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AI ethics should be mandatory for schoolchildren
No full textAs society increasingly integrates artificial intelligence (AI) into its fabric, AI ethics education in primary schools becomes necessary. Drawing parallels between the integration of foundational subjects such as languages and mathematics and the pressing need for AI literacy, we argue for mandatory, age-appropriate AI education focusing on technical proficiency and ethical implications. Analogous to how sex and drug education prepare youth for real-world challenges and decisions, AI education is crucial for equipping students to navigate an AI-driven future responsibly. Our study delineates the ethical pillars, such as data privacy and unbiased algorithms, essential for students to grasp, and presents a framework for AI literacy integration in elementary schools. What is needed is a comprehensive, dynamic, and evidence-based approach to AI education, to prepare students for an AI-driven future
Genital Modifications in Prepubescent Minors: When May Clinicians Ethically Proceed?
Full text linkWhen is it ethically permissible for clinicians to surgically intervene into the genitals of a legal minor? We distinguish between voluntary and nonvoluntary procedures and focus on nonvoluntary procedures, specifically in prepubescent minors (“children”). We do not address procedures in adolescence or adulthood. With respect to children categorized as female at birth who have no apparent differences of sex development (i.e., non-intersex or “endosex” females) there is a near-universal ethical consensus in the Global North. This consensus holds that clinicians may not perform any nonvoluntary genital cutting or surgery, from “cosmetic” labiaplasty to medicalized ritual “pricking” of the vulva, insofar as the procedure is not strictly necessary to protect the child’s physical health. All other motivations, including possible psychosocial, cultural, subjective-aesthetic, or prophylactic benefits as judged by doctors or parents, are seen as categorically inappropriate grounds for a clinician to proceed with a nonvoluntary genital procedure in this population. We argue that the main ethical reasons capable of supporting this consensus turn not on empirically contestable benefit–risk calculations, but on a fundamental concern to respect the child’s privacy, bodily integrity, developing sexual boundaries, and (future) genital autonomy. We show that these ethical reasons are sound. However, as we argue, they do not only apply to endosex female children, but rather to all children regardless of sex characteristics, including those with intersex traits and endosex males. We conclude, therefore, that as a matter of justice, inclusivity, and gender equality in medical-ethical policy (we do not take a position as to criminal law), clinicians should not be permitted to perform any nonvoluntary genital cutting or surgery in prepubescent minors, irrespective of the latter’s sex traits or gender assignment, unless urgently necessary to protect their physical health. By contrast, we suggest that voluntary surgeries in older individuals might, under certain conditions, permissibly be performed for a wider range of reasons, including reasons of self-identity or psychosocial well-being, in keeping with the circumstances, values, and explicit needs and preferences of the persons so concerned. Note: Because our position is tied to clinicians’ widely accepted role-specific duties as medical practitioners within regulated healthcare systems, we do not consider genital procedures performed outside of a healthcare context (e.g., for religious reasons) or by persons other than licensed healthcare providers working in their professional capacity
A Psycholinguistic Study of Persian-Speaking Children's Comprehension of Emotional and Non-Emotional Metaphors: Comparing Conventional and Novel Forms
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Understanding the EU’s Norm and Policy Diffusion in ASEAN through Trade and Security Cooperation: Normative or Normal Power?
Full text linkThis book examines the European Union’s (EU’s) norm and policy diffusion in relation to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
By looking at the EU’ engagement with ASEAN in trade and non-traditional security, the book analyzes the drivers, processes, and effectiveness of the EU’s norm and policy diffusion in ASEAN and explains the EU’s foreign policy and power projection in the context of its relationship with ASEAN. In doing so, it helps to advance knowledge about the EU’ external relations and power projection in relation to regional political entities beyond its immediate borders and affords firsthand empirical material on how the EU’s power in global politics is impacted by external perceptions and responses in different policy fields.
