiments on its own, etc.—we could kill it by just walking away from it, at least the way things are now.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">More likely than any of the hypothetical disasters imagined by the RAND folks is a possibility they didn't seem to consider.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>What if AI just gradually supplants humans until the last human dies?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This is essentially the stated goal of many transhumanists, who foresee the uploading of human consciousness into computer hardware as their equivalent of eternal life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>They don't realize that their idea is equivalent to thinking that making an animated effigy of myself will guarantee my survival after death, much as the ancient Egyptians prepared their pharaohs for the afterlife.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But pernicious ideas like this can gain traction, and we are already seeing an unexpected downturn in fertility worldwide as civilizations benefit from technology-powered prosperity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If AI, and its auxiliary technological forms, ever puts an end to humanity, I think the gradual, slow replacement of humans by AI-powered systems is more likely than any sudden, concentrated catastrophe, like the ones the RAND people considered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And the creepy thing about this one is that it's happening already, right now, every day.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Romano Guardini was a theologian and philosopher who in 1956 wrote <i>The End of the Modern World</i>, in which he foresaw in broad terms what was going to happen to modernity as the last vestiges of Christian influence were replaced by a focus on the achievement of power for power's sake alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Here are a few quotes from near the end of the book:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>"The family is losing its significance as an integrating, order-preserving factor . . . . The modern state . . . is losing its organic structure, becoming more and more a complex of all-controlling functions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In it the human being steps back, the apparatus forward."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As Guardini saw it, the only power rightly controlled is exercised under God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And once God is abolished and man sets up technology as an idol, looking to it for salvation, the spiritual death of humanity is assured, and physical death may not be far behind.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I'm glad we don't have to worry about an AI apocalypse that would make a good, fast, dramatic movie, as the RAND people assure us won't happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But there are other dangers from AI, and the slow insidious attack is the one to guard against most vigilantly.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Michael J. D. Vermeer's "Could AI Really Kill Off Humans?" appeared on pp. 73-74 of the September 2025 issue of <i>Scientific American</i>, and is also available online at <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-ai-really-kill-off-humans/">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-ai-really-kill-off-humans/</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I also referred to the Wikipedia article on sulfur hexafluoride.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The Romano Guardini quotes are from pp. 161-162 of his <i>The End of the Modern World</i>, in an edition published by ISI Press in 1998.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> Is the Internet Emulsifying Society? https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/08/is-internet-emulsifying-society.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:6596afe0-f35e-5505-c882-7a4b038ae1da Mon, 18 Aug 2025 10:41:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">About a year ago I had cataract surgery, which these days means replacing the natural lens in the eye with an artificial one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Curious about what happens to the old lens, I looked up the details of the process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It turns out that one of the most common procedures uses an ultrasonic probe to emulsify the old lens, turning a highly structured and durable object that served me well for 70 years into a liquefied mess that was easily removed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">If you're wondering what this has to do with the internet and society, be patient.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">A recent report in <i>The Dispatch</i> by Yascha Mounk describes the results of an analysis by <i>Financial Times</i> journalist John Burn-Murdoch of data from a large Understanding America survey of more than 14,000 respondents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Psychologists have standardized certain personality traits as being fairly easy to assess in surveys and also predictive of how well people do in society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Among these traits are conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>People who are conscientious make good citizens and employees:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>they are "organized, responsible, and hardworking."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Extraversion makes for better social skills and community involvement, while neuroticism indicates a trend toward anxiety and depression.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Burn-Murdoch divided up the results by age categories, with the youngest being 16 to 39, and compared the rates of these traits to what prevailed in the full population in 2014, less than ten years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The results are shocking.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Everybody (16-39, 40-59, and 60+) has declined in extraversion from the 50th to the 40th percentile, although by only ten percentile points out of 100.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>(If a number is unchanged from 2014, the results would be 50th percentile today).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But in neuroticism, those under 40, who were already in the 60th percentile in 2014, have now zoomed up to the 70th.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Lots of young neurotics out there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And they have distinguished themselves even more in the categories of agreeableness (declining from 45 to 35) and most of all, in conscientiousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>From a relatively good 47th percentile or so in 2014, the younger set have plummeted to an abysmal 28th percentile of conscientiousness in less than a decade.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">When the results of conscientiousness are broken down into their constituent parts, it gets even worse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Starting about 2016, the 16-39 group shows jumps in positive responses to "is easily distracted" and "can be careless."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">If the survey was restricted to teenagers, you would expect such results, although not necessarily this big.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But we're talking about people in their prime earning years too, twenty- to forty-year-olds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Mounk ascribes most of these disastrous changes to influences traceable to the Internet, and specifically, social media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>He contrasts the ballyhoo and wild optimism that greeted various Internet-based developments such as online dating and worldwide free phone and Zoom calls with the reality of cyberbullying, trolling, cancel culture, and the mob psychology on steroids that the Internet provides fertile soil for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Now for the emulsion part.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>An emulsion takes something that tends to keep its integrity—such as a blob of oil in water or the natural lens of an eye—and breaks it up into individual pieces that are surrounded by a foreign agent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In the case of mayonnaise, the oil used is separated into tiny drops surrounded by water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Oil doesn't naturally mix with water, but when an emulsifier is used (the lecithin in egg yolk, in this case), it reduces surface tension and breaks up the oil into tiny droplets.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">That's fine in the case of mayonnaise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But in the case of a society, surrounding each individual with a foreign film of Internet-mediated software that passes through firms interested not primarily in the good of society, but in making a profit, all kinds of pernicious effects can happen.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">There is nothing intrinsically wrong with making money, so this is not a diatribe against big tech as such.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But in the case of cigarettes, when a popular habit that made the tobacco companies rich was shown to have hidden dangers, it took a lot of political will and persistence to change things so that at least the dangers were known to anyone who picks up a pack of cigarettes.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Mounk thinks it may be too late to do much about the social and psychological harms caused by the Internet, but we are still at the early stage of adoption when it comes to generative artificial intelligence (AI).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I tend not to make such a sharp distinction between the way the Internet is currently used and what difference the widespread deployment of free software such as chatGPT will make.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For decades, the tech companies have been using what amounts to AI systems to addict people to their social media services and to profit from political polarization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>So as AI becomes more commonplace it will be a change only in degree, not necessarily in kind.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">AI or no, we have had plenty of time already to see the pernicious results among young people of interacting with other humans mainly through the mediation of mobile phones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It's not good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Just as man does not live by bread alone, people aren't intended to interact by smartphone alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If they do, they get less conscientious, more neurotic, more isolated and lonely, and more easily distracted and error-prone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>They also find it increasingly difficult to follow any line of reasoning of more than one step.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Several states have recently passed laws restricting the use of smartphones in K-12 education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This is a controversial but ultimately beneficial step in the right direction, although it will take a while to see how seriously individual school districts take it and whether it makes much of a difference in how young people think and act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For those of you who believe in the devil, I'm pretty sure he is delighted to see that society is breaking up into isolated individuals who can communicate only through the foreign agent of the Internet, rather than being fully present—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—to the Other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Perhaps warnings like these will help us realize how bad things have become, and what we need to do to stop them from getting any worse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In the meantime, enjoy your mayonnaise.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>John Burn-Murdoch's article "How We Got the Internet All Wrong" appeared in <i>The Dispatch</i> on Aug. 12, 2025 at <a href="https://thedispatch.com/article/social-media-children-dating-neurotic/">https://thedispatch.com/article/social-media-children-dating-neurotic/</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I also referred to the survey on which it was based at <a href="https://uasdata.usc.edu/index.php">https://uasdata.usc.edu/index.php</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> "Winter's Tale" and the Spirit of Engineering https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/08/winters-tale-and-spirit-of-engineering.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:c368f557-f6f3-1f6a-e04f-7d6588ab2f70 Mon, 11 Aug 2025 11:02:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Once in a great while I will review a non-fiction book in this space that I think is worth paying attention to if one is interested in engineering ethics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><i>Winter's Tale</i> by Mark Helprin is a novel, published in 1983, and even now I can't say exactly why I think it should be more widely known among engineers and those interested in engineering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But it should be.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Every profession has a spirit: a bundle of intuitive and largely emotional feelings that go along with the objective knowledge and actions that constitute the profession.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Among many other things, <i>Winter's Tale</i> captures the spirit of engineering better than any other fiction work I know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And for that reason alone, it deserves praise.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The book is hard to describe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>There are some incontestable facts about it, so I'll start with those.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It is set mainly in New York City, with excursions to an imaginary upstate region called Lake of the Coheeries, and side trips to San Francisco.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It is not a realistic novel, in the sense that some characters in it live longer than normal lifespans, and various other meta-realistic things happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>There are more characters in it than you'd find in a typical nineteenth-century Russian novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>There is no single plot, but instead a complex tapestry that dashes back and forth in time like a squirrel crossing a street.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But all these matters are secondary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The novel's chief virtue is the creation of an atmosphere of hope and, not optimism, exactly—some truly terrible things happen to people in it—but a temperate yet powerful energy and drive shared by nearly all the characters, except for a few completely evil ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And even the evil ones are interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The fertility of Helprin's imagination is astounding, as he creates technical terms, flora and fauna, and other things that are, strictly speaking, imaginary yet somehow make sense within the story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>One of the many recurring elements in the book is the appearance of a "cloud wall" which seems to be a kind of matrix of creation and time travel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Here is how Virginia, one of the principal characters, describes it to her son Martin:</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</span>". . . It swirls around the city in uneven cusps, sometimes dropping down like a tornado to spirit people away or deposit them there, sometimes opening white roads from&nbsp;the city,<span>&nbsp;</span>and sometimes resting out at sea while connections are made with other places.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It is a benevolent storm, a place of refuge, the neutral flow in which we float.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>We wonder&nbsp;if there is anything beyond it, and we think that perhaps there is."</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>"Why?" Martin asked from within the covers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>"Because," said Virginia, "in those rare times when all things coalesce to serve beauty,&nbsp;symmetry, and justice, it becomes the color of gold—warm and smiling, as if God <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>were reminded of&nbsp;the perfection and complexity of what He had long ago set to spinning,&nbsp;and long ago forgotten."</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The whole novel is like that.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Although there is no preaching, no doctrine expounded, and very few explicitly religious characters such as ordained ministers, a thread of holiness, or at least awareness of life beyond this one, runs throughout the book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This is probably why I learned about it from a recommendation by the Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, who mentioned it in<i>&nbsp;Doors in the Walls of the World.</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The reason engineers might benefit from reading it is that machines and other engineered structures—steam engines, cranes, bridges, locomotives—and those who design, build, and tend them, are portrayed in a way that is both appealing and transcendent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>At this moment I feel a frustration stemming from my inability to express what is so attractive about this book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">You may learn something from the fact that the reviews of it I could find fell into two camps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>One camp loved it and wished it would go on forever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The other camp, of which I turned out to be a member, said that after a while they found the book annoying, and almost didn't finish it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I think one reason for the latter reaction is that structurally, it is all trees and very little forest. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The very fertility of Helprin's imagination leads him to introduce novel and fascinating creations, incidents, and characters every page or two, and the result is a loss of coherence in the overall story and sequence of events.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A chart of every character and incident with lines drawn among them would look like the wiring diagram of a Boeing 747.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But every time I said to myself that I was going to stop reading it, I picked it up again, and finally chose one free day to finish the thing, all the time hoping that it would get to the point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>There is no crashing finale in which everything is tied up neatly with a bow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>There is, however, a climax of sorts, and toward the end events occur which have parallels in the New Testament.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Farther than that I shouldn't go, for fear of spoiling the ending for anyone who wants to read it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The only other novel I can think of that bears even a faint resemblance to <i>Winter's Tale</i> is G. K. Chesterton's <i>The Man Who Was Thursday</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It is also a fantasy in the sense that unrealistic things happen, and it features characters who are what Kreeft calls archetypes, embodied representations of ideas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Not everyone likes or can even make sense of Chesterton's novel, and the same will undoubtedly be true of <i>Winter's Tale</i>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">For a fantasy, Helprin's book is rather earthy in spots, and for that reason I wouldn't recommend it for children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But the earthiness is not gratuitous, and rounds out the realism of his character portrayals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Many of the main actors behave courageously and even nobly, and would be good subjects for the exemplary mode of engineering ethics, in which one describes how engineering went right in a particular case with ethical implications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">If you pick up the book, you will know in the first few pages whether you can stand to read the rest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If you persist till the end, you will have experienced a world unlike our own in some ways, but very like what it could be if we heeded, in Lincoln's phrase, the better angels of our nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><i>Winter's Tale</i> was published in 1983 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Peter Kreeft's<i>&nbsp;Doors in the Walls of the World&nbsp;</i>was published in 2018 by Ignatius Press.</p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> Should We Worry About Teens Befriending AI Companions? https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/08/should-we-worry-about-teens-befriending.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:309a33fb-242d-de6f-eed2-04066595d789 Mon, 04 Aug 2025 10:56:00 +0000 <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">A recent survey-based study by Common Sense Media shows that a substantial minority of teenagers surveyed use AI "companions" for social interaction and relationships.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In a survey of over a thousand young people aged 13 to 17 last April and May, the researchers found that 33% used applications such as ChatGPT, Character, or Replika for things like conversation, role-playing, emotional support, or just as a friend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Another 43% of those surveyed used AI as a "tool or program," and about a third reported no use of AI at all.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Perhaps more troubling than the percentages were some comments made by teens who were interviewed in an Associated Press report on the survey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>An 18-year-old named Ganesh Nair said, "When you're talking to AI, you are always right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>You're always interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>You are always emotionally justified."