Thoughts on regulatory and ethical issues relating to the use of technology in education and research
A pair of interesting sessions at today’s EUNIS conference looked at how universities responded to the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on end of year assessment. An audience survey indicated that 60% have changed the form of their assessment, 15% cancelled exams, and 15% adopted some kind of remote proctoring system to allow for traditional-format exams […]
Alberto Cairo, Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the School of Communication of the University of Miami, gave a wonderful EUNIS 2020 keynote on Making Good Visualisation Decisions. His argument – Visualisation is like writing: there are basic (grammatical) rules, but also choices, and those should be reasoned. Bad decisions can cause real-world harm. Just […]
There seems to be a widespread perception that “AI is creepy”. But at the same time as reacting strongly against an app that would check social media posts for signs that we were struggling to cope, we don’t think twice about the grammar checker that continually reads everything we type. I wondered why and if […]
[with thanks to a former university Head of Examinations for input and discussion] Recent years, and weeks, have seen a move away from the traditional examination context, where candidates gather in large halls to write on paper, to candidates being assessed using computers, in small groups or individual work spaces. In this change, the role […]
In looking at the many ethical concerns that have been expressed about the use of Artificial Intelligence in education, it struck me that most fall at the two ends of a scale. On the one hand questions of human autonomy lead to concerns about cookie-cutter approaches, where AI treats every student according to a rigid […]
I’ve been reading a fascinating paper by Julia Slupska – “War, Health and Ecosystem: Generative Metaphors in Cybersecurity Governance” – that looks at how the metaphors we choose for Internet (in)security limit the kinds of solutions we are likely to come up with. I was reminded of a talk I prepared maybe fifteen years ago […]
[Notes: This isn’t legal advice, but I hope it will reassure anyone considering supporting the COVID-19 Cyber Threat Coalition that the data protection risks should be very low; This only covers the use of data for defending systems, networks, data and users; use for offense, including attribution and evidence, is covered by separate legislation, which […]
The EU High-Level Expert Group’s (HLEG) Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI contain four principles and, derived from them, seven requirements for AI systems. The Guidelines do not discuss the need for AI to be lawful, but the expansion of Data Protection law beyond just privacy into areas formerly considered part of Ethics means that much […]
If Education 4.0 is about preparing students for the workplace of the future, that’s going to be a dynamically changing workplace. Even in my working life I’ve gone from VT100s to laptops and video-conferences. The mobile phone in my pocket is much more powerful than the first university mainframe I encountered. To send a single […]
A fascinating Digifest talk by Westminster City Council suggested that students may have a key role in ensuring that smart city and intelligent campus projects deliver real benefits. Westminster have a partnership with two of their local universities – KCL and UCL – that gives Masters students access to the council’s extensive datasets about use […]