As public concern about the ethical and social implications of artificial intelligence keeps growing, it might seem like it’s time to slow down. But inside tech companies themselves, the sentiment is quite the opposite. As Big Tech’s AI race heats up, it would be an “absolutely fatal error in this moment to worry about things […] … learn more→
Blog Archives
AI has social consequences, but who pays the price? Tech companies’ problem with ‘ethical debt’
Tackling online misogyny: what needs to be done in schools – and our communities
Research from the Children’s Commissioner for England has found that 79% of children have encountered violent pornography before they are 18. One-third of young people have reported receiving nude videos or photographs, with more than half sent from strangers. There has also been a dramatic rise of hyper-masculine social media influencers, causing alarm among teachers and teaching unions. These […] … learn more→
Personal data: nothing to hide, but a lot to lose
Our personal data circulates on the Internet: name, addresses, bank or social security details, real-time location… and related cases are making a permanent place in public debate, from the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal to data theft to the Red Cross , to the recent blockages of hospitals by ransomware (or ransomware ) and the banning of the TikTok application for civil servants in several countries . […] … learn more→
Survey: behind AI, precarious workers in developing countries
There are not only robots behind artificial intelligence (AI): at the end of the chain, there are often workers from southern countries. Recently a Time investigation revealed that Kenyan workers paid less than three euros per hour were responsible for ensuring that the data used to train ChatGPT did not contain discriminatory content . AI models indeed need to be trained, […] … learn more→
The riddle of the image
The human being is a visual animal, for which perception through image representation is the closest and most affordable means. It is mentioned in perceptual psychology studies that, in a very high percentage, human individuals attend to the visual rather than the auditory or other perceptive senses. Technologies have greatly developed the ability to live, access and communicate […] … learn more→
Rewrite children’s books or educate children? The example of Roald Dahl
Although many of his best-known books date from the 1960s, Roald Dahl is still one of the most popular children’s authors today. The recent decision by publisher Puffin, in conjunction with The Roald Dahl Story Company, to make several hundred revisions to new editions of his novels has drawn widespread criticism, with writer Salman Rushdie going so far as to speak of censorship. […] … learn more→
Medico-psychological cells : how do they help students after a traumatic event?
The school environment is, like the rest of society, regularly confronted with violence and serious events with a strong traumatic impact . Brutally exposed to a threat to their physical or psychological integrity, to a mortal risk for themselves or for others, or even the spectacle of a horrible death, the subjects involved may experience a feeling of […] … learn more→
What happens to our data when we no longer use a social media network or publishing platform?
The internet plays a central role in our lives. I — and many others my age — grew up alongside the development of social media and content platforms. My peers and I built personal websites on GeoCities, blogged on LiveJournal, made friends on MySpace and hung out on Nexopia. Many of these earlier platforms and social spaces occupy large parts […] … learn more→
Fighting Anti-Semitism: Teaching the Holocaust in the Age of Twitter and TikTok
In the age of the Internet, anti-Semitic remarks and Holocaust denial speech no longer circulate only in marginal hate groups but are exposed to everyone on social networks. High-profile figures like Ye – formerly known as Kayne West – or NBA player Kyrie Irving have echoed anti-Semitic ideas on their online accounts recently. Beyond these media figures , worrying survey results also […] … learn more→
Online racial harassment leads to lower academic confidence for Black and Hispanic students
Online racial discrimination or harassment has a negative effect on the academic and emotional well-being of students of color. That is the key finding from a study I published recently in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. For the study, I surveyed 356 Black and Hispanic teens across the U.S. I analyzed their responses to questions about […] … learn more→