</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The researchers also found that teens were more sophisticated than you might think about the reliability of AI and the wisdom of using it as a substitute for "meat" friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Half of those surveyed said they do not trust advice given to them by AI, although the younger teens tended to be more trusting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And two-thirds said that their interactions with AI were less satisfying than those with real-life friends, but one-third said they were either about the same or better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And four out of five teens spend more time with real friends than with AI.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The picture that emerges from the survey itself, as opposed to somewhat hyped news reports, is one of curiosity, cautious use, and skepticism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>However, there may be a small number of teens who either turn to AI as a more trusted interlocutor than live friends, or develop unhealthy dependencies of various kinds with AI chatbots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">At present, we are witnessing an uncontrolled experiment in how young people deal with AI companions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The firms backing these systems with their multibillion-dollar server farms and sophisticated software are motivated to engage young people especially, as habits developed before age 20 or so tend to stay with us for a lifetime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It's hard to picture a teenager messaging ChatGPT to "grow old along with me," but it may be happening somewhere.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I once knew a woman in New England who kept a life-size cloth doll in her house, made to resemble a former husband.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Most people would regard this as a little peculiar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But what difference is there between that sort of thing and spending time in online chats with a piece of software that simulates a caring and sympathetic friend?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The interaction with AI is more private, at least until somebody hacks the system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But why does the notion of teenagers who spend time chatting with Character as though it were a real person bother us?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">By saying "us," I implicitly separate myself from teens who do this sort of thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But there are teens who realize the dangers of AI overuse or misuse, and older teens especially expressed concerns to the AP reporter that too much socializing with chatbots could be bad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The same teen quoted above got "spooked" about AI companions when he learned that a friend of his used his companion to compose a Dear Jill message to his girlfriend of two years when he decided to break up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I suppose that is not much different than a nineteenth-century swain paging through a tome entitled "Letters for All Occasions," although I doubt that even the Victorians were that thorough in providing examples for the troubled ex-suitor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Lurking in the background of all this is a very old theological principle:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>idolatry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>An idol is anything less than God that we treat as God, in the sense of resorting to it for help instead of God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For those who don't believe in God, idolatry would seem to be an empty concept.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But even atheists can see the effects of idolatry in extreme cases, even if they don't acknowledge the God who should be worshipped instead of the idol.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">For a teen in a radically dysfunctional household, turning to an AI companion might be a good alternative, but a kind, loving human being would always be better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Kind, loving human beings aren't always available, though, and so perhaps an AI companion would suffice in a pinch like a "donut" spare tire until you can get the flat fixed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But you shouldn't drive on a temporary tire indefinitely, and teens who make AI companions a regular and significant part of their social lives are probably headed for problems.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">What kind of problems?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Dependency, for one thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The AI firms are not promoting their companions out of the kindness of their collective hearts, and the more people rely on their products the more money they make.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The researchers who executed the survey are concerned that teens who use AI companions that never argue, never disagree with them, and validate everything they say, will be ill-prepared for the real world where other humans have their own priorities, interests, and desires.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">In an ideal world, every teen would have a loving mother and father they would trust with their deepest concerns, and perhaps friends as well who would give them good advice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Not many of us grew up in that ideal world, however, and so perhaps teens in really awful situations may find some genuine solace in turning to AI companions rather than humans.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The big news of this survey is the fact that use of AI companions among teens is so widespread, though still in the minority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The next thing to do is to focus on those small numbers of teens for which AI companions are not simply something fun to play with, but form a deep and significant part of their emotional lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>These are the teens we should be the most concerned about, and finding out why they get so wrapped up with AI companions and what needs the companions satisfy will take us a long way toward understanding this new potential threat to the well-being of teenagers, who are the future of our society.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The AP article "Teens say they are turning to AI for friendship" appears on the AP website at <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ai-companion-generative-teens-mental-health-9ce59a2b250f3bd0187a717ffa2ad21f">https://apnews.com/article/ai-companion-generative-teens-mental-health-9ce59a2b250f3bd0187a717ffa2ad21f</a>, and the Common Sense Media survey on which it was based is at <a href="https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/talk-trust-and-trade-offs_2025_web.pdf">https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/talk-trust-and-trade-offs_2025_web.pdf</a>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">&nbsp;</p> <style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style><p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> The Tea App Data Breach: Not Everybody's Cup Of . . . https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-tea-app-data-breach-not-everybodys.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:22b4adfc-3b0b-2647-fb6b-aa2317c4d3a6 Mon, 28 Jul 2025 11:10:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">A phone app called Tea became the No. 1 app downloaded from the U. S. Apple App Store last week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Then Friday, news came that the app had been hacked, exposing thousands of images and other identifying information online.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The users of Tea are women who want to exchange information about men they are considering as dates, or have dated and want to evaluate for other women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>So any kind of data breach is disturbing, although it could have been worse.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Tea, an app introduced in 2023, is exclusively for women, and requires some form of identification to use.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Once a user is logged in, she can either post information about a certain man, or research his background as reported by other users, similar to the popular Yelp app that uses crowdsourcing to rate businesses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Understandably, some men take a dim view of Tea, and claim it violates their privacy or could even provide grounds for defamation lawsuits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>An attorney named Aaron Minc has been getting "hundreds" of calls from men whose descriptions on Tea are less than complimentary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In an interview, Minc said Tea users could be sued for spreading false information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But as the Wikipedia site describing Tea points out, the truth is an absolute defense against such a charge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Nevertheless, being sued for any reason is not a picnic, and so with data breaches and lawsuits in the air, women may now think twice before signing up for Tea and posting the story of their latest disastrous date, which may have been arranged via social media anyway.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">You might think most couples meet electronically these days, but a recent survey shows that even among those aged 18-29, only 23% of those who are either married or "in a relationship" met online.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>So meeting the old-fashioned eyeball-to-eyeball way is still how most couples get together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The woman meeting a new guy in person could still use Tea to check out the man's credentials, but that raises larger issues of how reliable the report of another woman would be, especially if the report is anonymous.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Lawsuits over relationships are nothing new, of course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>One of the running plot threads that Charles Dickens milked for a lot of laughs in his first published novel<i>, The Pickwick Papers</i>, was how Mr. Pickwick's landlady Mrs. Bardell misunderstood a stray comment he made as a proposal of marriage, and filed a suit against him for breach of promise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Though the legal details differ, this kind of action pitted the woman against the man, who then had to prove that his intentions were honorable or lose the suit.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I will admit that the idea of anonymous women posting ratings on me is somewhat disquieting, but as a teacher at a university, I'm subject to somewhat the same treatment by "Rate the Prof" websites, which take anonymous reports by students of various professors and post them online.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I never look at such sites, and if anything scurrilous has been posted about me, I've remained blissfully unaware of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The way Tea works raises the question of whether anonymity online should be as widespread as it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That issue has been in the news lately as several states have passed laws requiring robust systems to verify ages for users of pornographic websites, for example.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That is another example where anonymity leads to problems,and positive identification with regard to age can at least mitigate harms to children who are too young to be exposed to porn.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Unfortunately, anonymity is almost a default setting online, while tying one's identity to every online communication would be not only technically burdensome, but downright dangerous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>How would we do anonymous hotlines and tip lines?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>There would have to be exceptions for such cases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And VPN and other technologies exist that currently encumber even the most vigorous attempts to identify people online, such as in criminal investigations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The Tea app is facing not only its data-breach problem, which always is disturbing to users, but also the moral question of whether anonymous comments by women about men they have dated are fair to the men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Such a question can be answered on a case-by-case basis, but in general, if women had to sign their real names to every comment they posted on Tea instead of remaining anonymous, the comments might not be as frank as they are now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The same principle applies to student evaluations conducted not by a commercial app, but by my university.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Students are guaranteed anonymity for the obvious reason that if they make a negative comment, and the professor finds out who said it, the student might have to take another one of the professor's classes, in which the professor might be tempted to wreak vengeance upon the unhappy but honest student.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>So I accept the idea of anonymity in that situation, because I might otherwise be tempted to abuse my authority over students that way.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">If Tea were really confined only to women users, there wouldn't seem to be any danger of that sort of thing happening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But a woman could turn traitor, so to speak:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>seeing a bad review of her current boyfriend on Tea, she could show it to him, and if the review was tied to the identity of the woman who gave him the bad review, he might consider some kind of revenge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That would be bad news as well, so anonymity makes sense for Tea too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Still, when people know their names are associated with things they say, they tend to be more moderate in their expressions than if they hide behind a pseudonym and can flame to their hearts' content without any fear of retribution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Some systems allow the option of either signing your name or remaining anonymous, and possibly that is the best approach.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Tea presents itself as a way to find "green flags," that is, women going online and saying what a good guy this was and you ought to date him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If he's so good, why not keep him for yourself?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Realistically, I expect most of the comments are negative, which is why the site has been criticized to the extent it has been. Assuming the operators of Tea address their data breach, they can take comfort in the old saying attributed (perhaps apocryphally) to P. T. Barnum:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>"There's no such thing as bad publicity."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>More women know about Tea now, and so more men may get reviewed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I only hope they get the reviews they deserve.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The Associated Press article "The Tea app was intended to help women date safely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Then it got hacked," appeared on July 26, 2025 at <a href="https://apnews.com/article/tea-app-data-breach-leak-4chan-c95d5bb2cabe9d1b8ec0ca8903503b29">https://apnews.com/article/tea-app-data-breach-leak-4chan-c95d5bb2cabe9d1b8ec0ca8903503b29</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I also referred to an article at <a href="https://www.hims.com/news/dating-in-person-vs-online">https://www.hims.com/news/dating-in-person-vs-online</a> for the statistic about percentage of couples meeting online, and to the Wikipedia article on Tea (app).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> Can Teslas Drive Themselves? Judge and Jury To Decide https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/07/can-teslas-drive-themselves-judge-and.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:a80038d9-428a-a44a-e2ce-d33751831676 Mon, 21 Jul 2025 10:58:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">On a night in April of 2019, Naibel Benavidez and her boyfriend Dillon Argulo had parked the Tahoe SUV they were in near the T-intersection of Card Sound Road and County Road 905 in the upper Florida Keys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>George McGee was heading toward the intersection "driving" a Model S Tesla.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I put "driving" in quotes, because he had set the vehicle on the misleadingly-named <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>"full self-driving" mode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It was going about 70 MPH when McGee dropped his cellphone and bent down to look for it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">According to dashcam evidence, the Tesla ran a stop sign, ignoring the blinking red light above the intersection, crashed through reflective warning signs, and slammed into the SUV, spinning it so violently that it struck Naibel and threw her 75 feet into the bushes, where her lifeless body was found by first responders shortly thereafter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Dillon survived, but received a brain injury from which he is still recovering.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Understandably, the families of the victims have sued Tesla, and in an unusual move, Tesla is refusing to settle and is letting the case go to trial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The firm's position is that McGee was solely at fault for not following instructions on how to operate his car safely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The driver should be prepared to take over manual control at all times, according to Tesla, and McGee clearly did not do that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The judge in the federal case, Beth Bloom, has thrown out charges of defective manufacturing and negligent misrepresentation, but says she is hospitable toward arguments that Tesla "acted in reckless disregard of human life for the sake of developing their product and maximizing profit."</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Regardless of the legal details, the outlines of what happened are fairly clear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Tesla claims that McGee was pressing the accelerator, "speeding and overriding the car's system at the time of the crash."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>While I am not familiar with exactly how one overrides the autopilot in a Tesla, if it is like the cruise control on many cars, the driver's manual interventions take priority over whatever the autopilot is doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If you press the brake, the car's going to stop, and if you press the accelerator, it's going to speed up, regardless of what the computer thinks should be happening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has promulgated its six levels of vehicle automation, from Level 0 (plain old human-driven cars without even cruise control) up to Level 5 (complete automation in which the driver can be asleep or absent and the car will still operate safely).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The 2019 Tesla involved in the Florida crash was most likely a Level 3 vehicle, which can operate itself in some conditions and locations, but requires the driver to be prepared to take over at any time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">McGee appears to have done at least two things wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>First, he was using the "full self-driving" mode on a rural road at night, while it is more suitable for limited-access freeways with clear lane markings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Second, for whatever reason, when he dropped his phone he hit the accelerator at the wrong time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This could conceivably have happened even if he had been driving a Level 0 car.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But I think it is much less likely, and here's why.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Tesla drivers obviously accumulate experience with their "self-driving" vehicles, and just as drivers of non-self-driving cars learn how hard you have to brake and how far you have to turn the steering wheel to go where you want, Tesla drivers learn what they can get by with when the car is in self-driving mode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It appears that McGee had set the car in that mode, and while I don't know what was going through his mind, it is likely that he'd been able to do things such as look at his cellphone in the past while the car was driving itself, and nothing bad had happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That may be what he was doing just before he dropped the phone.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">At 70 MPH, a car is traveling over 100 feet per second.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In a five-second pause to look for a phone, the car would have traveled as much as a tenth of a mile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If McGee had been consciously driving a non-autonomous car the whole time, he probably would have seen the blinking red light ahead and mentally prepared to slow down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But the way things happened, his eyes might have been on the phone the whole time, even after it dropped, and when he (perhaps accidentally) pressed the accelerator, the rest of the situation plays out naturally, but unfortunately for Naibel and Dillon.