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Digital Age: Law & Ethics

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The typical Amazon employee makes less than you think. Amazon (AMZN) disclosed in a filing Wednesday that the median pay for its employees was just $28,446 in 2017. Put another way: half of Amazon's employees earned less than that amount. The underwhelming figure was made public as part of a new rule put into effect this year by the Securities and Exchange Commission requiring companies to disclose the pay ratio between their CEOs and overall employees. Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO and the world's richest man, received a total compensation of about $1.68 million last year -- or 59 times the median Amazon employee compensation. Amazon now employs 566,000 people worldwide — a 66 percent jump from a year ago. The number of people working for Amazon continues to go way, way up as the Seattle-based tech giant reached 566,000 employees worldwide during the fourth quarter of 2017 — an addition of 24,100 people in that timeframe.

Amazon now employs 566,000 people worldwide — a 66 percent jump from a year ago

Amazon shared the figure in its earnings report on Thursday. Jeff Bezos, post divorce, remains richer than everyone else on Earth. After his divorce from MacKenzie Bezos, Jeff Bezos remains the richest man in the world.

Jeff Bezos, post divorce, remains richer than everyone else on Earth

His net worth is an estimated $110 billion. USA TODAY With billions of dollars on the line, Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, and his ex-wife, novelist MacKenzie Bezos, announced on Thursday that they are in the process of finalizing their divorce. After months of speculation surrounding the future of Amazon and the personal valuation of Bezos, the ex-couple revealed on Twitter how their stock is being divided.

As it turns out, Jeff Bezos is exiting the marriage (still) richer than everyone else in the world. $110 billion net worth. Amazon employees describe working for Jeff Bezos' company during peak - Business Insider. Is IP Utilitarian or a Natural Right? - The Illusion of More. Image by ivelinradkov Usually, when we talk about copyright or patents, we focus on the utilitarian aspects of the law.

Is IP Utilitarian or a Natural Right? - The Illusion of More

We generally discuss the merits of specific arguments in a case or the need of the author or inventor to earn a living from her work relative to the social and economic value of that work to the market. But an ongoing debate among academics, which occasionally seeps into the blogosphere and general reportage, is the question of whether IP law is grounded in natural rights or based exclusively on utility.

Big Tech is Failing the Self-Regulation Test – Corporate Foreign Policy. Big Tech is Failing the Self-Regulation Test – Corporate Foreign Policy. Canada's Association of Information Technology Professionals. What defines a profession?

Canada's Association of Information Technology Professionals

There are many definitions of what constitutes a profession. Typically they all refer to a disciplined group of individuals who adhere to high ethical standards and are accepted by the public as possessing special knowledge and skills in a widely recognised, organized body of learning derived from specialized education and training. Inherent in this definition is the idea that the responsibility for the welfare, health and safety of the community takes precedence over personal considerations.

Will Tech Companies Ever Take Ethics Seriously? – Featured Stories. Professionalism In Information Technology.

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5 of the Biggest Information Technology Failures and Scares. 6 Different Types of Jobs in Information Technology. “Information Technology”, or IT - its more popular acronym, is a pretty broad term.

6 Different Types of Jobs in Information Technology

It covers a whole range of career paths that diverge into fascinating and lucrative specializations in the digital world. If you’re looking to join the ranks of IT experts, it might seem a bit overwhelming to try to decipher exactly what these job titles all mean—especially if you’re looking for a way to start your career in IT. To save you a bit of work, we’ve collected some of the most common job titles you’ll come across during your research, and summarized what each job description typically looks like and what skills are needed. Here are six different types of jobs in information technology. Information Technology – trade or profession? A subject that has generated some lively discussions recently is the perception of IT as a whole.

Information Technology – trade or profession?

Is IT merely a trade or is it a true profession?? Of course, this requires some sort of definition of these terms. I have done quite a bit of research into these two terms and have finally narrowed it down to the following: TRADE: A skilled job, typically one requiring primarily manual skills and special training. Chinese scientists give monkeys human brain genes in ‘morally risky’ experiment. Their brains may not be bigger than normal, but monkeys created with human brain genes are exhibiting cognitive changes that suggest they might be smarter — and the experiments have ethicists shuddering.

