The ethical status of non-commercial spam

Much attention has been given in recent years to the moral status of commercial spam. Less attention has been focused on newer, non-commercial varieties of spam, such as spam from political parties, community sector organizations and governments. This article makes a start on evaluating the moral status of these non-commercial varieties of spam, drawing on arguments used to evaluate commercial spam.     

德育教育要做到敢于实践

德育工作是一门实践性很强的工作。实践性是学校德育工作的生命,离开了实践,德育工作会成为无源之水、无本之木,也就失去了生命力,只有把德育工作植根于丰富的实践之中,才有旺盛的生命力。德育工作没有固定的模式,全靠我们大胆地去试、去闯。多年来,笔者以很大精力投入于学校德育工作实践,先后进行了少则数小时、多达数年的德育工作实验。归纳起来,主要是围绕着对学生思想道德素质的培养,组织、指导学生进行道德实践,指导学生在假期社会实践等几方面做一些尝试。     

Recent developments in social spam detection and combating techniques: A survey

Spam in recent years has pervaded all forms of digital communication.The increase in user base for social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., has opened new avenues for spammers. The liberty to contribute content freely has encouraged the spammers to exploit the social platforms for their benefits. E-mail and web search engine being the early victims of spam have attracted serious attention from the information scientists for quite some time. A substantial amount of research has been directed to combat spam on these two platforms. Social networks being quite different in nature from the earlier two, have different kinds of spam and spam-fighting techniques from these domains seldom work. Moreover, due to the continuous and rapid evolution of social media, spam themselves evolve very fast posing a great challenge to the community. Despite being relatively new, there has been a number of attempts in the area of social spam in the recent past and a lot many are certain to come in near future. This paper surveys the recent developments in the area of social spam detection and mitigation, its theoretical models and applications along with their qualitative comparison. We present the state-of-the-art and attempt to provide challenges to be addressed, as the nature and content of spam are bound to get more complicated.     

Robot rights? Towards a social-relational justification of moral consideration

Should we grant rights to artificially intelligent robots? Most current and near-future robots do not meet the hard criteria set by deontological and utilitarian theory. Virtue ethics can avoid this problem with its indirect approach. However, both direct and indirect arguments for moral consideration rest on ontological features of entities, an approach which incurs several problems. In response to these difficulties, this paper taps into a different conceptual resource in order to be able to grant some degree of moral consideration to some intelligent social robots: it sketches a novel argument for moral consideration based on social relations. It is shown that to further develop this argument we need to revise our existing ontological and social-political frameworks. It is suggested that we need a social ecology, which may be developed by engaging with Western ecology and Eastern worldviews. Although this relational turn raises many difficult issues and requires more work, this paper provides a rough outline of an alternative approach to moral consideration that can assist us in shaping our relations to intelligent robots and, by extension, to all artificial and biological entities that appear to us as more than instruments for our human purposes.     

德育问题在非编实践教学中的表现与对策

当下大学德育的一些现状令人堪忧,如新闻传播专业学生,作为未来的新闻传播预备人才,处在信息高度密集化、观念多元化的媒介环境中,很容易沉湎于表层信息而迷失方向,因此新闻传播专业学生的德育教育应引起高度重视。已有的关于非编实践教学论文多从技术层面展开研讨,文章试图从德育缺失的角度,对非编的选题策划、拍摄及使用设备、后期编辑、...     

On the moral responsibility of military robots

This article discusses mechanisms and principles for assignment of moral responsibility to intelligent robots, with special focus on military robots. We introduce the concept autonomous power as a new concept, and use it to identify the type of robots that call for moral considerations. It is furthermore argued that autonomous power, and in particular the ability to learn, is decisive for assignment of moral responsibility to robots. As technological development will lead to robots with increasing autonomous power, we should be prepared for a future when people blame robots for their actions. It is important to, already today, investigate the mechanisms that control human behavior in this respect. The results may be used when designing future military robots, to control unwanted tendencies to assign responsibility to the robots. Independent of the responsibility issue, the moral quality of robots’ behavior should be seen as one of many performance measures by which we evaluate robots. How to design ethics based control systems should be carefully investigated already now. From a consequentialist view, it would indeed be highly immoral to develop robots capable of performing acts involving life and death, without including some kind of moral framework.     

