In June, 2024 at the international
political meeting of the G7, a group of seven industrial nations, the head of
the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, spoke on the ethical dimension of artificial
intelligence, or machine-learning. Regarding what the Pope called the “techno-human
condition,” machines capable of AI are yet another manifestation of human
propensity, which our species has had since its inception, to use tools to
mediate with the environment. Although tools can be thought of as an extension
of our arms ad legs, it is important to distinguish the human from the machine,
even as we posit human characteristics onto some advanced machines, such as
computers. In the film, 2001, the computer Hal sounds human, and may
even seem to have human motivations, but any such attributions come to an
abrupt end when Hal is shut down. To say that Hal dies is to commit a basic
category mistake. It would be absurd, for example, to claim that Hal has an
after-life. So too, I submit, is there a category mistake in taking the Pope’s
talk on the ethics of AI as being religious in nature. Just as it
is easy to imprint the human mind on a machine-learning computer, it can be
tempting to superimpose the religious domain onto another. The Pope overreached
in arbitrarily bringing in religious garb on what is actually an ethical matter
in the “techno-human” world.
Sunday, June 16, 2024
On the Ethics of AI
Tuesday, June 4, 2024
When Hollywood Gets Political: Partisan Profits
Entertainment celebrities and
businesses alike risk losing customers and thus revenue by taking positions
publicly on political issues. Fearing a surge from political parties on the
far-right, some large businesses in the E.U. took the unusual step of coming
out against those parties, labeling them as “extremist,” prior to the E.U.
election in June, 2024. Typically, businesses there limit their political
stances to particular issues that bear on core functions. This is a prudent
policy, for human beings, being of bounded rationality, can easily translate ideological
disagreement into switching brands. Even universities can get bruised by becoming
embroiled in a domestic or international matter that is controversial. Hence
after the contentious spring semester of pro-Palestine protests at Harvard (and
other many other universities), the university’s administration enacted a
policy not to take positions on issues in which the core functions of the
university are only indirectly touched or are not affected at all. In creating
a “marketplace” for academic freedom, universities themselves are best positioned
by staying neutral. Although it is tempting for anyone (for oneself or one’s institution)
who has access to media to sway public opinion on a political issue, I contend
that the immediate self-gratification is usually outweighed by lost revenue and
the reputation of being partisan. Applying strict scrutiny to one’s foray into controversial
issues is harder to do if some vocal customers are demanding that a position be
publicly taken. The silence of other customers, who would “vote with their purse
or wallet” were an opposing position to be taken, should not be overlooked. The singer Taylor Swift and the actor Robert
De Niro provide us with two illustrations. Stepping out of their respective
domains comes at a cost in those domains, and thus should, I submit, be done
prudently and seldom.
As Israel was bombing Rafah in
Gaza in 2024, contravening two rulings of the International Court of Justice
(i.e., the UN’s court), a significant number of “Swifties,” that is, fans of
the singer Taylor Swift, pleaded on social media for the international
celebrity to take a position against Israel’s aggression. One fan wrote, “Taylor,
please say something. Your silence is hurting us. We need you to stand with
Palestine and condemn the Israeli occupation and aggression.”[1]
I submit that the alleged hurt was exaggerated by the teenager. I sincerely
doubt that Taylor’s silence kept many Swifties from buying Swift’s recently
released album. Had the singer taken a stand, on the other hand, her fans on
the other side might do more than block Swift on social media. That is to say,
Swift’s financial bottom-line would be more impacted, and negatively so. It
seems very improbably that increased purchases by Swifties in favor of
Palestine would surpass the loss of revenue from Swifties on the other side of
the issue “voting with their purses and wallets.” The lack of symmetry here is
behind my advice to celebrities not to take a position on a controversial
political issue, or to do so knowing that a financial cost will come with
the exercise of political influence.