Chinese scientists give monkeys human brain genes in ‘morally risky’ experiment

In the wake of the genetically modified human babies scandal, Chinese scientists are drawing fresh condemnation from philosophers and ethicists, this time over the announcement they’ve created transgenic monkeys with elements of a human brain. A team led by scientists at the Kunming Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences say they generated 11 transgenic rhesus monkeys carrying human copies of a gene known as MCPH1, which they describe as an important gene for brain development and brain evolution.

The gene is involved in a process known as neoteny — the delaying or slowing of the development of an organism. As a baby’s brain develops after birth, MCPH1 is expressed in abundance, but less so in nonhuman primates. National Science Review. National Post. MICRO DRONES KILLER ARMS ROBOTS - AUTONOMOUS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - WARNING !! Facebook A.I. Robots shut down after creating their own language. Hot Robot At SXSW Says She Wants To Destroy Humans. Did Facebook Shut Down an AI Experiment Because Chatbots Developed Their Own Language? It is probably not a coincidence that two of the top-trending news stories of July 2017 were, in the first case, a warning from billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk that artificial intelligence (AI) poses an “existential threat” to human civilization, and, in the second case, the announcement that an AI experiment sponsored by Facebook was, according to some sources, “shut down” after researchers discovered that the chatbots they programmed had begun communicating with one another in a private language of their own invention.

Did Facebook Shut Down an AI Experiment Because Chatbots Developed Their Own Language?

Musk, who has previously warned that the development of autonomous weaponry could lead to an “AI arms race”, told the National Governors Association on 15 July 2017 that the risks posed by artificial intelligence are so great that it needs to be proactively regulated before it’s too late. Interview: How will artificial intelligence transform robotic surgery? - AI Med. 15 Medical Robots That Are Changing the World. We are at a crucial juncture in the field of robotics.

15 Medical Robots That Are Changing the World

We stand at the cusp of a massive shift in the way that we interact with the world and go about our daily lives. Every day, new discoveries are being made that push us inevitably toward a future where the majority of work is done not by us mere humans, but by robots instead. The rise of automation and the replacement of the working class by machinery is not something that is necessarily “new”. AI beats the world's best gamers after just two weeks of learning. New Report Highlights Lack of User Understanding About Facebook's Data Collection Processes. What does Google know about me? Artificial Intelligence: it will kill us. A New Study Brings Scientists One Step Closer To Mind Reading. A crime happens, and there is a witness.

A New Study Brings Scientists One Step Closer To Mind Reading

Instead of a sketch artist drawing a portrait of the suspect based on verbal descriptions, the police hook the witness up to EEG equipment. The witness is asked to picture the perpetrator, and from the EEG data, a face appears. How algorithms rule our working lives. A few years ago, a young man named Kyle Behm took a leave from his studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He was suffering from bipolar disorder and needed time to get treatment. A year and a half later, Kyle was healthy enough to return to his studies at a different university. Amazon’s Face Recognition Falsely Matched 28 Members of Congress With Mugshots. Amazon's Facial Recognition Tech Is Super Racist. Amazon is clearly hoping that its new face recognition technology, Rekognition, will be the wave of the future.

Others, though, see it as an invasion of privacy, as well as inaccurate. Now, the tech has misidentified 28 members of Congress as suspected criminals after the ACLU of Northern California asked the program to match the pictures of 535 members of Congress against 25,000 publicly available mugshot photos. Amazon's Facial Recognition Tech Is Super Racist. Detecting 'deepfake' videos in the blink of an eye. A new form of misinformation is poised to spread through online communities as the 2018 midterm election campaigns heat up. Called “deepfakes” after the pseudonymous online account that popularized the technique – which may have chosen its name because the process uses a technical method called “deep learning” – these fake videos look very realistic. So far, people have used deepfake videos in pornography and satire to make it appear that famous people are doing things they wouldn’t normally.

But it’s almost certain deepfakes will appear during the campaign season, purporting to depict candidates saying things or going places the real candidate wouldn’t. Cottingley Fairies. Faked photographs of fairies by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths The first of the five photographs, taken by Elsie Wright in 1917, shows Frances Griffiths with the alleged fairies.