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">So while Tesla may be technically correct that McGee's actions were the direct cause of the crash, there is plenty of room to argue that the way Tesla presents their autonomous-driving system encourages drivers to over-rely on it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Tesla says they have upgraded the system since 2019, and while that may be true, the issue at trial is whether they had cut corners and encouraged ways of driving in 2019 that could reasonably have led to this type of accident.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">In an article unrelated to automotive issues but focused on the question of AI in general, I recently read that the self-driving idea has "plateued."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A decade or so ago, the news was full of forecasts that we would all be able to read our phones, play checkers with our commuting partners, or catch an extra forty winks on the way to work as the robot drove us through all kinds of traffic and roads.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That vision obviously has not come to pass, and while there are a few fully autonomous driverless vehicles plying the streets of Austin right now—I've seen them—they are "geofenced" to traverse only certain areas, and equipped with many more sensors and other devices than a consumer could afford to purchase for a private vehicle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">So we may find that unless you live in certain densely populated regions of large cities, the dream of riding in a robot-driven car will remain just that:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>a dream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But when Tesla drivers presume that the dream has become reality and withdraw their attention from their surroundings, the dream can quickly become a nightmare.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I referred to an Associated Press article on the trial beginning in Miami at <a href="https://apnews.com/article/musk-tesla-evidence-florida-benavides-autopilot-3ffab7fb53e93feb4ecfd3023f2ea21f">https://apnews.com/article/musk-tesla-evidence-florida-benavides-autopilot-3ffab7fb53e93feb4ecfd3023f2ea21f</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I also referred to news reports on the accident and trial at <a href="https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/trial-against-tesla-begins-in-deadly-2019-crash-in-key-largo-involving-autopilot-feature/3657076/">https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/trial-against-tesla-begins-in-deadly-2019-crash-in-key-largo-involving-autopilot-feature/3657076/</a> and</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><a href="https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/man-wants-answers-after-deadly-crash/124944/">https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/man-wants-answers-after-deadly-crash/124944/</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> Are AI Chatbots Really Just Pattern Engines? https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/07/are-ai-chatbots-really-just-pattern.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:b7ee3598-0a4f-29bd-83dc-96109dadfc33 Mon, 14 Jul 2025 11:29:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">That's all they are, according to Nathan Beacom, who wrote recently in the online journal <i>The Dispatch</i> an article with the title "There Is No Such Thing as Artificial Intelligence."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">His point is an important one, as the phrase "artificial intelligence" and its abbreviation "AI" have enjoyed a boom in usage since 2000, according to Google's Ngrams analysis of words appearing in published books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The system plots frequency of occurrence, as a percentage, versus time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The term "AI" peaked around 1965 and again around 1987, which correspond to the first and second comings of AI, both of which fizzled out as the digital technology of the time and the algorithms used were inadequate to realize most of the hopes of developers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But starting around 2014, usage of "AI" soared until in 2022 (the last year surveyed by the Ngram machine), it stands at a level higher than the highest peak ever enjoyed by a common but very different phrase, "IRS."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>So perhaps people now think the only inevitable things are death and AI, not death and taxes.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Kidding aside, Beacom says that the language we use about the technology generally referred to as AI has a profound influence on how we view it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And his point is that a basic philosophical fallacy is embedded in the term "artificial intelligence."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Namely, what AI does is not intelligent in any meaningful sense of the term.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And fooling ourselves into thinking it is, as millions are doing every day, can lead to big problems.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">He begins his article with a few extreme cases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A woman left her husband because he developed weird conspiracy theories after he became obsessed with a chatbot, and another woman beat up on her husband after he told her the chatbot she was involved with was not "real."</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The problem arises when we fall into the easy trap of behaving as though Siri, Alexa, Claude, and their AI friends are real people, as real as the checkout person at the grocery store or the voice who answers on the other end of the line when we call Mom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Admittedly, quite a few of the chatbots out there would pass the Turing test, which compares the responses to typed commands and queries between a human being and a computer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But to believe that an AI chatbot can think and possesses human intelligence is a mistake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>According to Beacom, it's as much a mistake to believe that as it was for the probably apocryphal New Guinea tribesman who, when first hearing a voice come out of a radio, opened it up to see the little man inside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The tribesman was disappointed, and it didn't do the radio any good either.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">We can't open up AI systems to see the works, as they consist of giant server farms in remote areas that are intentionally hidden from view, like the Wizard of Oz who hid behind a curtain as he tried to astound his guests with fire and smoke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Instead, companies promote chatbots as companions for elderly people or entertainment for the lonely young.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And if you decide to establish a personal relationship with a chatbot, you are always in control.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The algorithms are designed to please the human, not the other way around, and such a relationship will have little if any of the unpredictability and friction that always happens when one human being interacts with another human being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">That is because human intelligence is a clean different kind of a thing than what AI does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Beacom makes the point that all the machines can do is a fancy kind of autocomplete function.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Large-language models use their huge databases of what has been said on the Internet to predict what kind of thing is most likely to come after whatever the human interlocutor says or asks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And so the only way it can sound human is by basing its responses on the replies of millions of other humans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But an AI system no more understands what it is saying, or thinks about your question, than a handheld calculator thinks about what the value of pi is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Both a simple electronic calculator and the largest system of server farms and Internet connections are fundamentally the same kind of thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A newborn baby and its elemental responses to its environment, as simple as they are, represents a difference in kind, not degree, from any type of machine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A baby has intelligence, as rudimentary as it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But a machine, no matter how complex and no matter what algorithms are running on it, is just a machine, as predictable (in principle, but no longer in practice in many cases) as a mechanical adding machine's motions.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Nobody in his right mind is going to treat a calculator like it was his best friend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But the temptation is there to attribute minds and understanding to AI systems, and the systems' developers often encourage that attitude, because it leads to further engagement and, ultimately, profits.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">There is nothing inherently wrong with profits, but Beacom says we need to begin to disengage ourselves from the delusion that AI systems have personalities or minds or understanding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And the way he wants us to start is to quit referring to them as AI.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">His preferred terminology is "pattern engine," as nearly everything AI does can be subsumed under the general category of pattern repetition and modification.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Beacom probably realizes his proposal is unlikely to catch on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Terms are important, but even more important are the attitudes we bring toward things we deal with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Beacom touches on the real spiritual problem involved in all this when he says that those who recognize the true nature of what we now call AI will "be able to see the clay feet of the new idol."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Whenever a friend of mine holds his phone flat, brings it to his mouth, and asks something like "What is the capital of North Dakota?" I call it "consulting the oracle."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I mean it jokingly, and I don't think my friend is seriously worshipping his phone, but some people treat AI, or whatever we want to call it, as something worthy of the kind of devotion that only humans deserve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>is truly idolatry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And as the Bible and history prove, idolatry almost always ends badly. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Nathan Beacom's article "There Is No Such Thing as Artificial Intelligence" appeared in <i>The Dispatch</i> at <a href="https://thedispatch.com/article/artificial-intelligence-morality-honesty-pattern-engines/">https://thedispatch.com/article/artificial-intelligence-morality-honesty-pattern-engines/</a>.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p><p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> Has AI Made College Essays Pointless? https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/07/has-ai-made-college-essays-pointless.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:4d590dcc-d391-c954-ffc7-76133dbd23bd Mon, 07 Jul 2025 10:49:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp;</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">That's the question that Bard College professor of literature Hua Hsu asks in the current issue of <i>The New Yorker</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Anyone who went to college remembers having to write essay papers on humanities subjects such as art history, literature, or philosophy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Even before computers, the value of these essays was questionable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Ideally, the task of writing an essay to be graded by an expert in the field was to give students practice in analyzing a body of knowledge, taking a point of view, and expressing it with clarity and even style.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The fact that few students achieved these ideals was beside the point, because, as Hsu says in his&nbsp;essay, "I have always had a vague sense that my students are learning <i>something</i>, even when it is hard to quantify."</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The whole process of assigning and grading essay papers has recently been short-circuited by the widespread availability of large-language-model artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Curious to see whether students at large schools used AI any differently than the ones at his exclusive small liberal-arts college, Hsu spent some time with a couple of undergraduates at New York University, which has a total graduate-plus-undergraduate enrollment of over 60,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>They said things such as "Any type of writing in life, I use A. I."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>At the end of the semester, one of them spent less than an hour using AI to write two final papers for humanities classes, and estimated doing it the hard way might have taken eight hours or more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The grades he received on the papers were A-minus and B-plus.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">If these students are representative of most undergraduates who are under time pressure to get the most done with the least amount of damage to their GPA in the subjects they are actually interested in, one can understand why they turn to resources such as ChatGPT to deal with courses that require a lot of writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Professors have taken various tacks to deal with the issue, which has mostly flummoxed university administrations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Following an initial panic after ChatGPT was made publicly available in 2022, many universities have changed course and now run faculty-education courses that teach professors how to use ChatGPT more effectively in their research and teaching.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A philosophy professor, Barry Lam, who teaches at the University of California Riverside, deals with it by telling his class on the first day, "If you're gonna just turn in a paper that's ChatGPT-generated, then I will grade all your work by ChatGPT and we can all go to the beach."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Presumably his class isn't spending all their time at the beach yet, but Lam is pretty sure that a lot of his students use AI in writing their papers anyway.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">What are the ethical challenges in this situation?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It's not plagiarism pure and simple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As one professor pointed out, there are no original texts that are being plagiarized, or if there are, the plagiarizing is being done by the AI system that scraped the whole Internet for the information it comes up with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The closest non-technological analogy is the "paper mills" that students can pay to write a custom paper for them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This is universally regarded as cheating, because students are passing off another person's work (the paper mill's employee) as their own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">When Hsu asked his interviewees about the ethics of using AI heavily in writing graded essays, they characterized it as a victimless crime and an expedient to give them more time for other important tasks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If I had been there, I might have pointed out something that I tell my own students at the beginning of class when I tell them not to cheat on homework.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">A STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) class is different than a humanities class, but just as vulnerable to the inroads of AI, as a huge amount of routine coding is now reportedly done with clever prompts to AI tools rather than writing the code directly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>What I tell them is that if they evade doing the homework either by using AI to do it all or paying a homework service, they are cheating themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The point of doing the homework isn't to get a good grade; it is to give your mind practice in solving problems that (a) you will face without the help of anything or anybody when I give a paper exam in class, and (b) you may face in real life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Yes, in real life you will be able to use AI assistance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But how do you know it's not hallucinating?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Hsu cites experts who say that the hallucination problem—AI saying things that aren't true—has not gone away, and may actually be getting worse, for reasons that are poorly understood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>At some level, important work, whether it's humanities research papers to be published or bridges to be built, must pass through the evaluative minds of human beings before it goes straight to the public.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">That begs the question of what work qualifies as important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It's obvious from reading the newspapers I read (a local paper printed on actual dead trees, and an electronic version of the <i>Austin American-Statesman</i>) that "important" doesn't seem to cover a lot of what passes for news in these documents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Just this morning, I read an article about parking fees, and the headline and "see page X" at the end both referred to an article on women's health, not the parking-fees article.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And whenever I read the Austin paper on my tablet, whatever system they use to convert the actual typeset words into more readable type when you select the article oftenmakesthewordscomeoutlikethis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I have written the managing editor about this egregious problem, but to no avail.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The most serious problem I see in the way AI has taken over college essay writing is not the ethics of the situation <i>per se</i>, although that is bad enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It is the general lowering of standards on the part of both originators and consumers of information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In <i>Culture and Anarchy</i> (1869) (which I have <i>not</i> read, by the way), British essayist Matthew Arnold argued that a vital aspect of education was to read "the best that has been thought or said" as a way of combating the degradation of culture that industrialization was bringing on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But if nobody except machines thinks or says those gems of culture after a certain point, we all might as well go to the beach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I actually went to the beach a few weeks ago, and it was fun, but I wouldn't want to live there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Hua Hsu's "The End of the Essay" appeared on pp. 21-27 of the July 7 &amp; 14, 2025 issue of <i>The New Yorker</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I referred to the website <a href="https://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-7/committed-knowledge-the-modern-past/matthew-arnold-on-learning-the-best-which-has-been-thought-and-said">https://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-7/committed-knowledge-the-modern-past/matthew-arnold-on-learning-the-best-which-has-been-thought-and-said</a> for the Arnold quote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> Supreme Court Validates Texas Anti-Porn Law https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/06/supreme-court-validates-texas-anti-porn.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:4c609a76-2750-fcbc-1b0c-078652e0207c Mon, 30 Jun 2025 11:10:00 +0000 <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">On Friday, June 27, the U. S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of <i>Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The Free Speech Coalition is an organization representing the interests of the online pornography industry, and Kenneth Paxton is the controversial attorney general of Texas,whose duty it is to enforce a 2023 law which "requires pornography websites to verify the age of users before they can access explicit material," according to a report by <i>National Review</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The Court upheld the Texas law, finding that the law was a constitutional exercise of a state's responsibility to prevent children from "accessing sexually explicit content."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">This ruling has implications beyond Texas, as 22 other states have adopted similar laws, and the decision of the court means that those states are probably safe from federal lawsuits as well.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">This is a matter of interest to engineering ethicists because, whether we like it or not, pornography has played a large role in electronic media at least since the development of consumer video-cassette recorders in the 1970s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As each new medium has appeared, the pornographers have been among its earliest adopters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Around 1980, as I was considering a career change in the electronic communications industry, one of the jobs I was offered was as engineer for a satellite cable-TV company.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>One of the factors that made me turn it down was that a good bit of their programming back then was of the <i>Playboy Channel</i> ilk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I ended up working for a supplier of cable TV equipment, which wasn't much better, perhaps, but that job lasted only a couple of years before I went back to school and remained in academia thereafter.