• 
• 5 min
• MIT Technology Review
• 2019

Humans take the blame for failures of AI automated systems, protecting the integrity of the technological system and becoming a “liability sponge.” It is necessary to redefine the role of humans in sociotechnical systems.

• Computing Ethics Issues
• Transportation Technologies
• Machine Learning
• Autonomous Vehicles

• 
• 41 min
• The New York Times
• 2021

In this podcast episode, Ellen Pao, an early whistleblower on gender bias and racial discrimination in the tech industy, tells the story of her experience suing the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins for gender discrimination. The episode then moves into a discussion of how Silicon Valley, and the tech industry more broadly, is dominated by white men who do not try to deeply understand or move toward racial or gender equity; instead, they focus on PR moves. Specifically, she reveals that social media companies and CEOs can be particularly performative when it comes to addressing racial or gender inequality, focusing on case studies rather than breeding a new, more fair culture.

• Tech Monopolies
• Gender Bias
• Social Networks

• 
• 9 min
• Kinolab
• 2016

Eleanor Shellstrop, a deceased selfish woman, ended up in the utopic afterlife The Good Place by mistake after her death. She spins an elaborate web of lies to ensure that she is not sent to be tortured in The Bad Place. In this narrative, the demons of the Bad Place try to wrest Eleanor’s soul away from the Good Place by convincing her that this is where she truly belongs. This resonates with Eleanor, who was always a lone wolf and never found a community of people who she liked. Ultimately, though, she fights to stay in the Good Place because of the fondness she has for the community of people who she knows there.

• Fundamental Ethics
• Networks

• 
• 3 min
• Kinolab
• 2017

Eleanor Shellstrop, a deceased selfish woman, ended up in the utopic afterlife The Good Place by mistake after her death. She spins an elaborate web of lies to ensure that she is not sent to be tortured in The Bad Place. In this narrative, she tracks her personal ethical point total with a technology which is compared to a Fitbit. In theory, the more good actions she completes, the higher her score will get. For another narrative on personal ratings/point tracking, see the narratives “Lacie Parts I and II” on the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive.”

• Fundamental Ethics
• Biometrics

• 
• 6 min
• Kinolab
• 2019

Eleanor Shellstrop runs a fake afterlife, in which she conducts an experiment to prove that humans with low ethical sensibility can improve themselves. One of the subjects, Simone, is in deep denial upon arriving in this afterlife, and does as she pleases after convincing herself that nothing is real. Elsewhere, another conductor of the experiment, Jason, kills a robot which has been taunting him since the advent of the experiment.

• AI Emotions and Rights
• Fundamental Ethics
• Virtual Reality
• Robots

• 
• 5 min
• Kinolab
• 2019

In an imagined future of London, citizens all across the globe are connected to the Feed, a device and network accessed constantly through a brain-computer interface. Lawrence, the CEO of the tech monopoly which created the Feed, explains to his son Tom that the newest model of the Feed is a quasi-organic implant which automatically appears in the makeup of an infant’s brain; they are born with it, having no say in whether or not it should be there and being unable to remove it. Lawrence and Tom then debate the pros and cons of this approach.

• Tech Monopolies
• Edited Humans
• Brain-Computer Interfaces
• Networks