Ethikos Editor’s Weekly Picks: Want More Ethical Employees? Give ’em a Nudge

By Matt Palmquist for strategy+business
Nudges, once the domain of Smokey Bear and McGruff the Crime Dog, are being used by an increasing number of companies to guide their employees to behave a certain way. Initially conceived for public policy projects — think government campaigns about quitting smoking, increasing organ donation, and not littering — nudges are interventions, suggestions, or reminders about changing for the better. Read more

By Ellen Tannam for siliconrepublic
The vast quantities of user data from social media accounts, apps and IoT devices have created swathes of information from which vital insights can be mined to implement new problem-solving technologies, ostensibly making the world a better place.

That hinges on the continuing development of an ethical framework, increased transparency with the public about their data and constant cognisance of potential biases (both human and within datasets) that could be used in automated decision-making or other technological advances. Read more

By Emily Bell for University Affairs
One thing I’ve realized after five-plus years of teaching a course on research integrity is that graduate students struggle with questions over ethics and integrity on a regular basis. My course focuses on helping students to think about why essentially good people sometimes do bad things. This approach, based on behavioural ethics, asks the question, “what factors influence people from being able to make and follow through on ethical decisions?” Similarly, “what factors when present in our environment, in the ways that we think and interact with others, make us more likely to act unethically?” Read more

By Neeti Mehta Shukla for VentureBeat
Business leadership is on the frontlines of an urgent ethical discussion about well, human-ness in a time of accelerating automation. We must talk about the responsibility leadership has in creating this human-robot world of work — in embracing the audacity of bots. History will judge us by the difference we make in the lives of humans.

“Bot audacity” refers to the expectation that robots will outperform humans, execute cognitive functions, and think — the most human of skills — which in turn makes our workforces fear and resist this change. Read more