Creativity Squared: On A.I., Ethics & Moral Reasoning

Dear Creativity Squared Member,

Thanks for all of the amazing feedback on last week’s episode, Salvador Dalí: Expand Your Mind on Immortality, Art, and A.I. — I’m so glad you’re enjoying it as much as I did recording it!

Yesterday, I flew into Boston for the MIT A.I. Summit, which I’ll be attending all day today. There were some fun artifacts, including the first-ever Apple laptop! It wasn’t light, to say the least! But it served to highlight the history of where we started and how far we’ve come in a very short amount of time with tech.

Excitement is in the air about the possibilities that A.I. will unlock and whether the next unicorn A.I. company is in the room.

Today’s Episode 45 with leading moral reasoning and knowledge scholar Dr. Andrew (Andy) Cullison couldn’t be more timely or important. One of his key messages is that everyone needs ethics and moral reasoning training, especially people who are building and designing the tools. Ethicists can’t be everywhere all the time, and these issues need to be nipped in the bud as early as possible. And as you know, there are a lot of thorny, moral challenges A.I. presents that we have to address.

Where do we draw the line with A.I. from an ethical lens?

Listen to Episode 45 today to find out how to navigate A.I. with different ethical frameworks.

In our conversation (which we joke is an airplane between two people sitting beside each other), Andy shares the importance of teaching ethics in an A.I. world, what he's learned from experimenting with ChatGPT's moral reasoning abilities, practical tips, moral framework exercises for navigating everyday ethical dilemmas, and much more.

I first met Andy at the 2.0 grand opening of the University of Cincinnati's Digital Futures building. You're in for a treat to hear Andy's insights that offer a philosopher's perspective on some of the most pressing issues of our time.

Check out Episode 45 today!

Stay tuned for more of my takeaways after being on stage with Professor De Kai at the Texas Eclipse Festival and this MIT A.I. Summit.

Scroll on to discover:

• 🤠 Featured Blog Post: SXSW 2024 Recap, 12 Favorite A.I. Sessions, and More!

• 📆 Calendar of Events: A.I. Conferences & Events Radar

• 🤯 A.I. + Creativity News Roundup

• 🎧 More on Episode 45

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• 💎 Creativity Squared Premium Member Benefits

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• ❤️‍🔥 Premium Members: Episode NFT

We’re just getting started, and if you enjoy our content, I’d really appreciate it if you could share, review, like, subscribe, leave a comment, and help spread the word about Creativity Squared in whatever way you’re willing to. Your support is greatly appreciated, and the whole team looks forward to growing with your help. Thank you!

Here's to exponential possibilities!

Helen

p.s. One newsletter pro tip: I know this newsletter is long and often gets truncated. If you click or tap the link “Read Online” in the upper right-hand corner, you can view the web version for easier reading.

Helen Todd (she/her)
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How creatives are collaborating with A.I.

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📆 A.I. CONFERENCE & EVENTS RADAR

APRIL 18 MIT’s Imagination in Action, Boston (Attendee) 

APRIL 26-28 Future Frequences Retreat, Newburgh, NY (Attendee)

MAY 7 CincyAI Meetup, Cincinnati (Co-Host)

MAY 16 INERTIA: The AI Summit for Non-technical Leaders, Cincinnati (Speaker)

JULY 16-18 Black Tech Week, Cincinnati (Speaker)

JULY 18-19 Data 4 Public Good, Minneapolis (Attendee)

SEPTEMBER 5 & 6: MidwestCon, Cincinnati (Speaker)

SEPTEMBER 10-12: Marketing AI Conference (MAICON), Cleveland (Speaker)

Looking forward to meeting those who can make it in person and geeking out about all things A.I. and creativity!

With all of the A.I. updates flooding our feeds and screens, we’ve got you covered with the latest news at the intersection of A.I. and creativity.

Computer Theorist Wins $1 Million Turing Award The New York Times — An Israeli-born mathematician is the 2024 Turing Award winner for his research into the role of randomness in technology. The “Nobel Prize for Computer Science” went to Professor Avi Wigderson of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., whose work suggests that introducing degrees of randomness into calculations helps computers model seemingly unpredictable events like stock market moves or disease spread. 

How One Author Pushed the Limits of AI Copyright WIRED —  An author with physical and mental disabilities won limited copyright protection for a book she wrote with A.I. assistance. Elisa Shupe won a copyright as author of the “selection, coordination, and arrangement of text generated by artificial intelligence,” after claiming on appeal to the Copyright Office that she could not have completed the book without A.I. assistance due to her disabilities. The Copyright Office’s reversal of their original rejection shows how the agency is attempting to “build the plane” of copyright policy for A.I. mid-flight. 

