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Fall 2021 Newsletter 


Upcoming Events: 













Register via Eventbrite 

Join the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions for this conversation featuring guest speakers William Aderholdt and Gabriel Thomas. Aderholdt and Thomas will share their thoughts and approaches regarding the ethical use of AI in agriculture. Topics of discussion will include what the ethical use of AI in agriculture means to each of them, how their teams and research projects are using artificial intelligence, and what challenges and strides they have encountered when implementing artificial intelligence in practice.

William Aderholdt, Director of the Project Management Office, Grand Farm

Dr. William Aderholdt, located in Fargo, North Dakota, is the Director of the Program Management Office at Grand Farm Research and Education Initiative. In this role, William oversees the technology and projects at Grand Farm, bringing together organizations from around the world to demonstrate, research, and develop innovations in agriculture technology. Each week, he meets with startups to better understand their technology, and how it fits into the future of agriculture. While completing his PhD, he worked to learn software development and data science, which allows him to connect deeper to modern technology innovations.

Gabriel Thomas, Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba

Gabriel Thomas (M’95) has been a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada since 1999, and he is currently an Associate Professor. He received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Monterrey Institute of Technology, Mexico in 1991 and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in computer engineering from the University of Texas, El Paso in 1994 and 1999, respectively. His current research interests include digital image and signal processing, machine learning, nondestructive testing, and computer vision.

 

Updates From CSEP: 

Recording of "Increasing Trust in Artificial Intelligence" Webinar 

On September 22, the webinar “Increasing Trust in Artificial Intelligence: Approaches and Limitations” featured speakers Jason Borenstein, Hille Haker, and Roberto Zicari who explored issues of overtrust and undertrust in artificial intelligence and robots, what is needed to make AI systems “trustworthy,” and a tool for accessing the trustworthiness of AI systems. Please watch a recording of the webinar if you were unable to join us, and please register for our next webinar, Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Agriculture.


CSEP Predoctoral Research Fellow Leilasadat (Leila) Mirghaderi publishes report on social media influencers and their use of free labor in Iran for SoReMo

As an inaugural Spring 2021 SoReMo fellow, Leilasadat (Leila) Mirghaderi investigated how social media influencers may be exploiting the labor of their followers for their own profit. By providing semester-long research fellowships, the Socially Responsible Modeling, Computation, and Design (SoReMo) initiative aims to empower the students to engage in interdisciplinary research opportunities and create impacts beyond their immediate surroundings and Illinois Tech’s campus. By performing content analysis on 2,130 Instagram stories from the top (based on the number of followers) 71 Iranian Instagram influencers, Leila has identified the different strategies that Iranian social media influencers use to exploit their followers.
(read more: Social Media Users Free Labor in Iran: Influencers, Ethical Conduct, and Labor Exploitation)

SoReMo Study Discovers New Source of Free Labor

SoReMo Looks to Make Impact Beyond Campus

Dissertation Exploring the Role of Social Media Satirists in Enabling Social Changes in Iran
 

Leilasadat (Leila) Mirghaderi is a Ph.D. candidate in the humanities department, and her dissertation is focused on investigating the role of social media satirists in enabling and facilitating social change in Iran. As a nontraditional source of news, online satire is being used in different ways around the globe. Although researchers have focused on understanding the role of satire in Western countries, the ways satire is being used are different in other nations. This study has several steps. First, the literature is reviewed to identify the current findings of other researchers related to the impact of satire on social change. There have been several studies that investigated the role of satire in gaining knowledge and also political participation and engagement in Western countries. However, the way satire is being used in Western countries is different from that of Eastern countries. Especially, in the case of Iran, there is a gap in the matter of understanding the role of satire in social change. The second phase involves gathering the data. For this purpose, the online content generated by prominent Iranian social media influencers will be collected. Third, the data will be analyzed based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Furthermore, Leila is looking at this issue through the lens of theoretical concepts such as Habermas’s public sphere. As the cornerstone of Leila’s research, Habermas’s public sphere can enable her to investigate the effectiveness of the online world in promoting the democratic exchange of ideas. However, it is necessary to investigate how satire, humor, and memetic culture on the social web complicate the normative functioning of the public sphere as a space for rational deliberation and whether humor has a place in Habermas’ normative public sphere.

See Illinois Tech's Magazine feature on CSEP's predoctoral research fellow Monika Sziron, "Beginning the Conversation About AI in Ag" in the summer 2021 issue. 

CSEP research fellow Mónika Sziron is conducting research regarding AI ethics in agriculture. The survey for anyone who works in agriculture or farms in the Midwest is available here: https://bit.ly/35Ue46Y 

Faculty Associated with the Ethics Center

The Center has recently expanded its network of Illinois Tech Faculty with whom it collaborates. 

Mustafa Bilgic, Computer Science
Abhinav Bushan, Biomedical Engineering
Carol Davids, Computer Science
Andrew J.Howard, Biology and Physics
Mar Hicks, Humanities
Arlen C. Moller, Psychology
Sohail Murad, Chemical and Biological Engineering
Kai Shu, Computer Science
Marcella Vaicik, Biomedical Engineering
Ullica Segerstrale, Social Sciences

Recent Publications: 


Codes of Ethics and Ethical Guidelines in Research and Innovation

Edited by Kelly Laas, Elisabeth Hildt, and Michael Davis

To be published by Springer Nature Publishing Company in December 2021, this collected volume explores the role ethics codes and guidelines play in shaping the research and innovation process.

