ai-ethics
46 pieces
Field Guide to AI, Security and Cybercrime
AI Rules for a Small Business: Where to Start
You do not need a compliance department to use AI responsibly. You need four things done in order, and a page your staff will read.
Opinion · 6 min
AI Trading Bot Scams: How the Pitch Works
The bot, the dashboard and the steady profits are props. The only tests that matter are the regulator's register and a withdrawal.
Opinion · 5 min
How to Check an AI System for Bias Before It Decides About People
Bias is found by testing outcomes across groups and examining the path from data to decision, not by reading a vendor's fairness statement.
Opinion · 9 min
The Push to Regulate Emotional Recognition AI
New laws are challenging the flawed science and dangerous applications of technologies that claim to read your feelings.
Opinion · 7 min
The Surveillance Capitalism of AI Companions
How emotional intimacy is harvested, packaged and sold as a service.
Opinion · 8 min
AI Companion Chatbot Laws: What They Require for Minors
Disclosure, crisis protocols and age-aware design are becoming the legal baseline.
Opinion · 10 min
AI Companions and Loneliness: Comfort That Never Pushes Back
The risk of AI companionship is not that it feels real but that it is frictionless.
Opinion · 8 min
AI Homework Help: When Faster Means Less Learned
Handing the struggle to a chatbot removes the part of homework that does the teaching.
Opinion · 10 min
AI in Hiring: Your Rights When an Algorithm Screens You
Candidates have more room to ask questions than they think, and less than they deserve.
Opinion · 8 min
AI Productivity Claims: Faster Is Not the Same as Better
Time saved producing a draft often reappears as time spent checking it.
Opinion · 8 min
AI Slop and Fake Reviews: Finding Human Signal Online
When writing is free to produce, the evidence of a real experience is what is scarce.
Opinion · 7 min
AI Sycophancy: Why Chatbots Agree With You, and Why It Matters
Agreement is trained in by human preference, and it quietly bends judgement.
Opinion · 9 min
AI Toys and Smart Speakers in a Child's Room: What They Record
A talking toy is a microphone that a child confides in; set it up as if every conversation will be kept.
Opinion · 8 min
Deepfakes in Elections: The Bigger Risk Is Disbelieving the Real
Synthetic clips matter, but the lasting damage is a public that can wave away any genuine recording.
Opinion · 9 min
Digital Replicas and Consent: Who Controls Your Voice and Face?
A one-time release signed for a job can become permission to generate you forever.
Opinion · 8 min
EU AI Act Explained: What Applies to Whom
The Act regulates uses more than models, so classification of your use case comes first.
Opinion · 9 min
Fake Citations: How AI Hallucinations Reach Courts and Journals
The failure is not the model inventing sources; it is institutions that never check references.
Opinion · 9 min
Griefbots: Talking to an AI Version of Someone Who Died
A simulation built from a person's messages can comfort, short-term, but distort memory long-term.
Opinion · 8 min
Is AI Training Fair Use? The Questions Courts Actually Ask
The legal fight is turning on how data was obtained and whether outputs substitute for originals.
Opinion · 8 min
Scam Compounds: The Forced Labour Behind Scam Messages
Many of the people typing scam texts are themselves trafficked, which the fight against them must address.
Opinion · 8 min
Should Open-Weight AI Models Be Regulated?
Weights cannot be recalled once published, which forces regulation to look somewhere else.
Opinion · 8 min
Should You Trust AI Medical Advice? How to Use It Safely
Chatbots are good at explaining and preparing questions, and keeping decisions where accountability exists.
Opinion · 10 min
The Energy and Water Cost of AI: What Is Known and What Is Not
Per-prompt numbers are real but narrow; the footprint that matters is set by training, siting and model choice.
Opinion · 8 min
US State AI Laws: Why the Patchwork Keeps Rewriting Itself
States are retreating from broad frameworks toward narrow rules on chatbots, deepfakes and decisions.
Opinion · 7 min
Using ChatGPT as a Therapist: Where It Helps and Where It Harms
Structured exercises and rehearsal can help; crisis, delusion and dependency are where it fails.
Opinion · 7 min
Who Is Liable When AI Gets It Wrong?
Blaming the model rarely works; responsibility tends to land on whoever deployed it to the public.
Opinion · 7 min
Who Owns AI-Generated Content? Copyright and Human Authorship
Prompts alone rarely make you an author; what you select, arrange and change can.
Opinion · 8 min
Will AI Take My Job? Look at Tasks, Not Job Titles
Exposure lives at the level of tasks, and the rungs most at risk are the ones that train experts.
Opinion · 8 min
AI Security, Privacy and Vulnerability Index
Model Extraction and Reverse Engineering
A public endpoint is a slow, lossy, complete description of the thing behind it
Opinion · 3 min
Other
Age Verification and the Identity Trap
Proving you are over eighteen usually means proving exactly who you are, and the two are not the same requirement
Opinion · 3 min
AI Detectors Do Not Work, and the Cost Is Not Evenly Shared
Why classifying text as machine-written is structurally hard, and who pays when an institution pretends otherwise
Opinion · 4 min
Anonymised Is a Verb, Not a State
Removing names is the easy part, and it is almost never the part that identifies you
Supported · 3 min
How to Read an Interface
A method for working out what a product optimises, using nothing but a stopwatch and a count of taps
Opinion · 4 min
Privacy Is Not Secrecy
The strongest argument against privacy only works if you accept a definition nobody actually uses
Opinion · 3 min
The Consent Popup Is Not Consent
What the banner is actually for, why it is designed to be tiring, and what genuine consent would look like
Opinion · 3 min
The Default Is the Policy
What a system does when nobody chooses is what it does, and everything else is documentation
Opinion · 3 min
The Model in the Middle
When a language model sits between a person and a system, it inherits both sides' permissions and neither side's judgement
Opinion · 5 min
The Problem I Am Working On
Stated as a problem, because the solution is not mine to describe yet
Opinion · Founder essay · 4 min
The Record Outlives the Decision
Every privacy question people argue about is really a question about how long something is kept and by whom
Opinion · 5 min
The System Cannot Be Asked Why
Most disputes about automated decisions are really disputes about who has to explain themselves, and to whom
Opinion · 5 min
What a Consent Record Actually Proves
It is excellent evidence of process and almost worthless evidence of preference, and those get quoted interchangeably
Opinion · 4 min
What a Model Cannot Know About Itself
Asking a system to report its own confidence, its own reasoning, or its own limits produces text, and text is not evidence
Opinion · 4 min
Before You Post That Photograph
What actually reduces the exposure, what only feels like it does, and why the difference matters more for children
Supported · Field note · 5 min
Free Is a Price
What a service costs when it does not charge, and how to work out what you are paying before you sign up
Opinion · 4 min
What the Model Remembers
Where the text you paste into an assistant goes, who can read it, and which of the usual reassurances actually mean something
Supported · 5 min
You Are the Training Set
What the free photograph pays for, and who is holding it in fifteen years
Forward-looking · Founder essay · 6 min