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The idea behind the Texas law is that children exposed to pornography suffer objective harm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The American College of Pediatricians has a statement on their website attesting to the problems caused by pornography to children:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>depression, anxiety, violent behavior, and "a distorted view of relationships between men and women."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And it's not a rare problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The ubiquity of mobile phones means that even children who do not have their own phone are exposed to porn by their peers, and so even parents who do not allow their children to have a mobile phone are currently pretty defenseless against the onslaught of online pornography.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Requiring porn websites to verify a user's age is a small but necessary step in reducing the exposure of young people to the social pathology of pornography.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In an article in the online journal <i>The Dispatch</i>, Charles Fain Lehman proposes that we dust off obscenity laws to prosecute pornographers regardless of the age of their clientele.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The prevalence of porn in the emotional lives of young people has ironically led to a dearth of sexual activity in Gen Z, who have lived with its presence all their lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In a review of several books that ask why people in their late teens and 20s today are having less sex than previous generations, <i>New Yorker</i> writer Jia Tolentino cites the statistic that nearly half of adults in this age category regard porn as harmful, but only 37% of older millennials do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And fifteen percent of young Americans have encountered porn by the age of 10.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">There are plenty of science-based reasons to keep children and young teenagers from viewing pornography.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For those who believe in God, I would like to add a few more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples that they must "become like children" to enter the kingdom of Heaven.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Then he warns that "whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin [the Greek word means "to stumble"], it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>(Matt. 18:6).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>People who propagate pornography that ten-year-olds can watch on their phones seem to fill the bill for those who cause children to stumble.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The innocence of children can be overrated, as anyone who has dealt with a furious two-year-old can attest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But it is really a kind of mental virginity that children have:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>the absence of cruel and exploitative sexual images in their minds helps keep them away from certain kinds of sin, even before they could understand what was involved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Until a few decades ago, most well-regulated societies protected children from the viewing, reading, or hearing of pornography, and those who wished to access it had to go to considerable efforts to seek out a bookstore or porn theater.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But that is no longer the case, and as Carter Sherman, the author of a book quoted in the <i>New Yorker</i> says, the internet is a "mass social experiment with no antecedent and whose results we are just now beginning to see."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Among those results are a debauching of the ways men and women interact sexually, to the extent that one recent college-campus survey showed that nearly two-thirds of women said they'd been choked during sex.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">This is not the appropriate location to explore the ideals of how human sexuality should be expressed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But suffice it to say that the competitive and addictive nature of online pornography invariably degrades its users toward a model of sexual attitudes that are selfish, exploitative, and unlikely to lead to positive outcomes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The victory of Texas's age-verification law at the Supreme Court is a step in the right direction toward the regulation of the porn industry, and gives hope to those who would like to see further legal challenges to its very existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Perhaps we are at the early stages of a trend comparable to what happened with the tobacco industry, which denied the objective health hazards of smoking until the evidence became overwhelming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It's not too early for pornographers to start looking for millstones as a better alternative to their current occupation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The article "Supreme Court Upholds Texas Age-Verification Law" appeared at <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/supreme-court-upholds-texas-age-verification-porn-law/">https://www.nationalreview.com/news/supreme-court-upholds-texas-age-verification-porn-law/</a>, and the article "It's Time to Prosecute Pornhub" appeared at <a href="https://thedispatch.com/article/pornhub-supreme-court-violence-obscenity-rape/">https://thedispatch.com/article/pornhub-supreme-court-violence-obscenity-rape/</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I also referred to the Wikipedia article "Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton" and the <i>New Yorker</i> article "Sex Bomb" by Jia Tolentino on pp. 58-61 of the June 30, 2025 issue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style><br /><p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> Should Chatbots Replace Government-Worker Phone Banks? https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/06/should-chatbots-replace-government.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:42702eb6-e177-2a87-a2be-e719a5884c82 Mon, 23 Jun 2025 11:03:00 +0000 <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The recent slashes in federal-government staffing and funding have drawn the attention of the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), and two of the Institute's members warn of impending disaster if the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) carries through its stated intention to replace hordes of government workers with AI chatbots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In the July/August issue of <i>Scientific American</i>, DAIR founder Timnit Gebru, joined by staffer Asmelash Teka Hadgu, decry the current method of applying general-purpose large-language-model AI to the specific task of speech recognition, which would be necessary if one wants to replace the human-staffed phone banks that are at the other end of the telephone numbers for Social Security and the IRS with machines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The DAIR people give vivid examples of the kinds of things that can go wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>They focused on Whisper, which is a speech-recognition feature of OpenAI, and the results of studies by four universities of how well Whisper converted audio files of a person talking into transcribed text.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The process of machine transcription has come a long way since the very early days of computers in the 1970s, when I heard Bell Labs' former head of research John R. Pierce say that he doubted speech recognition would ever be computerized.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But anyone who phones a large organization today is likely to deal with some form of automated speech recognition, as well as anyone who has a Siri or other voice-controlled device in the home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Just last week I was on vacation, and the TV in the room had to be controlled with voice commands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Simple operations like asking for music or a TV channel are fairly well performed by these systems, but that's not what the DAIR people are worried about. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">With more complex language, Whisper was shown not only to misunderstand things, but to make up stuff as well that was not in the original audio file at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For example, the phrase "two other girls and one lady" in the audio file became after Whisper transcribed it, "two other girls and one lady, um, which were Black."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">This is an example of what is charitably called "hallucinating" by AI proponents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If a human being did something like this, we'd just call it lying, but to lie requires a will and an intellect that chooses a lie rather than the truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Not many AI experts want to attribute will and intellect to AI systems, so they default to calling untruths hallucinations.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">This problem arises, the authors claim, when companies try to develop AI systems that can do everything and train them on huge unedited swaths of the Internet, rather than tailoring the design and training to a specific task, which of course costs more in terms of human input and guidance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>They paint a picture of a dystopian future in which somebody who calls Social Security can't ever talk to a human being, but just gets shunted around among chatbots which misinterpret, misinform, and simply lie about what the speaker said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Both government-staffed interfaces with the public and speech-recognition systems vary greatly in quality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Most people have encountered at least one or two government workers who are memorable for their surliness and aggressively unhelpful demeanor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But there are also many such people who go out of their way to pay personal attention to the needs of their clients, and these are the kinds of employees we would miss if they got replaced by chatbots.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Elon Musk's brief tenure as head of DOGE is profiled in the June 23 issue of <i>The New Yorker</i> magazine, and the picture that emerges is that of a techie dude roaming around in organizations he and his tech bros didn't understand, causing havoc and basically throwing monkey wrenches into finely-adjusted clock mechanisms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The only thing that is likely to happen in such cases is that the clock will stop working.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Improvements are not in the picture, not even cost savings in many cases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As an IRS staffer pointed out, many IRS employees end up bringing in many times their salary's worth of added tax revenue by catching tax evaders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Firing those people may look like an immediate short-term economy, but in the long term it will cost billions.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Now that Musk has left DOGE, the threat of massive-scale replacement of federal customer-service people by chatbots is less than it was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But we would be remiss in ignoring DAIR's warning that AI systems can be misused or abused by large organizations in a mistaken attempt to save money.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">In the private sector, there are limits to what harm can be done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If a business depends on answering phone calls accurately and helpfully, and they install a chatbot that offends every caller, pretty soon that business will not have any more business and will go out of business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But in the U. S. there's only one Social Security Administration and one Internal Revenue Service, and competition isn't part of that picture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The Trump administration does seem to want to do some revolutionary things to the way government operates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But at some level, they are also aware that if they do anything that adversely affects millions of citizens, they will be blamed for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">So I'm not too concerned that all the local Social Security offices scattered around the country will be shuttered, and one's only alternative will be to call a chatbot which hallucinates by concluding the caller is dead and cuts off his Social Security check.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Along with almost every other politician in the country, Trump recognizes Social Security is a third rail that he touches at his peril.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But that still leaves plenty of room for future abuse of AI by trying to make it do things that people really still do better, and maybe even more economically than computers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>While the immediate threat may have passed from the scene with Musk's departure from DOGE, the tendency is still there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Let's hope that sensible mid-level managers will prevail against the lightning strikes of DOGE and its ilk, and the needed work of government will go on.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The article "A Chatbot Dystopian Nightmare" by Asmelash Teka Hadgu and Timnit Gebru appeared in the July/August 2025 <i>Scientific American</i> on pp. 89-90.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I also referred to the article "Move Fast and Break Things" by Benjamin Wallace-Wells on pp. 24-35 of the June 23, 2025 issue of <i>The New Yorker</i>.</p> <style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style><p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> Why Did Air India Flight 171 Crash? https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/06/why-did-air-india-flight-171-crash.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:7a3caef3-2060-0d3a-356a-8c7824585edc Mon, 16 Jun 2025 10:40:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">That is the question that investigators will be asking in the coming days, weeks and months to come.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>On Thursday June 12, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner took off from Ahmedabad in northwest India, bound for London.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>On board were 242 passengers and crew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It was a hot, clear day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Videos taken from the ground show that after rolling down the runway, the plane "rotated" into the air (orienting flight surfaces to make the plane take off), and assumed a nose-up attitude.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But after rising for about fifteen seconds, it began to sink back toward the ground and plowed into a building housing students of a medical college.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>All but one person on the plane were killed, and at least 38 people on the ground died as well.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">This is the first fatal crash of a 787 since it was introduced in 2011.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The data recorder was recovered over the weekend, so experts have abundant information to comb through in determining what went wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The formal investigation will take many weeks, but understandably, friends and relatives of the victims of the crash would like answers earlier than that.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Air India, the plane's operator, became a private entity only in 2022 after spending 69 years under the control of the Indian government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>An AP news report mentions that fatal crashes killing hundreds of people involved Air India equipment in 1978 and 2010.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The quality of training is always a question in accidents of this kind, and that issue will be addressed along with many others.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">An article in the <i>Seattle Times</i> describes the opinions of numerous aviation experts as to what might have led to a plane crashing shortly after takeoff in this way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>While they all emphasized that everything they say is speculative at this point, they had some specific suggestions as well.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">One noted that the appearance of dust in a video of the takeoff just before the plane becomes airborne might indicate that the pilot used up the entire runway in taking off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This is not the usual procedure at major airports, and might have indicated issues with available engine power.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Several experts mentioned that the flaps may not have been in the correct position for takeoff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Flaps are parts of the wing that can be extended downward during takeoff and landing to provide extra lift, and are routinely extended for the first few minutes of any flight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The problem with this theory, as one expert mentioned, is that modern aircraft have alarms to alert a negligent pilot that the flaps haven't been extended, and unless there was a problem with hydraulic pressure that overwhelmed other alarms, the pilots would have noticed the issue immediately.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Another possibility involves an attempt to take off too soon, before the plane had enough airspeed to leave the ground safely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Rotation, as the actions to make the plane leave the ground are called, cannot come too early, or else the plane is likely to either stall or lose altitude after an initial rise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Stalling is an aerodynamic effect that happens when an airfoil has an excessive angle of attack to the incoming air, which no longer flows in a controlled way over the upper surface but separates from it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The result is that lift decreases dramatically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>An airplane entering a sudden stall can appear to pitch upward and then simply drop out of the air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>While such a stall was not obvious in the videos of the flight obtained so far, something obviously caused a lack of sufficient lift that led to the crash.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Other more remote possibilities include engine problems that would limit the amount of thrust available below that needed for a safe takeoff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It is possible that some systemic control issue may have limited available thrust, but there was no obvious mechanical failure of the engines before the crash, so this possibility is not a leading one.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">In sum, initial signs are that some type of pilot error may have at least contributed to the crash:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>too-early rotation, misapplication of flaps, or other more subtle mistakes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A wide-body aircraft cannot be stopped on a dime, and once it has begun a rollout to takeoff there are not a lot of options left to the pilot should a sudden emergency occur.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A decision to abort takeoff beyond a certain point will result in overrunning the runway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And depending on how much extra space there is at the end of the runway, an overrun can easily lead to a crash, as recently happened when Jeju Air Flight 2216 in Thailand overshot the runway and crashed into the concrete foundation of some antennas in December 2024.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The alternative of taking off and trying to stay in the air may not be successful either, unless sufficient thrust can be applied to gain sufficient altitude.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Although no expert mentioned the following possibility and there may be good reasons for that, perhaps there was an issue with brakes not being fully released on the landing-gear wheels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This would slow down the plane considerably, and the unusual nature of the problem might not give the pilots time enough to figure out what was happening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Modern jetliners are exceedingly complicated machines, and the more parts there are in a system, the more combinations of things can happen to cause difficulties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The fact that there have so far been no calls to ground the entire fleet of 787 Dreamliners indicates that the consensus of experts is that a fundamental issue with the plane itself is probably not at fault.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Once the flight-recorder data has been studied, we will know a great deal more about things such as flap and engine settings, precise timing of control actions, and other matters that are now a subject of speculation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It is entirely possible that the accident happened due to a combination of minor mechanical problems and poor training or execution by the flight crew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Many major tragedies in technology occur because a number of problems, each of which could be overcome by itself, combine to cause a system failure.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Our sympathies are with those who lost loved ones in the air or on the ground.