ACM Ethics

Never Neutral: Why We Need More Anthropologists in the AI Alignment Space A digital anthropologist in a jungle of cables

You should get together with Lianne! medium.com/@Technically...

Never Neutral: Why We Need More Anthropologists in the AI Alignment Space A digital anthropologist in a jungle of cables

medium.com/@Technically... is a more functional link.

I'm here. I've been publishing and researching this space and I seek work.

Meta acquires AI agent social network Moltbook Co-founders of Moltbook, a platform for artificial intelligence agents, will join tech giant’s AI research unit

Or...
Shot:
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Chaser:
www.technologyreview.com/2026/03/05/1...

Digital surveys may have hit the AI point of no return A new study shows bots can be indistinguishable from humans in survey responses.

By me www.fastcompany.com/91467125/dig...

"Never Neutral: Why We Need More Anthropologists in the AI Alignment Space" medium.com/@Technically... HT @theaifix.show with Lianne Potter cc @anthropunk.bsky.social

You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow. Ursula K. Le Guin Chapter 3 (Master Hand) - Earthsea Books - A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)

Softerware Keep your Claude skills loose for better performance

A bit about a pattern I've been seeing in how ordinary people are using coding tools in probably unproductive ways. If you are new to coding, you may thing the problem you want to solve is build more things. The reality is you want to build *less* things.

What’s the Point of School When AI Can Do Your Homework? The creator of the AI agent “Einstein” wants to free humans from the burden of academic labor. Critics say that misses the point of education entirely.

If an AI can go to school for you what’s the point of going to school? For Advait Paliwal, Brown dropout and co-creator of Einstein, it's just like horses. “They used to pull carriages, but when cars came around, I'd argue horses became a lot more free."
www.404media.co/whats-the-po...

Gen Z Teachers Grew Up With Tech. Now They're Seeking Better Boundaries for Students Gen Z teachers grew up in an era of unbridled tech. It shapes how they approach classroom technology.

"Gen Z teachers are the first cohort of classroom educators that entered adolescence just as smartphones became ubiquitous. They grew up with much of their social lives online" #edtech #ILoveEdTech #ImFutureReady #elearning #AIEdu

New statement from the ACM U.S. Technology Policy Committee on AdTech & DHS privacy/security: computing experts urge stronger safeguards around government use of advertising-tech data collection. #Privacy #Security #TechPolicy

acm.org/binaries/con...

Computing experts call for clearer, tech-grounded standards in Evidence Rule 707 for handling digital evidence in court. #TechPolicy @ACMorg

www.acm.org/binaries/con...

The Cyber Safety Review Board Should be Reinvigorated ACM Calls for Reactivation and Legislative Reform of the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) The U.S. Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB), established by Executive Order in 2021 to investigate major cyberse...

The Cyber Safety Review Board is dormant, and that's a cybersecurity risk in itself. ACM US Tech Policy Committee is calling for the CSRB to be reactivated and given a permanent legislative foundation, subpoena power, and full-time expert staff. shorturl.at/ufrs8
#Cybersecurity #CSRB #TechPolicy

Buying vs. Building AI: How should governments navigate the LLM frontier?

New ACM TechBrief offers a deep dive into the strategic choices facing nations today—balancing control, cost, and capability.

Essential reading for policy makers: dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10....

#AI #Policy #SovereignAI #Tech

Aside from security, memory unsafety can be the cause of reliability issues and is notoriously expensive to debug. In the latest issue of "Queue: In Practice," four software engineers argue that the best place to start today is by improving our standard libraries.

Learn more: buff.ly/w8VJYpj

The use of AI on the DL has been a big point of discussion, prompting a new ACM Presidential Task Force (PTF) on the Responsible Use of AI. If you have input to share with the PTF, please reach out at sigchi-president@acm.org.

