Primum non nocere
“First, do no harm” is a phrase often associated with the Hippocratic Oath or in recent times more often a variant of the Declaration of Geneva which in…
“Please stop submitting known-invalid patches.”
Open source software is an important cornerstone to the HPC community, spanning all layers from the operating systems, middlewares, and actual applications. But the very intentionally open dynamic…
The AI Index Report
Earlier in March, Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) release the 2021 AI Index report . The importance of ethical questions in relation to this technology is…
Open Source Software
With open source software dominating HPC, looking at the ethical issues related to it are also important. Here is a discussion on exactly that topic: https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/614
Overview of Edge Surveillance Practices at Protests
In an interesting talk, Kurt Opsahl enumerates various commonly used surveillance practices deployed at protests and large gatherings . While this may not seem directly related to HPC,…
On Allocating Scarce Resources “Fairly”
Maybe there is a lesson to be learned for HPC from common practices in medicine. The lack of organs that can be transplanted creates several ethical dilemmas without…
Supercomputing Around the World: A look at the Top500 as of 11/2020
With the release of the Nov 2020 Top500 list of supercomputers, it is time again to have a look at the distribution of supercomputers worldwide. Notable new entries…
The Compute Devide: The De-democratization of AI?
In a recent arXiv paper , analysis suggests that unequal access to computing capabilities may shift who and where AI is being innovated. […] we present systematic evidence…
Robustness and Explainability of Artificial Intelligence
In anticipation of potential negative consequences when employing artificial intelligence (AI) the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) published a technical report offering a policy-oriented description of the…
GSA Data Ethics Framework Published
The US General Services Administration has published new rules about ethical data use.