This book investigates how ethics generally precedes legal regulation and looks at how changes in codes of ethics represent an unparalleled window into the research, innovation, and emerging technologies they seek to regulate. It provides case studies from the fields of engineering, science, medicine, and social science showing how professional codes of ethics often predate regulation and help shape the ethical use of emerging technologies and professional practice. Changes in professional ethics are the crystallization of ongoing conversation in scientific and professional fields about how justice, privacy, safety, and human rights should be realized in practice where the law is currently silent. This book is a significant addition to this area of practical and professional ethics and is of particular interest to practitioners, scholars, and students interested in the areas of practical and applied ethics.

Hildt, Elisabeth. 2021. "Affective Brain-Computer Music Interfaces—Drivers and Implications." Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 15 (355). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2021.711407. https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2021.711407.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) allow users to control a computer or other device with their brain activity. While BCI technology has been developed and used primarily in medical contexts, a broad spectrum of non-clinical applications is on the horizon. The focus of this article is on affective BCIs that allow to identify and influence a person's affective states. For example, some affective brain computer music interface (aBCMI) applications aim at modulating the affective states of their users.   Based on determining how listeners respond to certain types of music, music that influences their emotional states can be chosen. These affective BCIs detect correlates of a user's current affective state and attempt to modulate it by generating or selecting music that, for example, serves to increase happiness or reduce stress levels. While the future development of this type of technology is largely unclear, for future non-clinical aBCMI home applications to be of interest to a broad spectrum of potential users, the technology not only has to prove attractive to a wide audience but also must be ethically sound. 


Hildt, Elisabeth. 2021. "What Sort of Robots Do We Want to Interact With? Reflecting on the Human Side of Human-Artificial Intelligence Interaction." Frontiers in Computer Science 3 (62). https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2021.671012. 

During the past decades, the interplay between humans and robots has been investigated in the field of human-robot interaction (HRI). This research has provided fascinating results on the spectrum and forms of engagement between humans and robots and on the various behaviors displayed by robots aimed at interacting with and influencing humans. Yet, crucial questions regarding how humans want to interact with and be influenced by robots are sidestepped in this research, falling for what could be called a robotistic fallacy. This article outlines some of the current findings on HRI to then critically assess the broader implications of HRI and key questions that must be asked in this context.


Kelly Laas, Stephanie Taylor, Christine Z. Miller, Eric M. Brey & Elisabeth Hildt. 2021. “Views on ethical issues in research labs: A university-wide survey.” Accountability in Research, DOI: 10.1080/08989621.2021.1910503

In this article, we summarize the key findings of an exploratory study in which students and faculty completed a survey that sought to identify the most important ethical issues in STEM fields, how often these issues are discussed in research groups, and how often these ethical issues come up in the daily practice of research. Participants answered a series of open-ended and Likert-scale questions to provide a detailed look at the current ethical landscape at a private research university in the Midwest. The survey also looked at potential differences between faculty and undergraduate and graduate students’ perceptions in answering these questions. The results indicate that while all community members tended to view issues that can be classified as research misconduct as the most important activities to avoid in STEM-related research, the level of discussion and actual witnessing of these practices was relatively low. The study points to a consensus among students and faculty about the important ethical issues in STEM and the need for more discussion and attention to be paid to communication, collaboration, and interpersonal relationships in the research environment.


Mirgharderi, Leilasadat. 2021. “Social Media Users Free Labor in Iran.: Influencers, Ethical Conduct and Labor Exploitation.” Socially Responsible Modeling, Computation, and Design, 1(1).  https://soremo.library.iit.edu/index.php/Soremo/article/view/19

As social media sites are penetrating our daily lives in an ever-increasing manner, there is a need to revisit and reexplore the theoretical concepts that have gone through paradigm shifts due to the influence of these platforms. In this regard, audience labor theory, which was originally conceptualized in the context of mass media, needs to be reexamined as the divide between production and consumption is getting narrower. Users are no longer passive consumers since social media sites have reduced the cost of production and resulted in the advent of the term “presumption.” In such a case, as production involves performing work and results in surplus-value, it needs to be investigated whether users are being exploited for the free work they provide on these platforms. From the several identified forms of digital labor, I will focus on the concept of audience labor. To this end I will focus on identifying labor strategies that Iranian Instagram influencers employ; these strategies involve exploiting their followers to perform tasks that produce fame and visibility as well as monetary gains, but leave the users uncompensated for the work they have performed. By conducting content analysis of the 2130 stories created by 71 Iranian Instagram influencers, this study will identify the strategies that these influencers use to exploit their followers. Furthermore, I will provide ethical guidelines and recommendations for ethical conduct.

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Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions
Illinois Institute of Technology
http://ethics.iit.edu
10 W. 35th Street, 2nd Floor
Chicago, IL 60616

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Illinois Institute of Technology · Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions , Illinois Institute of Technology · 10 W 35th St, 2nd Floor · Chicago, IL 60616 · USA

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