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Irina Raicu

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Irina Raicu is the director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara Univ. Center. She is a Certified Information Privacy Professional and was formerly an attorney in private practice. Her work addresses a wide variety of issues, ranging from online privacy to net neutrality, from data ethics to social media’s impact on friendship and family, from the digital divide to the ethics of encryption, and from the ethics of artificial intelligence to the right to be forgotten. Her writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including The Atlantic, U.S.A. Today, MarketWatch, Slate, the Huffington Post, the San Jose Mercury News, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Recode. Raicu is a member of the Partnership on AI's Working Group on Fair, Transparent, and Accountable AI.

  • AI Hallucinations in Court: A Growing Legal and Ethical Challenge
    Irina stresses the role of CIOs in addressing AI hallucinations and cybersecurity risks. She notes, "Most lawyers are not familiar with these new challenges." The American Bar Association's guidance on AI use underscores the need for collaboration between legal and technical teams to maintain competence and confidentiality.
  • AI Tools in Universities: A Threat to Genuine Learning?
    Irina highlights concerns that AI reliance may hinder skill development in research, critical thinking, and more. She warns that unchecked AI growth could reduce education to mere software interactions, with students and professors learning more about AI than the actual subject matter.
  • Meta's Content Moderation Shift: A Double-Edged Sword?
    Irina warns that reduced content moderation may not lead to healthier debate but could increase hate speech, limiting others' expression. She notes, "Meta's platforms are likely to become both more toxic and, arguably, more 'authentic'," as algorithms amplify certain posts, potentially prioritizing outrage over constructive conversations.
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  • “It is interesting to hear them talk about strikes and regular rules when the other companies acknowledged these are unprecedented times and they need to do something more aggressive given the violence unraveling,” Raicu said. “I think YouTube would argue they would be more fair but fairness also requires treating people who are similarly situated and we are not in that situation."

  • "What they really need to prioritize and think about moving forward is how they will deal with the rise of the next Donald Trump. It's really hard when you have a figure like that who is probably very good for business."

  • "This sort of chatbot is already a violation of a deceased person’s autonomy—they have no say in which bits of their social data go into the final chatbot, for instance. And creating a chatbot modeled on a person who has never consented in the first place feels unfair, because they aren’t a part of the decision-making process."

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