The Future Needs You Today: A Conversation on AI & Decolonization with Karen Palmer OpenText Blogs — Storyteller from the future, immersive digital artist, and previous Creativity Squared Guest, Karen Palmer takes criticism of bias in A.I. a step further, arguing that we need to decolonize artificial intelligence. She says that instead of pursuing diversity as a quota to be reached, we should build “Indigenous A.I.,” models that center BIPOC perspectives from the group-up. 

OpenAI Researchers, Including Ally of Sutskever, Fired for Alleged Leaking The Information — OpenAI fired two researchers on their alignment and safety teams for allegedly leaking unspecified information. It’s unclear if this move is related to CEO Sam Altman’s brief ouster last year, although one of the fired researchers was reportedly close with OpenAI’s Chief Scientist, Ilya Sutskever, who played a role in Altman’s dismissal. 

Instagram Said to Be Testing AI-Powered Chatbots for Influencers That Can Interact With Followers Gadgets360  — Instagram is reportedly testing ways to increase engagement between influencers and their audiences with help from A.I. chatbots. Parent company Meta is testing technology that would allow influencers to train a chatbot for fans to interact with as if they’re speaking to the actual influencer. Also, check out our blog about A.I. relationships, where we discuss a popular influencer who uses a chatbot to interact with her thousands of online “boyfriends.”

Google DeepMind's Team of Tiny Robot Soccer Players Science Robotics  — Researchers at Google DeepMind built tiny-scale humanoid robots that learned soccer from trial and error. In another step toward a future of autonomous robots, researchers showed that the robots who learned through reinforcement played a better game than robots that were hard-coded. The robots that learned from scratch displayed emergent capabilities like recovering from a fall and defending the ball. 

Adobe Premiere Pro is getting generative AI video tools — and hopefully OpenAI's Sora The Verge  — Adobe is building its own generative video model for Premier Pro and hoping to bring in help from other text-to-video models. The company announced that GenVideo capabilities would come out later this year, and that it’s hoping to integrate similar models from OpenAI, Pika Labs, and Runway ML to put more editing power at users’ fingertips.

Listen: Ep45. A.I. & Ethics: Where Do We Draw the Line? 
Discover How to Navigate A.I. with Leading Moral Reasoning & Knowledge Scholar Dr. Andrew Cullison

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“We need to be thinking about what the rules for A.I. should be for us as a society. But we need people to be real good at identifying what those rules should or shouldn't be. And that's where moral reasoning becomes a critical component of all this.”

-Dr. Andrew Cullison

Where do we draw the line with A.I. from an ethical lens?

Meet Dr. Andrew Cullison who is the founding executive director of the Cincinnati Ethics Center and a research professor at the University of Cincinnati who specializes in moral reasoning, ethics education, and leadership development. With over 15 peer-reviewed publications to his name, Andy is a leading scholar on questions of how we can have moral knowledge. You're in for a treat to hear Andy's insights in Episode 45 that offer a philosopher's perspective on some of the most pressing issues of our time.

Prior to his current role, Andy spent over seven years as Director of the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University, one of the largest collegiate ethics institutes in the country. In addition to his academic work and passion for helping people of all ages develop crucial moral reasoning skills, Andy conducts workshops for K-12 students, teams, and organizations like the FBI to apply philosophical tools to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

While at DePauw, he coined the phrase “ethics education and leadership development from the wonder years to the golden years” which describes the kind of work he is most passionate about.

An advocate for K-12 ethics education, Andy believes it's never too early to start honing our ability to identify and thoughtfully work through moral issues. The Cincinnati Ethics Center runs several innovative programs for local youth, including an Ethics Bowl for high schoolers and an "Ethics & Dragons" initiative that uses Dungeons & Dragons to improve moral reasoning.

In this episode’s conversation, Andy shares the importance of teaching ethics in an A.I. world, what he's learned from experimenting with ChatGPT's moral reasoning abilities, practical tips, moral framework exercises for navigating everyday ethical dilemmas, and more. He emphasizes the urgent need for practitioners developing A.I. to receive robust ethics training so they can spot potential issues early on.

Listen in to sharpen your own thinking about the thorny moral challenges surrounding A.I. development and implementation.

Check out Episode 45 today!

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