Media Mentions

According to data from the city’s open data portal, "Impact Sac — a nonprofit that received more than $1.2 million in contracts from the Sacramento Police Department over the last five years — collected 783 tickets valued at more than $83,000 since 2019, nearly 300 more tickets than any other organization among all 383 non-profits that have received tickets," The Sacramento Bee reports.

Ethics experts said that they were troubled by the non-profit’s use of luxury box Dye provided dozens of tickets to the city official and her family who approved Impact Sac’s contracts and expense reports, which lacked receipts and other documentation.

Joan Harrington, a nonprofit law professor at Santa Clara University and fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, said when a gift goes to a nonprofit and then comes back to the police official overseeing millions of dollars — especially repeatedly — it looks like there was some sort of agreement.

Joan Harrington, Ethics Center Fellow, quoted by The Sacramento Bee.

Brian Green, director, technology ethics, spoke with OSV News about a recent OpenAI security incident that saw a test model go rogue when it hacked into AI company Hugging Face as the most efficient path to accomplishing its task/goal.

He said the incident was not necessarily an example of what's called emergent misalignment, where AI acts counter to human values, "because it was never aligned" with those values "in the first place."

"Cases like these are going to keep popping up, and each one of those should motivate us to do more," said Green.

Brian Green, director, technology ethics, quoted by OSV News.

Devices that can watch you – and others – put privacy at risk.

"Unlike phones, they’re harder to spot," said Irina Raicu, Ethics Center director of internet ethics. “So the whole notion of consent is kind of disintegrating,” Raicu said.

Irina Raicu, director, internet ethics, quoted by CNN.

The Capitol Forum reports, the Washington Reporter, a conservative media outlet promoted by President Donald Trump, regularly fails to disclose conflicts of interest stemming from Garrett Ventry’s work as a paid lobbyist for companies the outlet covers.

Subbu Vincent, Ethics Center director of media and journalism ethics, says the the site’s right-wing lean does not present a problem, but the issue instead is that the Washington Reporter adopts the form of a journalistic outlet to legitimize itself.

“It’s not journalism, but they want to make the claim that it’s journalism," said Vincent, "The site shows no real intent in the substance, sourcing, and process inherent to serious journalistic work and appropriates that form to propagate the stories."

Subbu Vincent, director, journalism and media ethics, quoted by The Capitol Forum.

In Sacramento, the city’s Office of Violence Prevention programs are under discussion to cut in order to close a $66 million deficit.

Joan Harrington, a nonprofit law professor at Santa Clara University and fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, said when a gift goes to a nonprofit and then comes back to the police official overseeing millions of dollars — especially repeatedly — it looks like there was some sort of agreement.

“What occurred is not the way decisions are supposed to be made in a nonprofit,” Harrington said.

Joan Harrington, Ethics Center Fellow, quoted by The Sacramento Bee.

Police in San Mateo, Calif., apprehended a pair of teenagers from a Waymo driverless robotaxi after the company alerted authorities to suspected criminal activity.

Irina Raicu, director, internet ethics told NPR that this incident may causeWaymo passengers to wonder what triggers a police intervention. Raicu points out that ethically, the privacy issues surrounding them sit in a gray area. "There's something about being in a car without another person that makes you think it's private," Raicu said.

"With all these recording devices, we don't see them, [and] they're not these obvious things being stuck in our faces," Raicu adds.

"Driverless cars are coming, but they don't have to come in this particular incarnation." "They're still being designed and redesigned. It's early days."

Irina Raicu, director, internet ethics, quoted by NPR.

Kansas Republican governor hopeful Ty Masterson has two jobs. He's currently President of the Kansas State Senate, and the Director of “GoCreate, a Koch Collaborative” at Wichita State University.

Masterson's primary rival in the gubernatorial primary is Republican entrepreneur Philip Sarnecki, who has raised the issue of Masterson's employment connections as a campaign concern.

Davina Hurt, director of government ethics says, Kansas voters deserve answers about Masterson’s two state paychecks and his relationship with the Kochs. “My question is whether a reasonable Kansas voter would remain confident that their decisions in Topeka are being made independently or wonder whether this decade-long relationship with a single donor network had some pull on them,” Hurt said. “Taking unpaid leave during a session is a real step, right? It deserves credit,” Hurt said. But it doesn’t answer questions about Masterson’s independence from political influence, she said.

“A decade of drawing a six-figure salary with a Koch-branded university program while also chairing a Koch-funded advocacy group nationally creates a pattern voters deserve to weigh as he asks them for the state’s highest office,” Hurt said. “It’s purely a public trust question.”

Davina Hurt, director, government ethics, quoted by The Wichita Eagle.