AI ethics in September 2016

BACKGROUND: Late-life depression (LLD) is associated with a decline in physical activity. Typically this is assessed by self-report questionnaires and, more recently, with actigraphy. We sought to explore the utility of a bespoke activity monitor to characterize activity profiles in LLD more precisely. METHOD: The activity monitor was worn for 7 days by 29 adults with LLD and 30 healthy controls. Subjects underwent neuropsychological assessment and quality of life (QoL) (36-item Short-Form Healt

The article discusses problems of representative views of data and elaborates a concept of the performativity of data. It shows how data used for surveillance contributes in creating suspect subjectivities. In particular, the article focuses on the inductive or explorative processing of data and on the decoupling of data generation and analysis that characterize current use of data for surveillance. It lines out several challenges this poses to established accounts of surveillance: David Lyon’s

IMPORTANCE: Aesthetic eye treatments can dramatically change a person's appearance, but outcomes are rarely measured from the patient perspective. The patient perspective could be measured using an eye-specific patient-reported outcome measure. OBJECTIVE: To describe the development and psychometric evaluation of FACE-Q scales and an adverse effect checklist designed to measure outcomes following cosmetic eye treatments. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Pretreatment and posttreatment patients

From ‘connecting the dots’ and finding ‘the needle in the haystack’ to predictive policing and data mining for counterinsurgency, security professionals have increasingly adopted the language and methods of computing for the purposes of prediction. Digital devices and big data appear to offer answers to a wide array of problems of (in)security by promising insights into unknown futures. This article investigates the transformation of prediction today by placing it within governmental apparatuses

The present research examines how a robot's physical anthropomorphism interacts with perceived ability of robots to impact the level of realistic and identity threat that people perceive from robots and how it affects their support for robotics research. Experimental data revealed that participants perceived robots to be significantly more threatening to humans after watching a video of an android that could allegedly outperform humans on various physical and mental tasks relative to a humanoid

Over recent decades it has become widely accepted that managing fisheries resources means managing human behaviour, and so understanding social and economic dynamics is just as important as understanding species biology and ecology. Until recently, fisheries managers and researchers have struggled to develop effective methods and data for social and economic analysis that can integrate with the predominantly biological approaches to fisheries management. The field is now growing fast, however, a

BACKGROUND: Clozapine remains the only evidence-based antipsychotic for treatment-resistant schizophrenia (TRS). The ability to predict which patients with their first onset of schizophrenia would subsequently meet criteria for treatment resistance (TR) could help to diminish the severe functional disability which may ensue if TR is not recognized and correctly treated. METHOD: This is a 5-year longitudinal assessment of clinical outcomes in a cohort of 246 first-episode schizophrenia spectrum p

Brain computer interfaces (BCIs) have been developed and implemented in many areas as a new communication channel between the human brain and external devices. Despite their rapid growth and broad popularity, the inaccurate performance and cost of user-training are yet the main issues that prevent their application out of the research and clinical environment. We previously introduced a BCI system for the control of a very humanlike android that could raise a sense of embodiment and agency in th

This essay tries to bring out some of the complexities that are overlooked in the usual treatment of the state in the institutional economics literature and supplement the latter with a discussion of some alternative approaches to looking at the possible developmental role of the state. It refers to a broader range of development goals (including the structural transformation of the economy) and focuses on problems like the resolution of coordination failures and collective-action problems, the

RCTs would be more useful if there were more realistic expectations of them and if their pitfalls were better recognized. For example, and contrary to many claims in the applied literature, randomization does not equalize everything but the treatment across treatments and controls, it does not automatically deliver a precise estimate of the average treatment effect (ATE), and it does not relieve us of the need to think about (observed or unobserved) confounders. Estimates apply to the trial samp

Players and Arenas brings together a diverse group of experts to examine the interactions between political protestors and the many strategic players they encounter, such as cultural institutions, religious organizations, and the mass media—as well as potential allies, competitors, recruits, and funders. Discussing protestors and players as they interact within the arenas of specific social contexts, the essays show that the main constraints on what protestors can accomplish come not from social