Using evolutionary computation for discovering spam patterns from e-mail samples

One of the most relevant problems affecting the efficient use of e-mail to communicate worldwide is the spam phenomenon. Spamming involves flooding Internet with undesired messages aimed to promote illegal or low value products and services. Beyond the existence of different well-known machine learning techniques, collaborative schemes and other complementary approaches, some popular anti-spam frameworks such as SpamAssassin or Wirebrush4SPAM enabled the possibility of using regular expressions to effectively improve filter performance. In this work, we provide a review of existing proposals to automatically generate fully functional regular expressions from any input dataset combining spam and ham messages. Due to configuration difficulties and the low performance achieved by analysed schemes, in this work we introduce DiscoverRegex, a novel automatic spam pattern-finding tool. Patterns generated DiscoverRegex outperform those created by existing approaches (able to avoid FP errors) whilst minimising the computational resources required for its proper operation. DiscoverRegex source code is publicly available at https://github.com/sing-group/DiscoverRegex.     

Detecting spam blogs from blog search results

Blogging has been an emerging media for people to express themselves. However, the presence of spam blogs (also known as splogs) may reduce the value of blogs and blog search engines. Hence, splog detection has recently attracted much attention from research. Most existing works on splog detection identify splogs using their content/link features and target on spam filters protecting blog search engines’ index from spam. In this paper, we propose a splog detection framework by monitoring the on-line search results. The novelty of our splog detection is that our detection capitalizes on the results returned by search engines. The proposed method therefore is particularly useful in detecting those splogs that have successfully slipped through the spam filters that are also actively generating spam-posts. More specifically, our method monitors the top-ranked results of a sequence of temporally-ordered queries and detects splogs based on blogs’ temporal behavior. The temporal behavior of a blog is maintained in a blog profile. Given blog profiles, splog detecting functions have been proposed and evaluated using real data collected from a popular blog search engine. Our experiments have demonstrated that splogs could be detected with high accuracy. The proposed method can be implemented on top of any existing blog search engine without intrusion to the latter.     

网络对大学生道德社会化的影响

网络已经成为大学生学习生活的一部分,网络信息的传播对大学生的社会化进程产生了重要的影响。本文主要从大学生道德社会化出发,分别从道德认知、道德情感、道德意志和道德行为四个方面,探讨了网络对大学生道德社会化产生的影响。并提出了促进大学生形成良好的思想道德品质的对策。     

Do we have moral duties towards information objects?

In this paper, a critique will be developed and an alternative proposed to Luciano Floridi’s approach to Information Ethics (IE). IE is a macroethical theory that is to both serve as a foundation for computer ethics and to guide our overall moral attitude towards the world. The central claims of IE are that everything that exists can be described as an information object, and that all information objects, qua information objects, have intrinsic value and are therefore deserving of moral respect. In my critique of IE, I will argue that Floridi has presented no convincing arguments that everything that exists has some minimal amount of intrinsic value. I will argue, however, that his theory could be salvaged in large part if it were modified from a value-based into a respect-based theory, according to which many (but not all) inanimate things in the world deserve moral respect, not because of intrinsic value, but because of their (potential) extrinsic, instrumental or emotional value for persons.     

提高中职德育课教学有效性的探索

新一轮课程改革要求德育课教学本着＂贴近实际、贴近生活、贴近学生＂的原则,提高德育教学的实效性。笔者针对中职德育课的实际情况,结合教学实例,提出提高德育课教学有效性的方法：挖掘典型生活素材、凸显学生主体地位、改变课堂教学方式、构建新型师生关系以及建立有效的评价体系。     

SimilCatch: Enhanced social spammers detection on Twitter using Markov Random Fields

The problem of social spam detection has been traditionally modeled as a supervised classification problem. Despite the initial success of this detection approach, later analysis of proposed systems and detection features has shown that, like email spam, the dynamic and adversarial nature of social spam makes the performance achieved by supervised systems hard to maintain. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of using the output of previously proposed supervised classification systems as a tool for spammers discovery. The hypothesis is that these systems are still highly capable of detecting spammers reliably even when their recall is far from perfect. We then propose to use the output of these classifiers as prior beliefs in a probabilistic graphical model framework. This framework allows beliefs to be propagated to similar social accounts. Basing similarity on a who-connects-to-whom network has been empirically critiqued in recent literature and we propose here an alternative definition based on a bipartite users-content interaction graph. For evaluation, we build a Markov Random Field on a graph of similar users and compute prior beliefs using a selection of state-of-the-art classifiers. We apply Loopy Belief Propagation to obtain posterior predictions on users. The proposed system is evaluated on a recent Twitter dataset that we collected and manually labeled. Classification results show a significant increase in recall and a maintained precision. This validates that formulating the detection problem with an undirected graphical model framework permits to restore the deteriorated performances of previously proposed statistical classifiers and to effectively mitigate the effect of spam evolution.     

