1. Quinn, Ethics for the Information Age,Chapter 1 (Optional - read this if you have time and interest after doing the other readings);  

2. Benkler, Wealth of Networks, Chapter 1, "Introduction: A moment of Opportunity and Challenge" -- - Chapter 1 starts on page 1 and runs to page 28; you may safely skip the section called "Four Methodological Comments" (pp.16-22) but do read the section that comes after it, called "The Stakes of It All."
There is a PDF of the whole book online here.

3. The Case of the Killer Robot (online here)

1. Quinn, Chapter 2, the first six sections, through p. 71; 
2. Excerpts from Kant (with notes);

1. Quinn, Chapter 3, sections 1, 3, 4, and 10 (skip section 2 on spam, or read it if you have time and interest; we'll read the remaining sections (5 through 9) next week);

2. Nicholas Carr,   "The Platform Is the Conversation" (Carr is the author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing To Our Brains. Here he is responding to the news from a few years ago that Facebook ran experiments on the emotional psychology of its users.)

3. Nat Eliason, The Destructive Switch from Search to Social

4. Andrew Sullivan on Internet addiction: I Used To Be a Human Being (I'm putting this last, even though I think it's one of the best, because it is rather long. Maybe you won't have time, but I hope you will.)

1. First, so-called "general" AI (machines capable of human-level or beyond human-level thinking and deciding). A Ted Talk by philosopher/futurist Nick Bostrom
https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_bostrom_what_happens_when_our_computers_get_smarter_than_we_are/transcript

[Optional: Want a more detailed discussion of Bostrom's ideas?
a. Here's a review of his book Superintelligence
https://reason.com/2014/09/12/will-superintelligent-machines-destroy-h/
b. and here's an academic paper offering an approach to thinking about how to ensure that general AI is 'friendly'. https://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/aipolicy.pdf ]

2. An overview of some issues arising in connection with so-called “narrow AI” (I.e., the kind that already exists and is becoming more and more common in our digital lives:  https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/hold-artificial-intelligence-accountable/

3.  Two brief pieces about Cathy O’Neil’s book Weapons of Math Destruction:

One by the author:    https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/04/weapons-math-destruction/
And a review by Cory Doctorow:  https://boingboing.net/2016/09/06/weapons-of-math-destruction-i.html

4. Allegations of bias in Google search algorithms:
https://annenberg.usc.edu/news/diversity-and-inclusion/algorithms-oppression-safiya-noble-finds-old-stereotypes-persist-new
This page has a brief summary of Noble’s thinking, but also a couple of video’s that are useful.  The one near the top of the page is short and all good.  The one near the bottom of the page starts with three minute of promotional fluff that is best skipped, so start at the 3 minute mark.

5. Racial bias in facial recognition technology:  https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2020/racial-discrimination-in-face-recognition-technology/

1. Richard Stallman, Misinterpreting Copyright—A Series of Errors 

2. Quinn, Chapter 4 -- If you have time and interest, read the whole chapter.  If not read at least: Section 4.2 (pp. 162-169), Section 4.3.4 (pp. 172-175), Section 4.4 (pp. 179-186), Sections 4.8, 4.9, and 4.10 (pp.201-211)

3. links to further (optional) materials on copyright - read some of this if you have time and interest.

1. Quinn, Chapter 10, “Work and Wealth”

2. Daron Acemoglu, “AI's Future Doesn't Have to Be Dystopian" (Optional: If you had time to read some of the replies to this essay that can be found at the top and bottom of the article, that would be great.)

[Note: Some of the ideas in this essay will also be relevant the topic we will take up after the Thanksgiving break: the effect of information technology and the internet on politics and democracy.]

The Internet and Democracy

Some blame the internet for polarization and misinformation in our society:

1. “The Daily Me" by Cass Sunstein (From his book #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media)

2. Sunstein on Group Polarization and Cybercascades

[Optional: If you like watching and listening to people talk instead of reading, or if you just like to get a better sense of what a writer is like,  here’s a talk that Cass Sunstein gave (virtually) to an audience in Chile last October, going over much the same set of ideas that he wrote about in his book. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ay_DJGs_cc&list=UUKSa9-lO2UlFNEvkyW-GpEA  ]

3. A recent example: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-knew-radicalized-users-rcna3581

But others blame increasingly propagandistic broadcast media (like Fox News):

4. "Selling Outrage" Deborah Chasman interviews our old friend Yochai Benkler. This interview begins with his diagnosis of the roots of these problems.  About halfway through, the conversation turns to the question of what to do: Benkler's focus is on how to improve journalistic practices to make it harder for misinformation and propaganda to spread. 

5. Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen tries to sort it out: https://bostonreview.net/articles/polarization-or-propaganda/

6. Some think we need to "Bring Back the Fairness Doctrine"

7. But Surveillance Capitalism author Shoshana Zuboff argues in a recent essay that we need to destroy the whole data extraction business model of 'big tech'.

1. Software designer Tobias van Schneider on design ethics:  "The Art of Being a Hypocrite Designer"
   
   
2. Salkever and Wadwa. "How Design Can Make Tech Products Less Addictive" (Don't neglect to click the button labeled "Story continues" to get the second half of the article.)
   
   
3. Principles for Technologists from Tristan Harris' Center for Human Technology (There is an OK video near the top of this page, if videos are your thing, but it contains 40 minutes of presentation and nearly an hour of Q and A. You can find out what these folks are advocating more quickly by reading the stuff below the video. This part of the page has numerous headers that expand into lists and explanations when you click on them.)