Building a more sustainable CHI 🌍 We’re sharing resources and guidance to help the community reduce the environmental footprint of the conference. Learn more about sustainability efforts for CHI 2026: chi2026.acm.org/2026/03/02/s...
#CHI2026 #CHICommunity #HCI #SustainableCHI

Hands-On Workshop: Building Advanced AI Applications and Agents in One Hour, Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 11:30 AM | Meetup **ACM Distinguished Speaker Series** **Title:** *A Hands-On Workshop: Building Advanced AI Applications and Agents in One Hour* **Speaker:** Mehdi Bahrami – Santa Clara, CA

Join us in the upcoming #ACMDSPLecture, "A Hands-On Workshop: Building Advanced AI Applications and Agents in One Hour" with speaker Mehdi Bahrami at Fujitsu Research of America. The hybrid event will take place on March 20, 2026. More info here: buff.ly/BOQxPuI

#distinguishedspeaker #computing

www.disabilitysimulator.com/dyslexia

Vibe Coding: What It Is, How It’s Changing Software, and What Comes Next？

Join Responsible Tech for an online discussion for:
- A clearer understanding of what vibe coding actually changes
- Language to discuss intent, boundaries, and responsibility with your teams

Register: buff.ly/qcAf8Tu

What's in the latest issue of #AdvancesInComputing:

- digital companions 🤖
- privacy for the young generation 👶
- designing for sufficiency 🏞️
and more.

Subscribe if you haven't already 👇
buff.ly/CY4wsTN

Build the future of Agentic & AI systems at the inaugural ACM CAIS!

Held May 26-29 in San Jose, California, the conference is dedicated to the design, evaluation, and engineering of compound and agentic AI systems.

For more details: www.caisconf.org

Submit your research by Feb 27, 2026!

Registration: SIGecom Winter Meeting 2026 February 25, 2026 on Virtual Chair. Event website

What are YOU doing Feb 25? Because the 6th Annual SIGEcom Winter Meeting is free, virtual, 10:30am-5pm about CS, AI & Law. Register to participate! forms.gle/LVjX7TPk9kba...
Organized by Rachel Cummings and @inbaltalgam.bsky.social!

But again, I am highly appreciative of the intention behind this. Doing something to encourage authors to write about research ethics in their papers is far more than most publication venues do, especially in computing.

Maybe my take on this relates to the work I've done on ethics education. Ethical considerations in special sections of papers at the very end that many people won't read makes me think of the senior level standalone CS ethics class you take after none of your profs mentions ethics for 4 years.

Ethical Considerations Statement. Can be included at submission time This statement is a description of the ethical concerns and potential adverse impacts that authors considered and mitigated while conducting the work. Authors should describe the ethical challenges they faced in their submission and how they addressed such challenges. In particular, submissions that (1) describe experiments with human subjectsusers and/or deployed systems (e.g., websites or apps), or (2) rely on sensitive user data (e.g., social network information) must adhere to precepts of ethical research and community norms. These include compliance with applicable laws and applicable professional ethical codes; respect for privacy; secure storage of sensitive data; voluntary and informed consent when appropriate; avoiding deceptive practices when not essential; beneficence and non-maleficence (maximizing the benefits to an individual or society while minimizing harm to the individual); risk mitigation; and post-hoc disclosure of audits. See also the section on Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct above. We also encourage authors to discuss any potential adverse or unintended impacts the work might have once published, and how they have mitigated those potential impacts.

Now to be clear! My assumption that the *reason* for ethical considerations sections being part of endmatter is that the conference wants to encourage such statements by not counting them towards the page limit. So good intention, but...

1. death to page limits
2. come onnnnnnnn

Reflexivity, positionality, and disclosure in HCI Are you an HCI researcher thinking about including a positionality statement? Here are some thoughts.

Same with positionality/reflexivity -- this should be part of the methods. This is also a section that authors are instructed to put at the end in FAccT papers.

(I have some thoughts about this one as well, but appreciate the thoughtful pointer to medium.com/@caliang/ref... )

I actually feel the same way (stronger, actually) about limitations and am completely baffled by why it's the norm for some fields/publications to put limitations at the end.

I need to know about limitations to appropriately interpret the findings! Why do I care about them when I get to the end!

For example, let's say that you make a well informed ethical decision to obfuscate data in some way in order to protect the privacy of social media users. The reader is wondering why there aren't direct quotes in the findings or why some information is redacted. They should know this going in.

I think that decisions about how to conduct research ethically are at the exact same level as any other methodological decision -- e.g. how to recruit participants or what statistical analyses to run. They are also often just as relevant to understanding and interpreting the findings.