To be sure, exercising political
influence on a societal and even world stage is tempting. As one Swiftie wrote
on social media of Swift’s latent power, “if she can rally all of us to vote,
she had the power to speak up about injustice.”[2]
More bluntly stated, Taylor Swift had the power to significantly
influence elections. The ideological benefit to her in doing so is not trivial;
my point is that in accruing such a benefit, she should know that it comes with
a financial cost in terms of her core function. By 2024, she had made so
much money that not earning as much as she otherwise could by taking a position
on Israel and Palestine could have made rational sense to her. Yet possible
hits to her reputational capital could go beyond merely losing some customers
of her music.
As Israel was bombing Gaza,
former U.S. president Don Trump was on trial for criminal fraud in order to
commit a political crime. Robert De Niro, a movie star, went to the courthouse
and castigated Trump, calling him a monster.[3]
As a result, the National Association of Broadcasters rescinded its Service to
America Award, which the actor was to accept in just days. A spokesperson for
the organization explained that it “is proudly bipartisan, uniting those from
across the political spectrum to celebrate the impactful work of local
broadcasters and our partners.”[4]
De Niro would be a “distraction.”[5]
Hence he was disinvited from even attending the event. De Niro took the high
road and wished the organization well. For him, the loss of the award and even
any loss at the box office if Trump supporters would then “vote with their
purses and wallets” was worth it. Like Swift, De Niro had plenty of money, no
doubt, and great star-power; he could take some of it out for a spin—like taking
a new car out for a fast drive—without fear that he would end up in the poor
house. Even so, the question of whether the hit to his personal “brand” was
worth the financial and reputational cost is worth asking. Perhaps the answer
is yes only if his public condemnation of Trump would end up making a
difference in the election that was still half a year away. To De Niro, the
answer could have been yes even if not because of the psychological reward that
he felt from standing up for something important to him. Even so, rationally it
would still be wise to keep an eye on the brand.
In short, it is human, all too human, to want to have political influence on a societal or even a global scale, and to enjoy the psychological pleasure that goes with the expenditure even though it could mean fewer sales than would otherwise be the case and a hit to one’s reputational capital, or brand. Generally speaking, though, such immediate gratification may not usually be worth the long-term costs, both tangible and intangible. Balancing the immediate with the long-term is not something that we humans are particularly good at, and natural selection in the process of evolution is to blame. The time-value of money, an economic concept, stems from the human preference for instant gratification. It is for this reason that I contend that celebrities should as a rule stick to their core functions—stick to the knitting in the words of the business book, In Search of Excellence—and only branch out to “cash in” to influence a political matter only rarely if at all. Taylor’s silence wasn’t actually hurting anyone; she was being an astute businesswoman and thus acting in her best interest.
2. Ibid.
3. Dylan Donnelly, “Robert De Niro Has Award Withdrawn after Calling Donald Trump ‘Monster’ Outside Trial,” Sky News, June 2, 2024 (accessed June 3, 2024).
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
Sunday, June 2, 2024
American Airlines: Caring for People
What is the purpose of a
business? According to Aristotle, there are different kinds of purposes. The
final cause of a tree seed, for example, is a tree; the material cause is
whatever biochemistry went into the seed. The final cause of a human sperm entering
a human egg is an adult human being—hence the question of the ethics of
abortion. A human embryo is potentially an adult human being. The
material cause of an embryo lies in the biochemistry of the seed and the egg.
But I digress. As regards a company, we can distinguish different kinds of
purposes. Somewhat crudely, the real purpose can be distinguished from the
ostensible purpose. The former has to do with what can be thought of as the
bottom-line purpose: maximizing revenue or profit. Any ostensible purpose, such
as feeding people or transporting them, is functional in nature, and can
be viewed as a means of achieving the real purpose. A third kind of purpose can
be labeled as a marketing purpose, the promotion of which is merely to serve
the real purpose. In terms of Shankara’s Hindu metaphysical framework, the real
purpose is in the real, the ostensible purpose is in the realm of appearance,
and a marketing purpose is in that of illusion. I contend that business
managers, especially in marketing, are accustomed to conflating these three
types of purposes in being oriented to the real purpose. Not being transparent
about the differences between these three purposes is, I submit, unethical in
nature. I have an incident involving American Airlines in mind.
