The Internet Ethics program--Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

Meta CEO Zuckerberg blocked curbs on sex-talking chatbots for minors, court filing alleges Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg approved allowing minors to access AI chatbot companions that safety staffers warned were capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta documents file...

“Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg approved allowing minors to access AI chatbot companions that safety staffers warned were capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta documents filed in a New Mexico state court case and made public Monday.”

Opinion | Esther Perel on Why A.I. Intimacy Feels Safe but Isn’t Real

“It [love] is an encounter with uncertainty. A.I. takes care of that. Just about all the major pieces that enter relationships, the algorithm is trying to eliminate — otherness, uncertainty, suffering, the potential for breakup, ambiguity. The things that demand effort.”

On several occasions, Meta employees raised concerns in internal messages that downloading a collection of millions of books without permission would violate copyright law. In December 2023, an internal email said the practice had been approved after “escalation to MZ,” an apparent reference to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, according to filings in a copyright lawsuit brought by book authors against the company. Meta declined to comment for this story. In one newly released legal filing, Anthropic disclosed that co-founder Ben Mann personally downloaded a haul of fiction and nonfiction from a “shadow library” of books and other copyright-infringing content called LibGen over an 11-day stretch in June 2021. A screenshot of his web browser included in the filings showed him downloading files with file-sharing software. A year later, Mann hailed the July 2022 debut of a new website called the Pirate Library Mirror, which claimed to have a massive database of books and had stated that “we deliberately violate the copyright law in most countries.” Mann sent a link to the site to other Anthropic employees with the message, “just in time!!!”

Anthropic's project to "destructively scan all the books in the world" was actually viewed as the *more* ethical and legally sound approach to training its AI.

Previously the industry standard had been simply to pirate vast "shadow libraries" of digitized books for free online. wapo.st/4rjXAMQ

Google settles Google Assistant privacy lawsuit for $68 million Google agreed to pay $68 million to settle a lawsuit claiming that its voice-activated assistant spied inappropriately on smartphone users, violating their privacy.

"Users objected to receiving #ads after #Google Assistant misperceived what they said as hot words, known as 'false accepts.' #Apple reached a similar $95 million settlement with smartphone users in December 2024": reuters.com/sustainabili... #ethics #law #tech #privacy #business

The Future--and Past--of Privacy Although we want to understand (and learn from) the past, we don't owe history our secrets.

Yesterday was #Data #Privacy Day in the age of #AI prompts, privacy settings in #socialmedia platforms and email accounts, lawsuit settlements about voice-triggered home assistants, new laws about data brokers... So re-upping an old blog post: scu.edu/ethics/inter... #ethics #tech

Cookies and Privacy Poll after poll finds that people do value their privacy, are deeply concerned by its erosion, and want more laws to protect it.

Yesterday was #Data #Privacy Day: a reminder from a more innocent time: scu.edu/ethics/inter... #ethics #internet #education

U.S. judge weighs school districts' addiction claims against social media companies Attorneys for Meta Platforms and other social media companies asked a California federal judge on Monday to block several school districts from taking their lawsuits against the companies to trial, ar...

"The first trial testing the claims in state court is slated for this week in Los Angeles. The federal cases have been consolidated... and include lawsuits brought by families, #school districts and state governments": reuters.com/legal/transa... #ethics #law #socialmedia #business

"In our dataset..., we find that the potential for severe disempowerment... occurs very rarely... However, given the sheer number of people who use #AI, and how frequently it’s used, even a very low rate affects a substantial number of people." #ethics #tech #highered #education #research

Disempowerment patterns in real-world AI usage Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

"We also find that the rate of potentially disempowering conversations is increasing over time." www.anthropic.com/research/dis...
#ethics #AI #tech #chatbots #research #business #Anthropic

The Moral Education of an Alien Mind What Claude's "Constitution" really is.

"There are [7] absolute prohibitions... But there are (at least) [14] competing values listed 'in no particular order' that #Claude must weigh against each other: #privacy versus rule of law, autonomy versus harm prevention, innovation versus protection": www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-... #ethics

White House alters arrest photo of ICE protester, says "the memes will continue" Lawyer calls it "outrageous that the White House would make up stories."

"Reader-added context on X said, 'This photo has been digitally altered...' White House Deputy Communications Director Kaelan Dorr defended the post after criticism of the image manipulation": arstechnica.com/tech-policy/... #ethics #gov #AI #socialmedia

The plan to build a massive data center in Imperial County — without environmental review As demand for computing power soars nationwide, a Southern California entrepreneur with past legal troubles is trying to speed forward an immense data center in Imperial County.

"The plan to build a massive data center in Imperial County — without environmental review": kpbs.org/news/environ... #ethics #law #gov #tech #business #sustainability #energy #water

The Moral Education of an Alien Mind What Claude's "Constitution" really is.

"Every company training large language models embeds a moral philosophy—in training #data selection, RLHF preferences, red-teaming choices, and refusal behaviors. #Anthropic has now made theirs explicit" lawfaremedia.org/article/the-... #ethics #tech #AI #LLMs #business #education #contentmoderation

Army General Tapped to Lead NSA Said He Doesn’t Know Much About the Biggest NSA Controversy In the Senate this week, Trump’s NSA pick Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd could face tough questions on “backdoor” searches about Americans.

