- Both Crawford and Ensmenger detail the environmental
impacts of the tech industry. Let’s apply their arguments to something
specific: AI image generators (like Dall-E from OpenAI, for
example). On the one hand, the image generators may not use the same
material resources as, say, manufacturing a new smartphone. On the
other hand, at least some studies suggest their energy usage is higher
than AI text generators (here’s
a report
on one such study). Given what you read from Crawford and Ensmenger,
identify two main questions we ought to be asking about AI image
generators that will help us think through their environmental
impact. Explain why the questions you identify are important and how
they will help us determine the ethical implications of AI image
generators. Finally, try to answer the following question: are AI
image generators worth it? [NB: that question is intentionally vague
so that you can think through for yourself what “worth it” might
mean.] Remember to anticipate an objection.
- Ethicists working in technology worry about the fact that
people are (usually) uninformed about its environmental impacts and
labor issues. Do two things in this paper. First, explain why it is an
ethical problem that people are uninformed about these things. For
example, you could argue that people have a right to know or that
companies have an obligation to inform them or that not knowing has
serious ethical risks that we shouldn’t want to incur (or some
combination of those). Remember that you’ll need to argue for your
answer as opposed to just asserting it. Second, what would it look
like to try to inform people (or be informed) about the resources that
technology uses? What strategies might we use to make this information
more prominent in people’s minds? Remember to anticipate an
objection.
- One of the themes that has emerged from the readings is
the notion of abstraction. In this context, abstraction refers to the
way that the technology we interact with (touch-screen kiosks, phones,
tablets, laptops, etc.) is both literally and metaphorically distant
from the actual material and labor that comprise it. Even though, for
example, you know that when you’re holding your phone, you are also
holding rare earths that were mined from the ground by a miner, the
connection between mining and your phone seems distant or perhaps even
invisible. What are some of the ethical implications of this
abstraction? This paper requires two parts. The first part needs to
be a philosophical account (what we sometimes call a “conceptual
analysis”) of abstraction in this context: what are its key
characteristics or conditions? You can use an example from the reading
to help you with this. The second part will be a discussion of what we
might call the ethical risks of abstraction. What ethical problems or
challenges does abstraction raise for us? You can think about this
from the perspective of people who design or people who use technology
(or both). Remember to anticipate an objection.