Values and ethics practice questions.

In 2018 employees at Google objected to company work on a defence contract that applied image recognition to drone footage; the contract was not renewed and a set of AI principles was published. Which ethical concern does the objection illustrate most directly?

• Data minimisation, because more attributes were collected than needed
• Vendor lock-in, because customers could not move to another supplier
• Planned obsolescence, because the product had a deliberately short life
• Dual use, because one capability serves civilian and military purposes

Answer: Dual use, because one capability serves civilian and military purposes

Dual use is a property of the capability rather than of the builder's intention, which is why professional codes place the judgement with the people who hold the skill. The other three options name commercial or design problems, not questions about application.

The Court of Justice of the European Union held in Google Spain (2014) that a search engine may have to remove links to lawfully published pages about a person. In Google v CNIL (2019) the same court decided that this de-listing obligation

• extends to every version of the search engine operated anywhere in the world
• applies to the versions accessible within the EU rather than worldwide
• requires the original publisher to delete the underlying article as well
• arises only where the person concerned holds a public office

Answer: applies to the versions accessible within the EU rather than worldwide

The ruling marks where a right stops at a border: the same result can be lawfully hidden in one jurisdiction and lawfully visible in another. Assuming that erasure is global is the standard error, and it decides who is actually protected by the right.

A hospital committee debates a triage model. One member argues it is justified if it lowers total waiting time across all patients; another argues it is unacceptable if any individual patient is treated merely as a means to that total. Which pair of ethical positions is being contrasted?

• Descriptive and normative
• Virtue ethics and an ethics of care
• Consequentialist and deontological
• Qualitative and quantitative

Answer: Consequentialist and deontological

The first argument judges the aggregate outcome, the second judges the treatment of the individual whatever the outcome, which is exactly that split. Naming the framework is what turns a disagreement into an argument a marker can credit.

A city publishes its full register of noise complaints as open data, including the free-text description written by each complainant and the street on which the complaint was made. Residents recognise their neighbours in the entries. Which conflict of values does the decision expose?

• Efficiency against cost, because publishing the register is cheaper than answering requests one at a time
• Transparency against privacy, because the same detail that makes the register checkable also identifies people
• Security against openness, because publishing the register makes the city's systems easier to attack
• Accuracy against timeliness, because the register is published before the complaints have been verified

Answer: Transparency against privacy, because the same detail that makes the register checkable also identifies people

Both values in the pair are legitimate, which is what makes it a genuine ethical conflict rather than a mistake: the granularity that lets residents audit the council is the granularity that identifies a neighbour. The usual resolution is aggregation or delay, which reduces the accountability that publication was for.

On a booking site, the button that accepts all tracking is large and coloured, while refusing requires opening a second screen and switching off fourteen sliders one by one. Both routes are technically available. What is the ethical objection to this design?

• It collects data that the site has no lawful basis at all to process from any visitor
• It stores the visitor's choice for longer than the site has stated in its published policy
• It obtains agreement by making the alternative costly, so the consent recorded is not freely given
• It gives no information about which companies receive the data that the visitor allows

Answer: It obtains agreement by making the alternative costly, so the consent recorded is not freely given

A design of this kind, usually called a dark pattern, leaves the choice formally intact while making one branch expensive in time and attention, so the recorded consent measures friction rather than agreement. This is why regulators have treated symmetry between the accept and refuse routes as a condition of valid consent.

A tax authority must decide how much to reveal about the model that selects tax returns for audit: publish the rules and taxpayers can contest their selection, but evaders can arrange their affairs to slip past. Which ethical tension does the decision illustrate?

• openness that lets people contest decisions also lets people game them
• efficiency gains for the authority against higher compliance costs for taxpayers
• the privacy of taxpayers against the authority's duty to store records securely
• automating the selection against the employment of the auditors it replaces

Answer: openness that lets people contest decisions also lets people game them

Both horns rest on the same fact, that knowledge of a rule changes behaviour, so the dilemma cannot be solved by 'more transparency' alone; partial disclosure or oversight bodies are attempts to hold both values. The error is treating transparency as costless and its absence as mere secrecy.