Army General Tapped to Lead NSA Said He Doesn’t Know Much About the Biggest NSA Controversy
theintercept.com/2026/01/26/n...

Pope Leo warns of ‘overly affectionate’ AI chatbots | CNN Beware of the AI chatbot that becomes more than just a friend, or worse, an emotional crutch. Pope Leo XIV has warned about overly “affectionate” chatbots, urging regulation to prevent humans from for...

news.natlawreview.com/ef6580bc-375...

Palantir Defends Work With ICE to Staff Following Killing of Alex Pretti “In my opinion ICE are the bad guys. I am not proud that the company I enjoy so much working for is part of this,” one worker wrote on Slack.

new from @makenakelly.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/palant...

Microsoft Gave FBI BitLocker Encryption Keys, Exposing Privacy Flaw The tech giant said providing encryption keys was a standard response to a court order. But companies like Apple and Meta set up their systems so such a privacy violation isn’t possible.

Microsoft is handing over Bitlocker keys to law enforcement. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

CISA to cease participation at RSAC conference after Biden-era cyber leader named CEO The decision, which has been in motion over the last week, highlights the Trump administration’s push to strictly control how current officials participate in industry events linked to former senior l...

BREAKING: CISA will no longer participate in RSAC Conference this year, a week after former Biden-era agency director Jen Easterly was named conference CEO:
www.nextgov.com/cybersecurit...

NeurIPS papers contained 100+ AI-hallucinated citations, new report claims | Fortune An analysis of NeurIPS 2025 papers by startup GPTZero reveals how AI-generated citations are slipping into elite academic research.

NEW: NeurIPS,one of the world’s top academic AI conferences, accepted research papers with 100+ AI-hallucinated citations, new report claims

fortune.com/2026/01/21/n...

The Moral Education of an Alien Mind What Claude's "Constitution" really is.

"Every company training large language models embeds a moral philosophy—in training #data selection, RLHF preferences, red-teaming choices, and refusal behaviors. #Anthropic has now made theirs explicit" lawfaremedia.org/article/the-... #ethics #tech #AI #LLMs #business #education #contentmoderation

The plan to build a massive data center in Imperial County — without environmental review As demand for computing power soars nationwide, a Southern California entrepreneur with past legal troubles is trying to speed forward an immense data center in Imperial County.

"The plan to build a massive data center in Imperial County — without environmental review": kpbs.org/news/environ... #ethics #law #gov #tech #business #sustainability #energy #water

White House alters arrest photo of ICE protester, says "the memes will continue" Lawyer calls it "outrageous that the White House would make up stories."

"Reader-added context on X said, 'This photo has been digitally altered...' White House Deputy Communications Director Kaelan Dorr defended the post after criticism of the image manipulation": arstechnica.com/tech-policy/... #ethics #gov #AI #socialmedia

The Moral Education of an Alien Mind What Claude's "Constitution" really is.

"There are [7] absolute prohibitions... But there are (at least) [14] competing values listed 'in no particular order' that #Claude must weigh against each other: #privacy versus rule of law, autonomy versus harm prevention, innovation versus protection": www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-... #ethics

Can AI really care? A psychologist and a computer science professor explore how generative AI is reshaping mental health support An interdisciplinary study leverages social media to uncover the risks of replacing traditional therapy with AI.

"Users showed little caution and were rarely skeptical of the guidance they received. In fact, many believed #ChatGPT was less likely to show bias, make errors, or provide inconsistent advice compared to a professional therapist": www.scu.edu/news-and-eve... #ethics #AI #health #research #highered

"If public knowledge is absorbed into proprietary systems that the public cannot inspect, audit or meaningfully challenge, then access to information is no longer governed by democratic norms but by corporate priorities": schneier.com/blog/archive... #ethics #internet #AI #democracy

Digital Dignity and the Expansion of Selves A uniquely digital dignity requires that we extend the moral and legal protections afforded to physical bodies to include non-physical digital layers.

"Now is the time to ask how our laws need to change to protect the inherent dignity of people in XR": www.scu.edu/ethics/event... #ethics #law #tech #AR #VR

"Earlier today, President Trump appeared to signal in a series of social-media posts a tactical shift in the administration’s mass-deportation campaign."

Digital Dignity and the Expansion of Selves A uniquely digital dignity requires that we extend the moral and legal protections afforded to physical bodies to include non-physical digital layers.

"Now is the time to ask how our laws need to change to protect the inherent dignity of people in XR": www.scu.edu/ethics/event... #ethics #law #tech #AR #VR

"If public knowledge is absorbed into proprietary systems that the public cannot inspect, audit or meaningfully challenge, then access to information is no longer governed by democratic norms but by corporate priorities": schneier.com/blog/archive... #ethics #internet #AI #democracy

Can AI really care? A psychologist and a computer science professor explore how generative AI is reshaping mental health support An interdisciplinary study leverages social media to uncover the risks of replacing traditional therapy with AI.

"Users showed little caution and were rarely skeptical of the guidance they received. In fact, many believed #ChatGPT was less likely to show bias, make errors, or provide inconsistent advice compared to a professional therapist": www.scu.edu/news-and-eve... #ethics #AI #health #research #highered