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And I hope that whatever lessons we learn from this catastrophe will improve training and design efforts to make these the last fatalities involving a 787 in a long time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I referred to AP articles at<a href=" https://apnews.com/article/air-india-survivor-crash-boeing-e88b0ba404100049ee730d5714de4c67" target="_blank"> https://apnews.com/article/air-india-survivor-crash-boeing-e88b0ba404100049ee730d5714de4c67</a> and <span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><a href="https://apnews.com/article/india-plane-crash-what-to-know-4e99be1a0ed106d2f57b92f4cc398a6c">https://apnews.com/article/india-plane-crash-what-to-know-4e99be1a0ed106d2f57b92f4cc398a6c</a>, a <i>Seattle Times</i> article at </span><a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/what-will-investigators-be-looking-for-in-air-india-crash-data/">https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/what-will-investigators-be-looking-for-in-air-india-crash-data/</a>, and the Wikipedia articles on Air India and Air India Flight 171.</p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> Science Vs. Luck: DNA Sequencing of Embryos https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/06/science-vs-luck-dna-sequencing-of.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:ed156756-1f5e-440e-9297-69af70eb2f03 Mon, 09 Jun 2025 11:36:00 +0000 <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">"Science Vs. Luck" was the title of a sketch by Mark Twain about a lawyer who got his clients off from a charge of gambling by recruiting professional gamblers, who convinced the jury that the game was more science than luck—by playing it with the jury and cleaning them out! Of course, there was more going on than met the eye, as professional gamblers back then had some tricks up their sleeves that the innocents on the jury wouldn't have caught.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>So while the verdict of science looked legitimate to the innocents, there was more going on than they suspected, and the spirit of the law against gambling was violated even though the letter seemed to be obeyed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">That sketch came to mind when I read an article by Abigail Anthony, who wrote on the <i>National Review </i>website about a service offered by the New York City firm Nucleus Genomics:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>whole-genome sequencing of in-vitro-fertilized embryos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For only $5,999, Nucleus will take the genetic data provided by the IVF company of your choice and give you information on over 900 different possible conditions and characteristics the prospective baby might have, ranging from Alzheimer's to the likelihood that the child will be left-handed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">There are other companies offering services similar to this, so I'm not calling out Nucleus in particular.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>What is peculiarly horrifying about this sales pitch is the implication that having a baby is no different in principle than buying a car.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If you go in a car dealership and order a new car, you get to choose the model, the color, a range of optional features, and if you don't like that brand you can go to a different dealer and get even more choices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The difference between choosing a car and choosing a baby is this:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>the cars you don't pick will be sold to somebody else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The babies you don't pick will die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">We are far down the road foreseen by C. S. Lewis in his prescient 1943 essay "The Abolition of Man."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Lewis realized that what was conventionally called man's conquest of nature was really the exertion of power by some men over other men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And the selection of IVF embryos by means of sophisticated genomic tests such as the ones offered by Nucleus are a fine example of such power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In the midst of World War II when the fate of Western civilization seemed to hang in the balance, Lewis wrote, " . . .<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>if any one age attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power." </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Eugenics was a highly popular and respectable subject from the late 19th century up to right after World War II, when its association with the horrors of the Holocaust committed by the Nazi regime gave it a much-deserved bad name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The methods used by eugenicists back then were crude ones:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>sterilization of the "unfit," where the people deciding who was unfit always had more power than the unfit ones; encouraging the better classes to have children and the undesirable classes (such as negroes and other minorities) to have fewer ones; providing birth control and abortion services especially to those undesirable classes (a policy which is honored by Planned Parenthood to this day); and in the case of Hitler's Germany, the wholesale extermination of whoever was deemed by his regime to be undesirable:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Jews, Romani, homosexuals, and so on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But just as abortion hides behind a clean, hygienic medical facade to mask the fact that it is the intentional killing of a baby, the videos on Nucleus's website conceal the fact that in order to get that ideal baby with a minimum of whatever the parents consider to be undesirable traits, an untold number of fertilized eggs—all exactly the same kind of human being that you were when you were that age—have to be "sacrificed" on the altar of perfection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">If technology hands us a power that seems attractive, that enables us to avoid pain or suffering even on the part of another, does that mean we should always avail ourselves of it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The answer depends on what actions are involved in using that power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">If the Nucleus test enabled the prospective parents to <i>avert</i> potential harms and diseases in the embryo analyzed without killing it, there would not be any problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But we don't know how to do that yet, and by the very nature of reproduction we may never be able to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The choice being offered is made by producing multiple embryos, and disposing of the ones that don't come up to snuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Now, at $6,000 a pop, it's not likely that anyone with less spare change than Elon Musk is going to keep trying until they get exactly what they want.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But the clear implication of advertising such genomic testing as a choice is that, you don't have to take what Nature (or God) gives you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If you don't like it, you can put it away and try something else.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">And that's really the issue:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>whether we acknowledge our finiteness before God and take the throw of the genetic dice that comes with having a child, the way it's been done since the beginning; or cheat by taking extra turns and drawing cards until we get what we want.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The range of human capacity is so large and varied that even the 900 traits analyzed by Nucleus do not even scratch the surface of what a given baby may become.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This lesson is brought home in a story attributed to an author named J. John.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In a lecture on medical ethics, the professor confronts his students with a case study.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>"The father of the family had syphilis and the mother tuberculosis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>They already had four children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The first child is blind, the second died, the third is deaf and dumb, and the fourth has tuberculosis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Now the mother is pregnant with her fifth child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>She is willing to have an abortion, so should she?"</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">After the medical students vote overwhelmingly in favor of the abortion, the professor says, "Congratulations, you have just murdered the famous composer Ludwig von Beethoven!"</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Abigail Anthony's article "Mail-order Eugenics" appeared on the <i>National Review </i>website on June 5, 2025 at <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/mail-order-eugenics/">https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/mail-order-eugenics/</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>My source for the Beethoven anecdote is <a href="https://bothlivesmatter.org/blog/both-lives-mattered">https://bothlivesmatter.org/blog/both-lives-mattered</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style><p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> AI-Induced False Memories in Criminal Justice: Fiction or Reality? https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/06/ai-induced-false-memories-in-criminal.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:ae432ddc-926e-b5dc-5c10-18f48880abea Mon, 02 Jun 2025 11:16:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">A filmmaker in Germany named Hashem Al-Ghaili has come up with an idea to solve our prison problems:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>overcrowding, high recidivism rates, and all the rest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Instead of locking up your rapist, robber, or arsonist for five to twenty years, you offer him a choice:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>conventional prison and all that entails, or a "treatment" taking only a few minutes, after which he could return to society a free . . . I was going to say, "man," but once you find out what the treatment is, you may understand why I hesitated.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Al-Ghaili works with an artificial-intelligence firm called Cognify, and his treatment would do the following.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>After a detailed scan of the criminal's brain, false memories would be inserted into his brain, the nature of which would be chosen to make sure the criminal doesn't commit that crime again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Was he a rapist?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Insert memories of what the victim felt like and experienced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Was he a thief?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Give him a whole history of realizing the loss he caused to others, repentance on his part, and rejection of his criminal ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And by the bye, the same brain scans could be used to create a useful database of criminal minds to figure out how to prevent these people from committing crimes in the first place.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Al-Ghaili admits that his idea is pretty far beyond current technological capabilities, but at the rate AI and brain research is progressing, he thinks now is the time to consider what we should do with these technologies once they're available.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Lest you think these notions are just a pipe dream, a sober study from the MIT Media Lab experimented with implanting false memories simply by sending some of a study group of 200 people to have a conversation with a chatbot about a crime video they all watched.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The members of the study did not know that the chatbots were designed to mislead them with questions that would confuse their memories of what they saw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The researchers also tried the same trick with a simple set of survey questions, and left a fourth division of the group alone as a control.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">What the MIT researchers found was that the generative type of chatbot induced its subjects to have more than three times the false memories of the control group, who were not exposed to any memory-clouding techniques, and more than those who took the survey experienced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>What this study tells us is that using chatbots to interrogate suspects or witnesses in a criminal setting could easily be misused to distort the already less-than-100%-reliable recollections that we base legal decisions on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Once again, we are looking down a road where we see some novel technologies in the future beckoning us to use them, and we face a decision:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>should we go there or not?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Or if we do go there, what rules should we follow?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Let's take the Cognify prison alternative first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As ethicist Charles Camosy pointed out in a broadcast discussion of the idea, messing with a person's memories by direct physical intervention and bypassing their conscious mind altogether is a gross violation of the integrity of the human person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Our memories form an essential part of our being, as the sad case of Alzheimer's sufferers attests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>To implant a whole set of false memories into a person's brain, and therefore mind as well, is as violent an intrusion as cutting off a leg and replacing it with a cybernetic prosthesis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Even if the person consents to such an action, the act itself is intrinsically wrong and should not be done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">We laugh at such things when we see them in comedies such as <i>Men in Black</i>, when Tommy Lee Jones whips out a little flash device that makes everyone in sight forget what they've seen for the last half hour or so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But each person has a right to experience the whole of life as it happens, and wiping out even a few minutes is wrong, let alone replacing them with a cobbled-together script designed to remake a person morally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Yes, it would save money compared to years of imprisonment, but if you really want to save money, just chop off the head of every offender, even for minor infractions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That idea is too physically violent for today's cultural sensibilities, but in a culture inured to the death of many thousands of unborn children every year, we can apparently get used to almost any variety of violence as long as it is implemented in a non-messy and clinical-looking way.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">C. S. Lewis saw this type of thing coming as long ago as 1949, when he criticized the trend of substituting therapeutic treatment of criminals as suffering from a disease, for retributive fixed-term punishment as the delivery of a just penalty to one who deserved it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>He wrote "My contention is that this doctrine [of therapy rather than punishment], merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">No matter what either C. S. Lewis or I say, there are some people who will see nothing wrong with this idea, because they have a defective model of what a human being is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>One can show entirely from philosophical, not religious, presuppositions that the human intellect is immaterial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Any system of thought which neglects that essential fact is capable of serious and violent errors, such as the Cognify notion of criminal memory-replacement would be.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">As for allowing AI to implant false memories simply by persuasion, as the MIT Media Lab study appeared to do, we are already well down that road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>What do you think is going on any time a person "randomly" trolls the Internet looking at whatever the fantastically sophisticated algorithms show him or her?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>AI-powered persuasion, of course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And the crisis in teenage mental health and many other social-media ills can be largely attributed to such persuasion.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I'm glad that Hashem Al-Ghaili's prison of the future is likely to stay in the pipe-dream category at least for the next few years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But now is the time to realize what a pernicious thing it would be, and to agree as a culture that we need to move away from treating criminals as laboratory animals and restore to them the dignity that every human being deserves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Charles Camosy was interviewed on the Catholic network Relevant Radio on a recent edition of the Drew Mariani Show, where I heard about Cognify's "prison of the future" proposal. The quote from C. S. Lewis comes from his essay "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment," which appears in his <i>God in the Dock</i> (Eerdmans, 1970). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>I also referred to an article on Cognify at <a href="https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/62983/1/inside-the-prison-of-the-future-where-ai-rewires-your-brain-hashem-al-ghaili">https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/62983/1/inside-the-prison-of-the-future-where-ai-rewires-your-brain-hashem-al-ghaili</a> and the MIT Media Lab abstract at <a href="https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/ai-false-memories/overview/">https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/ai-false-memories/overview/</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> NSF and Women in STEM: Removing Barriers or Chartering Jets? https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/05/nsf-and-women-in-stem-removing-barriers.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:3913411d-a176-7c44-6d08-155f17fa2b76 Mon, 26 May 2025 11:20:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Anyone even remotely connected with the academic world knows that the Trump administration has recently been playing Attila the Hun to the Italy of the government-funded research establishment, slashing billions in already-granted money, firing staff, and generally raising Hades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A recent article by Andrew Follett in <i>National Review</i> highlights the shakeup at what many academics consider to be the crown jewel of such funding, the U. S. National Science Foundation (NSF).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Follett points out that the long-established woke-diversity-equity-inclusion slant at the agency may be repressed for the moment, but making permanent changes will require Congressional action.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Follett may well be right regarding the correct political strategy, but what I would like to focus on is one particular goal which the NSF holds dear to its bureaucratic heart:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>expanding participation in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) for women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">It is not quite the case, as Follett says it is, that NSF is abandoning this goal completely. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>Rather, according to some updated guidelines on the NSF website, investigators may pursue it, but only "as part of broad engagement activities" that are open to all Americans, regardless of sex, race, or other "protected characteristics."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Even if Congress gets involved, I suspect NSF will keep doing what it wants to do while staying within the letter of the law, because I've seen up close how they do it in the case of a specific grant aimed at increasing the participation of women in engineering.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I state categorically that women should not be barred from pursuing degrees or jobs in engineering, either <i>de jure</i> or <i>de facto</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As recently as 1970, women were not admitted to many all-male engineering-intensive schools, and many engineering programs at coed universities refused to take women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Accordingly, the U. S. Dept. of Labor reports that only 3% of engineers were women that year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Second-wave feminism, equal-employment laws, and other societal changes knocked down virtually all the legal and cultural barriers that kept women from being engineers by around 1990, and the percentage of engineers in the U. S. who were women rose to around 16%, where it has hovered to this day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But since 1990, NSF has expended probably a total of billions of dollars trying to raise that percentage above 16%, with the presumed goal being "equity":<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>that is, a percentage of women in engineering equal to their percentage in the general population.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>We can say several things about these efforts.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The most obvious thing is, they have failed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If NSF had poured billions of dollars into a pure-science project—just to take one at random, say, the nature of ball lightning—and gotten precisely zip results by now, one would hope that common sense would prevail and they would turn their attention to other matters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But that is not how these things work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This is not to say that all the money was wasted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In a grant I was familiar with at my own university, special scholarships and academic support networks were set up in a way that mainly attracted women, although when I asked the principal investigator whether a male student could apply, she said technically yes, although they weren't getting any to speak of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And scholarships are good for students, other things being equal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But in terms of NSF's original goals of funding science research that otherwise would not get done, paying for scholarships that are legally for everybody but (wink-wink) are really focused on women is a classic example of politics corrupting science.