Tag Archives: Ethical Concerns

Science: Vitamin D Trial In Asthmatic Children, Risks to Machine Learning

Charles Piller, an investigative journalist for Science, talks with host Sarah Crespi about a risky trial of vitamin D in asthmatic children that has caused a lot of concern among ethicists.

They also discuss how the vitamin D trial connects with a possibly dangerous push to compare new treatments with placebos instead of standard-of-care treatments in clinical trials.

Next, Birhanu Eshete, professor of computer and information science at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, talks with producer Joel Goldberg about the risks of exposing machine learning algorithms online—risks such as the reverse engineering of training data to access proprietary information or even patient data.

Technology Podcast: Concerns Over Facial Recognition Technology

Scientists have grave concerns over ethical and societal impacts of facial-recognition technology. In this surveillance special, we dig into the details.

In this episode:

03:24 Standing up against ‘smart cities’

Cities across the globe are installing thousands of surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition technology. Although marketed as a way to reduce crime, researchers worry that these systems are ripe for exploitation and are calling for strict regulations on their deployment.

Feature: Resisting the rise of facial recognition

17:44 The ethics of researching facial recognition technology

Despite concerns surrounding consent and use, researchers are still working on facial recognition technology. Can this sort of work be justified? We hear some of the debates going on in academia about this field of research.

Feature: The ethical questions that haunt facial-recognition research

25:02 What do researchers actually think?

Nature surveyed 480 researchers who have published papers on facial recognition, AI and computer science. The results revealed that many researchers think there’s a problem.