Student Team Podcast Transcript: AI, Ethics and Us and A Metal Box Paradox

This podcast is part of the UCIL Digital Society course from the University of Manchester. The topics it relates to are hosted on Medium and can be found here and here.

In this podcast, Kai and Fariha from the Library Student Team reflect on AI, Ethics and Us and A Metal Box Paradox.

TRANSCRIPT

ST1: Hi everyone, welcome to the DigiSoc podcast, I am Kai from the Library Student Team.

ST2: And my name is Fariha, I’m also a member of the Library Student Team. In Week 6, you discussed the rise of AI and its ethical issues whilst offering improvements you think could be made.

ST1: Many of you wondered whether disclosing AI usage would resolve the issue of ‘ownership,’ while others questioned if AI-generated content can truly be owned. The question here is if I ask AI to create something, does the idea belong to me, or does it belong to the AI tool?

ST2: I think that’s a great point, especially when it is so new and unregulated. Have you ever used it in your studies?

ST1: I have used Goblin Tools before to make phrases clearer and break down tasks into steps. I have also used ChatGPT to refine my writing to be more cohesive with fewer words. It was tricky to navigate between using AI as a tool and making sure that it doesn’t take away from our learning but I currently perceive myself as the expert and that my role in using AI is to supervise and guide what I want the AI to do.

ST2: I know for sure students have used AI to ask and explain simple questions. Do you think there are issues engaging with AI and taking what it says to be true, which you wouldn’t do in conversation with other people?

ST1: It depends on how AI is perceived and how we inform the general public on how generative AI differs from more traditional AI. If people are assuming generative AI gives us correct information, then this is certainly problematic as generative AI is prone to factual inaccuracies and hallucinations.

ST2: It also leads to the question of how much we should use AI?

ST1: That connects well with week 7’s materials about the relations, interconnectedness and influences between the social and the technological.

ST1: I think there are a lot of social factors that might influence technology. Do our motives and values change how we interact with technology and how it interacts with us?

ST2: Do you agree with Levin’s argument that technological choices are influenced by human intentions?

ST1: Generally, I think it helps in understanding the collaborative work between people and technology. It’s not a mutually exclusive relationship. However, I feel it’s important to think about the implications of this and how we consider cultural differences in our own technological decisions.

For example, we found that cultural differences were not considered in the development of generative AI detectors, as it was identified that AI detectors were falsely flagging academic work as AI-generated more often when authored by international students and neurodivergent students.

ST1: Some of you contributed to Case Study 1 which focused on values and motives influencing technology using the context of AI.

ST2: It was interesting to think about how this relates to the automation of processes in Crawford’s work.

ST1: It made me think more about why we want automation in processes and who that is benefitting.

ST2: I think automation is seen as something inevitable but it’s interesting to pause and question why something would be automated. Is it being used to better the quality of life of the workers? Or is it degrading their quality of life by taking away their livelihoods?

ST1: I wonder how this could differ depending on the technology and how our cultures will be impacted by these decisions.

ST2: For those of you that focused on Case 2 and the organisation of work and people, you were looking specifically at the fast fashion industry.

ST1: I think it’s interesting that there is a specific reason why work is organised and designed to flow in specific ways.

ST1: Also, for the ethical implications of how work is organised, what could this mean for the people involved?

ST2: Thank you for tuning into this week’s podcast and we will speak with you again soon.

ST1 and ST2: Bye!