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I use the word "corrupting" deliberately, in the sense that betrayal of an agency's stated purpose for political reasons—<i>any</i> political reasons, right, left, or slantwise—is a step down a long road that led to distinctions such as "Aryan science" in Germany before World War II.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">As a wise junior-high civics teacher once told me, politics is just the conduct of public affairs, and of course it's not possible to keep any human institution, let alone a governmental one, completely free of political considerations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But as in so many other ethical situations, the intent is the key.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If Congress manipulates an agency's budget to favor certain regions, there's not much the agency's director can do about it other than jawbone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But that is vastly different from setting up entire divisions directed not at the discovery of new knowledge, but at the changing of certain demographic statistics such as the percentage of women in engineering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">It is entirely possible, but in the nature of things it cannot be proved, that about as many women as want to go into engineering today presently do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As we said, most legal barriers that kept women out of engineering were gone by 1990, and since then the two professions that are even more prestigious than engineering—law and medicine—have become thoroughly feminized.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And the stereotypical engineering image has changed radically from the 1940s, when a clipart drawing of an engineer would depict a rugged guy wearing work boots and toting a transit tripod on one shoulder and a big hammer in his hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Nowadays, your typical engineer does exactly what I'm doing now—sits at a computer, something that women and men can do equally well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I agree with Follett that the NSF, along with other federal agencies, will require extensive Congressional action and supervision in order for it to reorient its intentions and priorities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Old habits die hard, and old bureaucrats die harder.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But some such sea change may be necessary if we are to avoid a wholesale turn away from government support of science research, which from the 1940s up to at least the 1990s enjoyed the benign support of most citizens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In a democracy, if most people no longer want a thing done by the government, it shouldn't be done, generally speaking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And if the science establishment has betrayed its origins and allowed itself to be corrupted by political winds that inevitably go out of fashion, the day of reckoning we are currently seeing the dawn of may go on longer than we think.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I'm glad there are women in engineering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I miss them when I don't have any in my undergraduate class, which happened last semester.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But I think it's time NSF quit trying to move political needles and go back to funding science.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Andrew Follett's article "How Republicans Can Actually Defund Woke Science" appeared on the <i>National Review </i>website at <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/05/how-republicans-can-actually-defund-woke-science/">https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/05/how-republicans-can-actually-defund-woke-science/</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I also referred to the Dept. of Labor site at <a href="https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/occupations-stem">https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/occupations-stem</a> for women-in-engineering statistics, and the NSF website <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/updates-on-priorities">https://www.nsf.gov/updates-on-priorities</a> for their updated priorities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> Parents and Children: Breaking Down the Technoference Barrier https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/05/parents-and-children-breaking-down.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:a22f972a-247c-8efd-5838-64406a4d5a50 Mon, 19 May 2025 10:49:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> <span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman \(Body CS\)&quot;; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Aptos; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">No, I never read the word "technoference" before today, either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But according to some </span> <style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style>sociologists, technoference is what happens when a parent pays more attention to a mobile phone than to their children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And the results are not good.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">An article by Clare Morell on the news website <i>The Dispatch</i> points out that even if children don't have mobile phones or screens themselves, their lives are significantly affected when their parents do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A study that compared rates of parental mobile phone use with how well their children do when starting school found that kids whose parents used their phones a lot had deficits in language and interpersonal skills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Another problem comes when children try to learn new life skills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It turns out that parental "scaffolding"—basic support and encouragement—is vital for children to control their emotions when dealing with new situations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If Mommy is off in cyberspace when Junior is trying to color within the lines for the first time, she can't provide the reassurance and guidance which, however trivial-seeming for the parent, can make an earthshattering difference for the child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I'm pretty sure I remember the first time I rode a bike without training wheels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And it was when my father held the bike for me to get on, and then gave it enough of a shove that it would stay upright no matter what I did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Suddenly I could make it go on my own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This was about three decades before the advent of mobile phones, and while my upbringing was not without problems, mobile-phone technoference wasn't one of them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Full disclosure:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I have never been a parent, so I can't speak about childraising from personal experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But there is one childraising principle I have observed in action over many years, which the article terms "over-imitating."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I prefer to state it as follows:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>"Whatever Daddy (or Mommy) does is OK."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This is a deep and profound, even subconscious, tendency in children to accept, embrace, and imitate whatever they see their parents doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It plays out in everything from such minor habits as habitual finger-tapping to major malfeasances such as adultery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And I'm sure it applies to mobile-phone use as well.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">One interesting study found that even babies are affected by a parent using a mobile phone within the child's field of view, even if the baby doesn't need anything in particular at the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If you observe the expressions of people while they are looking at their phones, it's a kind of passive, zoned-out look that showed up a lot when a sociologist decided to install a camera on a TV and take pictures of people as they watched television.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The researchers call this a "still face."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It turns out that showing a still face to an infant isn't good, because it gives the infant no positive feedback or assurance that the mother or father is paying attention to the child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This passive look often inspires the infant to cry or otherwise try to attract attention. If Mommy stays glued to her phone, Junior escalates provocations until he gets some kind of reaction, which by this time will probably be a negative one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Yet another study showed a correlation between a four-times-greater incidence of depression in teenagers and high rates of mobile phone use among parents.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Now, as we should constantly remind ourselves when reading about research like this, correlation isn't necessarily causation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The crisis in reproducibility of scientific studies means that statistical methods are often misapplied in an illogical way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That is a topic for another blog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But even if we disregard all the statistics and simply ask, "Can a parent's mobile-phone use get in the way of their attempts to be a good parent?" I think the answer is obvious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Of course it can, but what can we do about it?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Morell has a number of recommendations, some of which are easier to do than others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>She suggests having a "phone box" to put phones in at the end of the day, so parents and children are both freed up to interact without distractions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>How one would define the day's end is up to the individual, but it sounds like a good idea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I have a phone you can actually turn off, and I set it in my study and leave it there overnight.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">She suggests putting away your phone whenever you are with your children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For some people, especially single moms, that is a big ask.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But at least consciously setting aside a no-phone interval each day might be a good idea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The only time these days I am around parents with a lot of children is when I go to church, and except for the stray ringtone during the sermon, you might otherwise think that my church is a phone-free zone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That's an unusual situation, though, and I have no idea what these parents do with regard to mobile phones when they are home with their kids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A good many of them homeschool, however, and you can bet the phone is put away during those times.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Morell says she uses something called a Wisephone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A visit to that firm's website shows that their product has "no social media, no explicit content, no web browser" but can do basic stuff like maps, calling for rides, playing music, dealing with money, and checking the weather.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That's two or three more things than I use my phone for, so I'm ahead of her already in that regard.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I'm also in sync with her recommendations to go analog (or at least not use your phone for everything):<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>get a separate alarm clock (check), use a paper calendar (check), use a real camera instead of your phone camera (check), and use a notepad and pen (check).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I claim no particular virtue for doing these things:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I just never quit doing them when I got a mobile phone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Others may have more of a problem transitioning.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">So even if kids don't have mobile phones themselves, their parents' phones can cause problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Parenting is a huge responsibility, and my metaphorical hat is off to anyone who attempts it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Just be aware that your smartphone may get in the way of being the best parent you want to be.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Clare Morell's article "Parents, Put Down the Phones" is on the (paywall-protected, unfortunately) website <i>The Dispatch</i>, which some may be able to access at <a href="https://thedispatch.com/article/parenting-phones-screen-time-kids-development-imitation/">https://thedispatch.com/article/parenting-phones-screen-time-kids-development-imitation/</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I also referred to the Wisephone website at <a href="https://wisephone.com/">https://wisephone.com/</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> Did Renewables Contribute to Spain's Blackout? https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/05/did-renewables-contribute-to-spains.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:20fb2303-35fa-a900-c554-2d50a47dc96b Mon, 12 May 2025 10:50:00 +0000 <p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">That's the question that still has not been definitively answered as of today (May 11), almost two weeks after the April 28 power outage that plunged much of Spain and Portugal into darkness for almost 24 hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Why could renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power have contributed to the blackout?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The answer isn't simple, but as more and more countries derive more of their energy from renewables, it's a question that deserves examination.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">What we do know about the blackout is this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The Iberian Peninsula is a little like Texas in that its power grid is nearly autonomous, with only small interties to the rest of the European continent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A little after noon, some "oscillations" appeared in the grid and were "detected and mitigated."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Operating a large power grid is a delicate balancing act in which the fluctuating demand must be met by appropriate generating capacity at all times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And across the entire grid, all the generating plants must produce power in synchronism at a rate of 50 Hz (in Europe—60 Hz in the U. S.).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">A prime indicator of the health of the grid is how close the grid's frequency is to its nominal frequency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The grid is like a symphony orchestra in which all the instruments are tuned to the same pitch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The entire system is designed for optimum efficiency at 50 Hz, and as little as only 1 Hz deviation above or below that can lead to serious problems and ultimately damage or destroy millions of dollars' worth of transformers and other gear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>So grid operators have both automatic and manually backed-up systems to keep the grid frequency near its nominal value, and to vary the amount of power being generated as demand varies.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">For reasons that are not yet clear, at 12:33 PM three generators tripped off the grid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This meant that the system lost 2.2 GW of capacity instantly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In response, the grid frequency began to fall from 50 Hz, and when it reached 48 Hz, automatic protection circuitry began to disconnect more generators from the grid, leading to a cascade that shut the entire system down in a matter of seconds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Once a thing like this happens, it takes hours to communicate among the now-isolated generating plants and organize an effort to re-synchronize and reconnect parts of the grid in a way that will not lead to further problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In the meantime, most communications and transportation systems in Spain and Portugal were severely crippled, thousands of people had to be evacuated from electric trains, and seven people died as a result of the blackout.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">At the time of the grid failure, over half of the grid's power was being produced by solar, wind, or hydroelectric plants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>Assuming most of this was wind or solar, the grid was therefore missing something that power grids used to have an abundance of:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>"spinning reserve."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And spinning reserve is an important way that grids can stabilize themselves.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Simply put, spinning reserve is the energy stored in the mechanical momentum of the turbines and generators used to produce power at nuclear, fossil-fueled, and hydropower plants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A generator-turbine shaft, armature, and blades weighing many tons cannot be stopped on a dime, and the fact that it's spinning, typically at thousands of revolutions per minute, means that there's a lot of energy stored in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">When a sudden increase or decrease in load occurs on such a generator, the spinning reserve means that its speed (which directly determines its frequency) does not change instantly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If the load increases (as it would if generators elsewhere suddenly tripped off the line), the spinning reserve automatically keeps the frequency from dropping instantly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This factor can be used in designing stability into the grid, and historically spinning reserve has been an asset in making grids stable.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">When renewable sources began to be connected to power grids, the approach taken by designers was that the renewables would always be a small fraction of the total power generated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>So when they designed the devices to interface solar or wind power to the grid (called "inverters") they simply designed them to follow whatever frequency the grid was producing at the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Electronics has no mechanical momentum, so renewable sources can adjust their frequency instantaneously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As long as they represent a small fraction of the total power generated, like a few monkeys riding on the back of an elephant, the fact that renewables do not contribute spinning reserve was not important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The monkeys go where the elephant goes, and they're just along for the ride.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But reports say that at the time of the blackout, the fraction of power being made by renewables was on the order of 58%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>So the monkeys outweighed the elephant in this case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Engineers have studied and modeled these situations, and presumably know what they're doing, but there is an undercurrent of suspicion that under some circumstances, having too large a fraction of renewables on a power grid that is isolated, like the Iberian Peninsula's is, can lead to trouble.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The question is, was last month's blackout an example of the kind of trouble renewables can cause?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>We will have to wait on the results of the investigation to find out.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">There is a way to make renewable power sources act like they have spinning reserve, but it's not cheap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That energy has to come from somewhere, and either the renewable source has to hold its maximum capacity in reserve (which is wasteful), or you have to add capacity in the form of batteries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But with suitable inverter design, a wind or solar source with batteries can be made to act like it has a certain amount of spinning reserve.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">If we find that the blackout was in fact worsened by inverter-based renewables, something like the battery-spinning-reserve idea may need to be implemented as a safety precaution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>There are other good reasons to put battery storage on grids with a lot of renewable energy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A windless night produces no wind or solar power, and it's handy in such cases to have energy stored up somewhere that you can use in such situations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Batteries are improving steadily and may come in very handy to avert the next blackout.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If it turns out that renewables contributed to the problem, we have a solution, but it's not going to be cheap.