Faceswapping, Unethical Videos, and Future Shock. 8 Most Common Causes of Data Breach - Sutcliffe Insurance. Cyber-bullying and Personal Data Protection - Deacons. Nowadays, we live in an information age (also known as the computer age, digital age or new media age) and the advancement of technologies has facilitated information flow and communication through social media. On one hand, people have easy and quick access to others’ information, enabling interaction with one another. World’s Biggest Data Breaches & Hacks. What is a data breach? Types, Consequences and Prevention Measures. How Rogers, Telus and Bell sell access to your location data to third-party companies. Tom Gruber: How AI can enhance our memory, work and social lives. Filter Bubbles: Taking Back Our Social Media Control. Big Data : 4 types of filter bubbles. Does Your State Prefer CNN, Fox News Or BBC? Bitly's New Media Map May Have The Answer (INFOGRAPHIC)

This week, Bitly launched an interactive, real-time map that shows how different states are biased toward certain media outlets. Big data security: issues, challenges, concerns. The Complete Beginner's Guide To Big Data Everyone Can Understand. Value-Added Modeling 101: Using Student Test Scores to Help Measure Teaching Effectiveness. Disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence ॥ Danger of AI. Sidewalk Toronto has only one beneficiary, and it is not Toronto. 7foundationalprinciples. Sidewalk Labs’s vision and your data privacy: A guide to the saga on Toronto’s waterfront.

The 21st-century battle over privacy may feel virtual and abstract, but in Toronto it has a very real front line: the city’s waterfront. Sidewalk Toronto. Mpanies have been selling our data in exchange for ‘free’ products and services for a long time – Facebook’s not so different. Let’s forget for a moment about the Facebook scandal, though if you are one of the million-plus Britons who have had their data sold on, someone else remembers a whole lot about you. Think instead about your mobile phone.

How and Why Businesses Collect Consumer Data. Could A.I.-Based Surveillance Predict Crime Before It Happens? The complicated truth about China's social credit system. Data mining firm behind Trump election built psychological profiles of nearly every American voter. How Big Data Analysis helped increase Walmart’s Sales turnover? Biometrics Pose New Risk to Consumer Security. Bill Gates says filter bubbles are a serious problem with news. DuckDuckGo study finds that Google Chrome still records results Incognito. Measuring the Filter Bubble: How Google is influencing what you click.

MrBeast calls out YouTube after being hit with false copyright strike. NPR Choice page. Ways your technology is already spying on you. Apple 1984 Ad Commercial - Original Recording from The Day It First Aired. Apple - 1984. Apple '1984' Super Bowl Ad Retrospective - Business Insider. Personal Computer History: 1975-1984. 11 Examples of Fear and Suspicion Of New Technology. Video: Big Data and Discrimination. Bias in Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. Virginia Eubanks – Writing about technology and social justice. The need for algorithmic literacy, transparency and oversight grows.

In Brief - Big data, algorithms and discrimination. Weblining (Internet Redlining) Ultra-Realistic Voice Cloning and Text-to-Speech. VoCo Demo at Adobe Max 2016. You Won’t Believe What Obama Says In This Video! □ This New Tech Can Copy Anyone’s Voice Using Just a Minute of Audio. Artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and the uncertain future of truth. Big Data in Marketing: 5 Use Cases. Examples of Targeted Advertising. Case Study: Super-Apps and the Exploitative Potential of Mobile Applications.

How to Avoid Being Tracked by Facebook. #109 Is Facebook Spying on You? by Reply All from Gimlet Media. Facebook Isn't Listening Through Your Phone's Microphone. It Doesn't Have To. How did adverts get so good at following us around? Is Google Always Listening? (no, it isn't)

Course: Internet History, Technology & Security

Artificial intelligence is the future—but it's not immune to human bias. Artificial Intelligence: MIT Researchers Create Deep-Learning Algorithm That Can Peer Into The Future. What Is The Difference Between Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning? The Tech Revolt. Women & Tech. PRIVACY INFRINGEMENT. The 3 Biggest Challenges for Tech in 2019. MIT313 Teaching & Assessing. Ethics in the Digital Age.

Anonymity. Blockchain.