This book will be of key interest to scholars, students, and practitioners of EU foreign policy, EU–SEAN relations, and ASEAN politics and more broadly to European Studies, Comparative Regionalism, Asian Studies, and International Relation
The effects of a green monetary policy on firms financing cost
Full text linkThe monetary policy operations of a central bank (CB) involve allocation decisions when purchasing assets and taking collateral. A green monetary policy aims to steer or tilt the allocation of assets and collateral toward low-carbon industries, to reduce the cost of capital for these sectors in comparison to high-carbon ones. Starting from a corporate bonds purchase program (e.g., CSPP) that follows a carbon-neutral monetary policy, we analyze how a shift in the CB portfolio allocation toward bonds issued by low-carbon companies can favor green firms in the market. Relying on optimal portfolio theory, we study how the CB might include the risk related to the environmental sustainability of firms in its balance sheet. In addition, we analyze the interactions between the neutral or green CB re-balancing policy and the evolutionary choice (i.e., by means of exponential replicator dynamics) of a population of firms that can decide to be green or not according to bonds borrowing cost
Bodies, Voices, Relations: Thinking with Adriana Cavarero, Special Issue Introduction: Inclining Politics. Introducing Adriana Cavarero Federica Castelli, Marco Piasentier, and Sara Raimondi
Full text linkThe philosopher Adriana Cavarero has long been a well recognised voice in the plural landscape of contemporary Italian thought. Her engagement with grounding themes and ideas has resonated across, and often profoundly shaken, multiple fields of enquiry, spanning political philosophy, the humanities and classical studies, literary theory, and the traditions of feminist debates. Whilst a coherent synthesis of such a vast reception would be impossible to pursue in one volume, the collection of contributions that follows attempts to portray – via a multiplicity of perspectives and angles – Cavarero’s work, and the important legacy and debates that it continues to spark, not only in Italy, but also, increasingly, at an international level
Can robots have feelings? Should we now apologise to the AI-beast called DABUS and compliment ANNs instead?
Full text linkThe article looks at two judgments with comparable subject matters, decided within a month of each other towards the end of 2023 by United Kingdom (UK) courts: the UK Supreme Court appeal in Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2023] UKSC 49 and the High Court ruling in the Emotional Perception AI Ltd v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2023] EWHC 2948 (Ch) (Re ANNs). These cases ask the question whether an artificial intelligence (AI) system can be named as an inventor and whether a patent application can proceed without naming a human inventor. The Dr Stephen Thaler matter has been considered in various semblances before courts in Australia, Germany, Israel, New Zealand, South Africa, South Korea and the US. Dr Thaler’s ‘Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience’ (DABUS) was also considered at the European Patent Office (EPO) and by the South African Patent Office (SAPO). Except for South Africa, the overall message from the various global courts has been wholly negative. The decision from the UK Supreme Court in Thaler is the latest decision, providing no surprises. The UKSC held, in agreement with other courts around the world (except South Africa), that an AI machine, such as DABUS, could not own any rights in the alleged inventions and therefore there was no mechanism by which these could pass to Dr Thaler. The core of the UKSC’s decision in Thaler revolved around two patent applications filed by Dr Stephen Thaler, where the alleged ‘inventor’ of the products and processes is an AI system named DABUS. The justices of the Supreme Court unanimously held that an AI system cannot be recognised as an inventor under the current legislative framework of the Patents Act 1977. In his leading judgment, Lord Kitchin emphasised that an ‘inventor’ must be a natural person. Since DABUS, a non-human entity, created the inventions autonomously, it did not fit within the legal definition of an inventor. Lord Kitchin’s examination of the role and status of DABUS in the Thaler case is particularly insightful: the crux of the court’s decision hinged on the interpretation of the term ‘inventor’ within the 1977 Act which defines an inventor as ‘the actual deviser of the invention’. This interpretation adheres to the traditional understanding of inventorship, which inherently links human intellect and creativity to the concept of invention. The article compares the Thaler judgment with the High Court ruling in the Emotional Perception AI Ltd v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2023] EWHC 2948 (Ch), where Sir Anthony Mann permitted the patentability of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) (pending an appeal)
Literature and second language vocabulary learning: the role of text-type and teaching approach.
Full text linkThis study considers the relative benefits for vocabulary learning of exposure to two types of texts, literary or non-literary, used with two teaching approaches. These approaches were termed functional and creative respectively. In the former, learners’ attention was drawn to factual information and linguistic features in order to develop their linguistic knowledge. In the latter, the aim was to stimulate learners’ personal and emotional response, by drawing their attention to the text’s emotional content and how language was used to express meaning. We analysed data from 160 learners of French in eight schools in England. Learners in four schools studied French poems and those in another four studied French factual texts. Teachers in each text condition employed functional and creative methods of exploitation within a counterbalanced design. We assessed two types of vocabulary knowledge at pre- and post-test: meaning-recall of vocabulary contained in the texts, and learners’ general vocabulary size. Our results indicated learning gains across both text-types. There were however important interactions between text-type and teaching approach and between text-type and the order in which the teaching approaches were used. Finally, we consider the implications of these findings for understanding of vocabulary learning through literature and for classroom practice