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I referred to an article in Wired at <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/what-caused-the-european-power-outage-spain-blackout/">https://www.wired.com/story/what-caused-the-european-power-outage-spain-blackout/</a>, an article on batteries supplying spinning reserve at <a href="https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/energy-storage/battery/spinning-reserve-displacement-using-batteries-for-a-more-efficient-and-cleaner-way-to-back-up-power/">https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/energy-storage/battery/spinning-reserve-displacement-using-batteries-for-a-more-efficient-and-cleaner-way-to-back-up-power/</a>, and the Wikipedia article "2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout."</p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style> <br /></p> She Did Not Turn Left https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/05/she-did-not-turn-left.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:1b8f0d43-c955-9f12-8250-80b59267e516 Mon, 05 May 2025 11:43:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Those are the last words of a New York Times story on the helicopter-airline crash that killed 67 people last Jan. 29 in Washington, DC.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>While there is no official word yet from the National Transportation Safety Board on the cause of the crash, the in-depth Times report has material from interviews with numerous experts, and pieces together the final minutes leading up to the crash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As with so many avertable tragedies, this one combined multiple factors, each one of which might have not been fatal by itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But the combination proved deadly, and as is often the case in modern aviation accidents, human error played a large role.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The basics of what happened are well known.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>American Airlines Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas to Washington's National Airport was on its final approach to land when an Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter flying a training mission collided with it short of the runway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>All 64 people on the commercial flight died in the crash, as did the helicopter pilot, Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach; the instructor, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, and the third member of the crew, Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O'Hara.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">When I blogged on this crash shortly after it happened, we knew that the helicopter was flying higher than FAA regulations allowed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>At the location of the crash, it was supposed to be lower than 200 feet, but the crash occurred at an altitude of about 300 feet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Also, the helicopter was equipped with an improved navigational aid called ADS-B, which updates air traffic controllers every second on the aircraft's location, but the device was not turned on at the time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The Times article adds important information about the interaction among the air traffic controller, Capt. Lobach, and Warrant Officer Eaves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The main purpose of the flight was to practice evacuating important members of the Federal government in time of emergency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As a part of that practice, it was customary not to operate easily-detected navigational equipment such as the ADS-B.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The helicopter had a standard radar transponder on board which was operational, but it provides updated location information only about every five to twelve seconds, according to the report.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Such a time gap between updates could have been critical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For one thing, the runway that Flight 5342 landed on that night was seldom used, and it's possible that Capt. Lobach had never been in a situation where she had to avoid a plane landing on that runway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For another thing, it seems that critical information the controller tried to tell the helicopter crew may have been "stepped on" when the crew pressed their push-to-talk button to transmit words to the controller.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">A third factor is that a few minutes before the crash, after being alerted that there was a commercial flight nearby, the helicopter pilots requested "visual separation" from the controller.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This meant basically, "We want to be responsible for avoiding a crash by looking around us and getting out of the way of anything we see in our path."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">This relieves the controller from essentially micro-managing the flight's actions, but puts a heavy burden on the pilot to know exactly what is going on and what to do to avoid a collision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>At night, with night-vision goggles on, it is quite possible that Capt. Lobach and Warrant Officer Eaves had difficulty seeing the approaching Flight 5342, or at least gaining enough information about its path to avoid the collision.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">At about 40 seconds before the crash, when the two aircraft were about a mile apart, the controller asked the helicopter pilots if they had the CRJ passenger jet in sight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>He received no response, and then transmitted an order to them to pass behind the jet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Analysis of the recordings indicates that the helicopter crew might have been transmitting at the time and didn't hear this order.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The last exchange between Warrant Officer Eaves and the controller came a few seconds later, and affirmed that the helicopter crew had "the aircraft" in sight and wanted to be okayed for visual separation, which was again approved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Then, the instructor Eaves told the pilot Lobach to turn left, which would have brought the helicopter farther away from the jet's flight path and might have averted the accident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But she kept flying straight, and the collision happened a few seconds later.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">No one knows what was going on in the minds of Capt. Lobach and Warrant Officer Eaves in those last few seconds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But some aspects of this tragedy remind me of the crash of Korean Air flight 801 in Guam in 1997.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Analysis of the voice recorders in that crash revealed that the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>captain of the flight evidently became confused about the plane's location.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But when the junior-ranked copilot tried to correct him, his suggestions were ignored.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">In a training flight, the protocol should be that the student, even if she is a five-star general, for the moment is under the authority of the instructor, even if he is just a warrant officer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It's possible that cultural factors prevented Warrant Officer Eaves from being as forceful as he should have been in telling Capt. Lobach to turn left.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And we do not know how deferential Capt. Lobach was feeling at the time, and whether she was alert and cognizant of her surroundings, frozen with fear, or somewhere in between.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But it is already clear that communications broke down in significant ways in the last few critical seconds before the crash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The technology exists to enable pilots to both hear and talk to the controller at the same time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I say that, not knowing the details of what would have to change about the old-fashioned AM VHF cockpit radio system still in use, but I suspect there would be some grumbling on the part of those affected and then they would go along with the change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Beyond technology, there is the vital issue of prompt and relevant communication among those who can do something to avoid a crash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That didn't happen in this case, and I hope the lessons learned here are applied in every situation where they could help avoid the next accident.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></b>The New York Times carried the story entitled "Missteps, Equipment Problems and a Common but Risky Practice Led to a Fatal Crash" by Kate Kelly and Mark Walker appeared in the Apr. 27, 2025 edition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I also referred to Wikipedia articles on the 2025 Potomac River mid-air collision and Korean Air Flight 801.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> Waymo Comes to Austin https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/04/waymo-comes-to-austin.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:f2e3ffb3-a041-68dd-03ab-b5840f0833cb Mon, 28 Apr 2025 11:00:00 +0000 <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">In March, the robotaxi company Waymo announced that it was teaming for the first time with the ride-hailing service Uber to provide rides in Austin, Texas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Waymo traces its roots to a secret project started by Google in 2009, with some key staffers having participated in the 2004 Stanford Self-Driving Car Project.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It is now a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Uber, along with Lyft, provides app-based ride-hailing services outside the usual taxi structure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Waymo's driverless taxis operated commercially first in San Francisco, and now provide service in U. S. cities such as Phoenix, Los Angeles, Miami, and now Austin.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Last week, I rode with a friend, who was driving, from north Austin to the University of Texas main campus just north of downtown.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Our route went along Burnet Road, which is in many ways the prototypical Austin street:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>four lanes, a center median in some blocks, all kinds of one-story retail businesses along the way with multiple parking-lot entrances in each block, and fairly heavy traffic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">We pulled up at a red traffic signal, and a few feet ahead of us in the lane to our right were two Waymo driverless cars, one in front of the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>There were no passengers and of course, no driver. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>They are easy to spot from a distance, even if you can't see whether anyone is in the driver's seat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A thing like a black police gumball on top of the roof spins constantly, as do smaller gizmos on each side of the car, and it bristles with wide-angle camera lenses and less identifiable technology, as well as logos letting you know what it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The Wikipedia article on Waymo says the vehicles are equipped with 360-degree lidar (light-based radar) with a nearly 1000-foot (300-meter) range, radio-type radars, and an extremely sophisticated AI processing system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Also, some stray comments on a Reddit page indicates there are human "remote monitors" who are responsible for several cars each.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>So yes, they look completely autonomous, but somewhere in the background there's a human ready to intervene if something unusual happens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I didn't know all of that as I gazed at a technology that has been on the streets in some form for at least a decade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But I have never actually seen a driverless car that close, let alone two of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The car in front was facing the intersection when the red light changed to green, and sure enough, it knew to start going, just like somebody was driving it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This is not a true-confession column, but I have to admit something here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Seeing those driverless cars acting so normal gave me the perverse urge to try to mess them up somehow, to wave a hand in front of one of the cars or something just to see how clever it was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It was only a brief stray thought, but its strangeness struck me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I am normally a live-and-let-live type of person, not given to vandalizing-type ideas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But there is a radical difference between reading about things and seeing them for yourself.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Philosophers make a distinction between two types of knowing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Knowing by description is what you would learn about riding a bicycle, say, by reading a book on how to ride a bicycle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>You might understand the physics of bicycles, you could answer detailed questions on bicycle dynamics, but if you had never actually sat on a bicycle or tried to ride one, your knowing about bicycles is only the first kind of knowledge: knowledge by description.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">On the other hand, knowing by acquaintance requires a personal physical encounter with the thing known.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Up to last Wednesday, I had known a lot about autonomous vehicles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I have blogged about them probably dozens of times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But all my knowledge was by description, not acquaintance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Seeing those two Waymo cars in the flesh, so to speak, was qualitatively different than any amount of reading or watching YouTube videos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I was right there, not twenty feet away from them, and if something happened to go wacky with one of them, I could be personally in danger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Not that Waymo has had too much trouble along those lines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Wary of how one spate of bad publicity can ruin an entire project, Waymo has been very cautious in choosing its operating locations and in keeping a nearly spotless safety record so far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>According to Wikipedia, the only fatal accident involving a Waymo driverless car happened when an unoccupied Waymo vehicle was involved in a multiple-car pileup set off by a Tesla driver who was going 98 MPH before the crash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Waymo can hardly be blamed for that.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Austin is a good choice for Waymo's initial teaming with Uber, as it is full of technophiles who will take a driverless Uber ride just for the thrill of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The annual international futurefest called SXSW (originally South by Southwest) was held in Austin in March, and I'm sure many of the out-of-town participants were tickled to get Uber rides in Waymos, which was probably one of the main reasons they were rolled out that month.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">There are still some people like me who will have generally negative feelings towards robotaxis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For one thing, you're not going to have the huge variety of interpersonal experiences that riding in a human-driven cab provides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Just for example, a couple of weeks ago I flew to Lawrence, Kansas, and the closest airport was in Kansas City, a 50-mile-or-so drive away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The place I was visiting hired a limo service to pick me up at the airport, and for the hour or so drive to Lawrence I had a fascinating conversation with a native of Veracruz, Mexico, who was as full of local and international tourist-type info as he was curious about various exotic places I'd been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Waymo isn't going to do that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>All you're greeted with is an empty car with a few control buttons, and no conversation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>At least not yet, but maybe they'll add a Cab-Chat app for people who miss the old days of human drivers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The Associated Press carried an article describing Waymo's teaming with Uber in Austin at <a href="https://apnews.com/article/uber-waymo-robotaxis-austin-texas-988aba46988e649be8cf59979587a8e5">https://apnews.com/article/uber-waymo-robotaxis-austin-texas-988aba46988e649be8cf59979587a8e5</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I found a reference to human monitors of Waymo cars at <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1f3ur68/current_waymo_revenue_per_car/?rdt=36096">https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1f3ur68/current_waymo_revenue_per_car/?rdt=36096</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I also referred to the Wikipedia article on Waymo and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-acquaindescrip/">https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-acquaindescrip/</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style><br /> The Dire Wolf Dilemma https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-dire-wolf-dilemma.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:a723be2e-c2f5-cfe7-15d5-e1e0be6d9fac Mon, 21 Apr 2025 10:59:00 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Many readers will have learned by now that a company called Colossal Bioscience has bio-engineered a creature that resembles the extinct dire wolf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The last true dire wolf died more than 10,000 years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Fossils recovered from Los Angeles's La Brea tar pits show that they had a more powerful bite than modern wolves, and they probably subsisted on wild horses and other large quadrupeds of their time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Exactly how much the cute white-haired puppies in Colossal Bioscience's publicity photos resemble the extinct species is a matter of some controversy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The more technical statements from Colossal Bioscience admit that the creatures' DNA is closer to being inspired by ancient samples of DNA of true dire wolves obtained from museums around the world, than it is a direct copy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That is rather like a movie that is "inspired by" true events—you can trust that the idea wasn't original, but don't look for exact correspondence in every detail either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">If this was just an expensive exercise in dog-breeding, why bother?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That and many other questions are investigated in an article by D. T. Max in a recent issue of <i>The New Yorker</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Max interviewed the company's founder, a Dallas billionaire named Ben Lamm; George Church, a professor of genetics whose dream of resurrecting extinct species caught Lamm's fancy; and Beth Shapiro, a researcher of ancient DNA who was hired away from her U. C. Santa Cruz lab to become Colossal Bioscience's chief science officer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The 1990 Michael Crichton novel <i>Jurassic Park</i> and the movie franchise that followed imagined what would happen if we were able to recreate million-year-old dinosaurs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Shapiro admits that is impossible, because DNA deteriorates with time and we're lucky even to have enough DNA from dire wolves to make an educated guess at the complete genome of a species that went extinct less than 100,000 years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The firm's most publicized goal is to re-engineer (probably the best term) the woolly mammoth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>One reason for that is that its DNA is abundant, as entire frozen carcasses have been discovered in Siberia and North America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But even a billionaire's resources are limited, so why has Lamm spent a large fraction of his fortune so far on efforts that have gained him nothing more than publicity?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Among the reasons Lamm gives are altruistic motives, such as the restoration of ecologies that would be improved by the return of woolly mammoths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It seems that they suppressed the proliferation of small shrubs, which would be stamped into oblivion by herds of mammoths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It may be too late for the extinct dodo bird, but there are also species of endangered birds that could be assisted by genetic technology that Colossal develops.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But bird species can't pay for such services, so is this nothing more than a rich man's hobby?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>After all, the puppies receiving Kardashian-level publicity have DNA that started out from a living species, the gray wolf, and was modified with CRISPR technology to have traits that resemble what the scientists think the dire wolf had:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>fluffy white hair, for instance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And some genes from ancient dire-wolf DNA were inserted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But no one has claimed that their DNA is identical to that of the dire wolf, because it isn't.