Eight Black men were ordered to
leave a flight in early 2024 because a flight attendant complained about the
men’s body odor. They were not seated together, and did not know each other, at
least altogether, and yet presumably they all smelled the same. As far as
business ethics cases go, this one is a whopper. When one of the men exclaimed,
“So this is discrimination,” a woman wearing a badge (and thus was presumably
an airline employee) replied, “I agree, I agree.”[1]
With no other flights to the destination that day, the company reboarded the eight
passengers on the same plane. To be sure, I don’t know whether any other
reasons for the airline’s action in deplaning the eight men existed and, if so,
whether any of them were valid but were not known to the press. Were all of the
men covering their faces with masks or talking loudly or using fowl language,
for instance, the airline may have had sufficient cause to remove the men. It
seems odd that a company manager would take the decision to remove the men
based only on an employee’s claim of a bad odor, especially given that none of
the men reported having been told of the odor before being asked to leave the
plane. In other words, I suspect that there is more to this story.
In any case, the airline’s
statements can themselves be analyzed in terms of the real, ostensible, and
marketing purposes of the company. One such statement is the following: “We
take all claims of discrimination very seriously and want our customers to have
a positive experience when they choose to fly with us.”[2]
This is a very good statement, as it disavows the legitimacy of racial
discrimination and is straight forward in situating a positive experience as
something that, while relevant to the company in terms of providing a
product/service, is not the company’s purpose.
I contend that the real purpose
of American Airlines, and virtually any private company, is to make money. The
company’s ostensible purpose is to transport people (and cargo). Next to these
two purposes, it can be readily seen that providing a positive experience to
customers does not in itself rise to the stature of being a purpose. Rather,
providing a positive experience is a means. So far, the response of the company
is fine.
The problem lies in the further
statement, “Our teams are currently investigating the matter, as the claims do
not reflect our core values or our purpose of caring for people.”[3]
The choice of the word, “teams,” is immediately suspect, as companies have
employees rather than bad sport analogies. The whiff of a marketer can thus be
detected. Although the lack of honesty on this point is tedious, it points to a
mindset that plays with words for effect. Gilding the lily is one way of
expressing the mentality. The real problem lies in the second part of the
statement, wherein caring for people is said to be the company’s purpose. Upon
reading this part of the statement, my initial reflex was to think, an
airline is not a nursing home. The latter does have as its main purpose the
caring of people. The function of an airline is otherwise, being in
transporting people from one place to another. So we don’t even have to go to
the real purpose—that of maximizing profit—to catch a lower good being
portrayed as a higher one. Aristotle refers to this as misordered concupiscence,
and it is not ethical in nature. Placing the good of one’s car above the good
that is in God is an example of placing a lower good above a higher one.
In actuality, stating “caring for people” as the airline’s purpose serves marketing. As if trying to turn lemons into lemonade, the manager who came up with that statement was using the incident to promote the airline, which in turn is in line with revenue and profits. I contend that using an error for self-promotion is morally squalid in nature, for the self-aggrandizement does not take seriously enough the need to accept the error publicly. Especially if no other reasons exist for having ordered the men off the plane, the seriousness of the harm to the Black men warrants significant attention be taken publicly by the airline. Beyond an easy apology that wouldn’t cost the company anything, an explanation was called for, and thus due publicly to the men at the very least. The airline was on much firmer ground in affirming that the company’s employees do try to give customers a positive experience. That employees are only human, and thus can make even bad mistakes, is more easily digested if a company does not invent feel-good purposes that are actually embellishments or even outright lies. Ecclesiastes has it that for everything there is a season. The season for atonement does not include self-aggrandizement.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid, italics added for emphasis.