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Even the piece's author Max can't come up with answers to questions such as whether these stunts will definitely lead to any sustained ecological changes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>There are no plans to breed the imitation dire-wolf puppies, for instance, and the longer-term goal of "resurrecting" the woolly mammoth is still in the future by a good bit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The word "resurrect" appears in Colossal's PR material, but isn't used much by Shapiro, who is still trying to act like a scientist, although her company forbids her from publicizing intellectual property which in an open university lab would be the subject of many scientific publications.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">And that may really be the main issue ethically with what Colossal Bioscience is doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Ever since the era of big-science projects began after World War II, and especially after biological science turned out to be massively profitable for drug companies, much research in the area has taken place under proprietary conditions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This means that discoveries potentially beneficial to humanity are controlled by private organizations, and general knowledge of them is either delayed (in the case of trade secrets) or available only under license (in the case of patents).</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Making money from a thing is a good way for the thing to become generally available, so this situation is not necessarily unethical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It looks like Lamm is counting on his hundred or more scientists to develop methods and techniques that will turn out to be profitable, and that probably means human medical applications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Letting one's imagination go leads to the so-far-forbidden area of human cloning, or the cloning of deceased individuals, which has rightly been banned outright in many countries, and highly regulated in others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But cloning is only part of what Colossal is doing—the ancient-DNA techniques they are developing are irrelevant to cloning recently deceased individuals. Perhaps Lamm really means what he says, and he simply wants to bring back extinct species as a way of atoning for the massive species destruction that humanity has been visiting on the rest of the biosphere since we developed minds that could plan attacks on other creatures, or simply plan new suburbs that wipe out whole ecologies.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The efforts to re-create extinct species are still in their early stages, and we will just have to wait to see what Lamm and his stable of scientists come up with next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Maybe they will be able to take intact DNA samples from mammoths and do total-DNA cloning as they originally hoped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But if Lamm is expecting to recoup his investments by selling live woolly mammoths to zoos, he's got another think coming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Sometimes a hobby is just a hobby, even if it benefits the ecosphere as a byproduct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The article "Life After Death" by D. T. Max appeared in the Apr. 14, 2025 issue of <i>The New Yorker</i> on pp. 30-41.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I also referred to Wikipedia articles on human cloning, the dire wolf, and the woolly mammoth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> The JetSet Roof Collapse: Causes Yet Unknown https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-jetset-roof-collapse-causes-yet.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:d01472ca-ebee-fbe4-5b33-ebb43b9c35c0 Sun, 20 Apr 2025 10:58:12 +0000 <p>&nbsp; </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Many prominent people were in the exclusive but crowded venue of the JetSet nightclub on Avenue Independencia in the Dominican Republic's capital city of Santo Domingo late Monday night, April 7.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>These included a provincial governor named Nelsy Cruz, ex-Major-League baseball players Octavio Dotel and Tony Blanco, and famed merengue musician Rubby Pérez, whose singing was the main attraction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>An estimated five hundred people were jammed into the building, which occupied a corner block behind some trees and a canopied entryway.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Around a quarter to one A. M., someone pointed to the ceiling, saying that they had seen something fall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Seconds later, a video showed Pérez himself on the stage as he glanced at the ceiling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Thirty seconds after the first warning sign, the roof over the entire main room of the club collapsed, crushing people under the weight of concrete slabs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">By Friday, the death toll stood at 225, with almost as many injuries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Pérez, Dotel, Cruz, and Blanco were killed, along with 17 U. S. citizens and numerous residents of other countries.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Any time a crowded building collapses with loss of life, especially in the absence of natural causes such as hurricanes or tornadoes, questions are sure to arise about the cause.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>While evidence to support a conclusion in which we can put confidence is lacking at this time, the little we know about the circumstances so far can guide cautious speculation.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">According to news reports, the building was erected in the mid-1970s as a movie theater.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Theaters, coliseums, and other locations for public performances require long unobstructed sight lines, which means that the roof has to be supported only at the edges, with trusses spanning the distance from wall to wall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Firefighters saw large blocks of concrete among the fallen rubble, and at least one remarked that he saw no "rebar" (reinforcing steel bars) in them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">In the U. S., most spaces at least fifty feet (15 meters) wide or more will have primarily steel trusses supporting the roof, which may have a thin layer of concrete above them for waterproofing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But the main supporting strength is in the steel trusses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">It's possible to span such distances with a roof made primarily of concrete, but there has to be reinforcing means such as rebar or pre-tensioning cables and thicker concrete beams to support the rest of the roof.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The state of the construction industry in the Dominican Republic in 1975 is unknown to me, but it's possible that the builders of the original structure made the roof just strong enough to support itself.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">If, as the fireman who saw the concrete slabs speculated, extra weight was added to the roof over the years, such as air-conditioning units or even solar panels, the weight might exceed the carrying capacity of the roof.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Concrete is not like steel, which is homogeneous enough to fail almost as soon as it's overloaded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Depending on how the concrete was mixed, a piece of concrete that is fundamentally overstressed may hang together for a relatively long time as cracks slowly propagate and stresses reorder themselves to go through the remaining connected pieces of the mix.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Concrete is more likely to fail with a crumble than a bang, although when the most stressed part fails, it usually takes the rest with it pretty fast.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">This catastrophe recalls the collapse of the Surfside Condominium in a Miami suburb in June of 2021.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Repeated inspections of that structure pointed out serious deterioration in some supporting columns, exacerbated by recent building modifications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Renovations had been scheduled before the collapse, but the building fell down, taking 98 people to their deaths with it, before they could be done.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">It is not known at this point (at least by me) whether Santo Domingo required regular building inspections of places where people gather in large crowds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Even if such inspections were required, it is not easy to inspect a concrete slab underneath layers of roofing material, although there are ways of doing so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And even if inspections were required, they might not have been done on schedule.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And if they had been done, adverse findings might have been ignored.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The owners of the nightclub are reportedly one of the wealthiest families in the Dominican Republic, so they presumably could have afforded repairs if they were needed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Now they're going to find out if they can afford the legal nightmares of liability for the two-hundred-plus deaths the collapse of the building caused.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">If anything good can come out of this tragedy, it may take the form of improvements in building codes and inspections.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Every industrialized nation has followed a long road from basically free-for-all construction methods to increasingly strict regulation of building codes, materials used in construction, design methods, and inspections before, during, and after a building is erected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>While there is an argument to be made that we have now passed the point of diminishing returns in parts of the U. S. and building codes now serve to restrict the housing market more than improve safety, there is a lot more room on the other end of the road where inadequate codes and inspections allow conditions to happen such as the circumstances that led to the JetSet tragedy last week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Perhaps this horrible accident will stimulate a conversation in the Dominican Republic about building codes, inspections, and where on the tradeoff curves the country wants to reside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>There is always the possibility that some extremely rare and unlikely cause will be found—sabotage, perhaps, or a freakish set of circumstances that can't be predicted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But currently, the little we know indicates that carelessness and perhaps incremental loading of the roof without an engineer's inspection and approval may be the cause.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If that's the case, then there is something the citizens of the Dominican Republic can do about it:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>demand safer buildings, and whatever regulation and enforcement is required to get them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>Sources:</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I referred to a CNN article at <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/10/americas/what-happened-dominican-republic-collapse-latam-intl/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/10/americas/what-happened-dominican-republic-collapse-latam-intl/index.html</a> and the Wikipedia article "JetSet nightclub roof collapse."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>P. S.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></b>A month or so ago, editor Michael Cook of the website mercatornet.com notified me that his website would soon cease operations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For over a dozen years, Michael did me the compliment of reprinting many of my blogs, always with my permission, and often with the result that they reached a much wider readership than they otherwise would have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Originally one of the few conservative family-values-oriented news outlets in Australia, Michael's site recently experienced increased pressure from competition from similar sites and a lack of readership numbers that finally made it uneconomical to continue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I wish Michael the best in his future endeavors and remind him that all the good things his website did have still been done, and will have unimaginable effects in the future—mostly good ones, I expect.---KDS</p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> Ten Pounds of Plutonium https://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/2025/04/ten-pounds-of-plutonium.html Engineering Ethics Blog urn:uuid:f61c243f-87c6-da8b-acf7-f1e22d5c675d Mon, 07 Apr 2025 10:40:00 +0000 <p> </p><p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">Plutonium was a major ingredient in the first nuclear bomb to be detonated successfully, the Trinity test on July 16, 1945 near Socorro, New Mexico.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The bomb contained thirteen pounds (5.9 kg) of plutonium, but subsequent measurements of the blast showed that only about three pounds (1.4 kg) of plutonium was consumed by the chain reaction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This means that the remaining ten pounds (4.5 kg) spread from the blast site over the New Mexico counties of Guadalupe, Lincoln, San Miguel, Socorro, and Torrance, as well as other counties and states to the east.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></span><span style="color: black;">As plutonium-239, the isotope used in the bomb, has a half-life of 24,000 years, virtually all that plutonium is still out there somewhere, with large amounts scattered among the ranches and villages of southeastern New Mexico.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>However, later investigations showed that some plutonium from the bomb reached 46 of the 48 continental United States as well as Canada and Mexico.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Aptos; panose-1:2 11 0 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536871559 3 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859921 -1073711039 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}p.abody, li.abody, div.abody {mso-style-name:abody; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0in; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0in; line-height:105%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:Aptos; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; line-height:105%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}</style></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">When breathed or ingested, the high-energy alpha particles (helium nuclei) that plutonium emits cause havoc in any living system they enter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In a documentary I saw last week entitled "First We Bombed New Mexico," a woman recalled the summer day in 1945 during her childhood when white particles looking something like snow began to fall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>She and her brothers tried to form it into snowballs, but it wouldn't stick together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It turned out to be fallout from the Trinity test.</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">Far from being an uninhabited area, the part of New Mexico selected for the world's first nuclear explosion harbored ranchers, cowboys, and others trying to extract a hardscrabble existence from the dry soil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Most of them were poor, most of them were Hispanic, and virtually none of them knew anything about fallout, nuclear explosions, or radiation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But as rates of cancer, thyroid disease, and infant mortality began to rise in 1945 and 1946, people started to wonder what was going on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">It is impossible to "prove" that a particular case of cancer in one person was caused by radiation from the Trinity test.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But statistics cited in the movie persuaded me that a great injustice has been wrought on the residents of the region heavily contaminated by fallout, an injustice that continues to this day as&nbsp; plutonium gets concentrated by rainfall in streambeds and aquifers in ways that no one has had the resources to quantify, except in rare cases.</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">Residents of Nevada near the subsequent thermonuclear-bomb test sites used in the 1950s, some residents of Utah, and some uranium miners were in principle compensated for their losses by the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which was proposed in 1979 but not signed into Federal law until 1990.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Ironically, it excluded the first victims of nuclear fallout:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>the New Mexico residents who were the nation's first guinea pigs in the uncontrolled experiment of seeing what ten pounds of plutonium spread over the landscape would do.</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">An activist (and cancer survivor) named Tina Cordova has devoted most of her adult life to getting New Mexico included in an extension of RECA, which was set to expire in 2022 but was extended to 2024 by President Biden's administration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Cordova co-founded the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, a group of cancer survivors, uranium miners, and relatives of deceased victims of cancer who are trying to extend the reach of RECA to cover their region as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">As I watched the film, I found myself imagining what would have happened if the Trinity test had been performed outside, say, Albany, New York instead of Socorro, New Mexico.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Southeasterly winds would have carried the fallout over Springfield and Boston in Massachusetts and Hartford in Connecticut.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If anything close to the level of radiation after Trinity was found in that part of the country, it's likely a bill would have been passed to dig up every square inch of soil in New England to a depth of six inches and get rid of it somewhere—maybe New Mexico?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>They need topsoil there, don't they?</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">There was very little in the way of technical information in the film.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Most of the time, the director, Lois Lipman, followed Tina Cordova around as she spoke at rallies, visited community events, and participated in memorial ceremonies in which paper bags with candles in them, one for each cancer survivor, were blown out one by one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">The Catholic faith is a constant undercurrent in the region of New Mexico contaminated by plutonium, and many victims and relatives gave God credit for getting them through the tribulations of cancer treatments, the sadness of watching one relative after another die of cancer at an early age, and the frustration of seeing the RECA bill amendments turned down year after year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>At this moment, the U. S. Senate has passed a version of the bill, but Speaker Mike Johnson is preventing it from coming to a vote in the House.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>God is neither a Republican nor a Democrat, but I'm sure He is interested in the outcome of this particular political tussle.</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast;">The nation was at war in 1945, and at least in the early stages of the nuclear bomb's development, we did not know how far Nazi Germany was in developing something similar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This situation initially justified a habit of secrecy which continued well after the end of the war, when the USSR became the chief nuclear threat instead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This air of secrecy perhaps explains, but does not justify, why virtually nobody in the path of the fallout was evacuated or even warned of the danger after the July 1945 test.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast;">But now that we know and have records of the injuries and premature cancer deaths that ten pounds of plutonium have wrought upon thousands of mainly poor people in New Mexico, it is a simple matter of justice to compensate them in some way roughly equivalent to what the other people covered by the RECA law have received.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That is the message of "First We Bombed New Mexico," and that is the message I hope our elected representatives get when Tina Cordova and others plead once again for its amendment and renewal.</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="abody" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><b><span style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast;">Sources:</span></b><span style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The award-winning film "First We Bombed New Mexico" was shown at a community center in San Marcos and accompanied by the director, Lois Lipman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It is not generally available, but Lipman is trying to get it aired publicly in time for the 80th anniversary of the Trinity test, which is coming up in July of 2025.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I also referred to a news article on Tina Cordova at </span><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://nmpoliticalreport.com/2024/03/05/activist-who-has-fought-for-reca-expansion-chosen-as-lujans-guest-for-the-state-of-the-union-address/">https://nmpoliticalreport.com/2024/03/05/activist-who-has-fought-for-reca-expansion-chosen-as-lujans-guest-for-the-state-of-the-union-address/</a> and the Wikipedia articles on plutonium and the Trinity test.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I also included some information provided to me by Lois Lipman concerning the extent of the fallout.</span></span></p> <p><style>@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; 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