Moral luck and computer ethics: Gauguin in cyberspace

I argue that the problem of ‘moral luck’ is an unjustly neglected topic within Computer Ethics. This is unfortunate given that the very nature of computer technology, its ‘logical malleability’, leads to ever greater levels of complexity, unreliability and uncertainty. The ever widening contexts of application in turn lead to greater scope for the operation of chance and the phenomenon of moral luck. Moral luck bears down most heavily on notions of professional responsibility, the identification and attribution of responsibility. It is immunity from luck that conventionally marks out moral value from other kinds of values such as instrumental, technical, and use value. The paper describes the nature of moral luck and its erosion of the scope of responsibility and agency. Moral luck poses a challenge to the kinds of theoretical approaches often deployed in Computer Ethics when analyzing moral questions arising from the design and implementation of information and communication technologies. The paper considers the impact on consequentialism; virtue ethics; and duty ethics. In addressing cases of moral luck within Computer Ethics, I argue that it is important to recognise the ways in which different types of moral systems are vulnerable, or resistant, to moral luck. Different resolutions are possible depending on the moral framework adopted. Equally, resolution of cases will depend on fundamental moral assumptions. The problem of moral luck in Computer Ethics should prompt us to new ways of looking at risk, accountability and responsibility.     

一种基于文本分类技术的邮件过滤系统设计

垃圾邮件的泛滥提出了极为迫切的技术诉求,文章介绍了基于文本分类技术的垃圾邮件过滤系统模型,首先介绍了整个系统工作流程,然后阐述了系统中文本分词,文本特征提取,Winnow线性分类器等关键环节。     

浅谈初中生思想品德养成教育

从学生时代就养成好的行为习惯,有利于日后形成良好的道德品质,促进社会和谐发展。进行思想品德教学的首要目标就是对学生的思想品质、言行举止进行规范,由此可见,在思想品德教学中渗透养成教育,会取得更加理想的教学效果。本文主要对如何在初中思想品德教学中实施养成教育进行深入研究。     

Opinion spam detection: Using multi-iterative graph-based model

The demand to detect opinionated spam, using opinion mining applications to prevent their damaging effects on e-commerce reputations is on the rise in many business sectors globally. The existing spam detection techniques in use nowadays, only consider one or two types of spam entities such as review, reviewer, group of reviewers, and product. Besides, they use a limited number of features related to behaviour, content and the relation of entities which reduces the detection's accuracy. Accordingly, these techniques mostly exploit synthetic datasets to analyse their model and are not able to be applied in the context of the real-world environment. As such, a novel graph-based model called “Multi-iterative Graph-based opinion Spam Detection” (MGSD) in which all various types of entities are considered simultaneously within a unified structure is proposed. Using this approach, the model reveals both implicit (i.e., similar entity's) and explicit (i.e., different entities’) relationships. The MGSD model is able to evaluate the ‘spamicity’ effects of entities more efficiently given it applies a novel multi-iterative algorithm which considers different sets of factors to update the spamicity score of entities. To enhance the accuracy of the MGSD detection model, a higher number of existing weighted features along with the novel proposed features from different categories were selected using a combination of feature fusion techniques and machine learning (ML) algorithms. The MGSD model can also be generalised and applied in various opinionated documents due to employing domain independent features. The output of the MGSD model showed that our feature selection and feature fusion techniques showed a remarkable improvement in detecting spam. The findings of this study showed that MGSD could improve the accuracy of state-of-the-art ML and graph-based techniques by around 5.6% and 4.8%, respectively, also achieving an accuracy of 93% for the detection of spam detection in our synthetic crowdsourced dataset and 95.3% for Ott's crowdsourced dataset.     

Free will and moral responsibility in video games

Can a player be held morally responsible for the choices that she makes within a videogame? Do the moral choices that the player makes reflect in any way on the player’s actual moral sensibilities? Many videogames offer players the options to make numerous choices within the game, including moral choices. But the scope of these choices is quite limited. I attempt to analyze these issues by drawing on philosophical debates about the nature of free will. Many philosophers worry that, if our actions are predetermined, then we cannot be held morally responsible for them. However, Harry Frankfurt’s compatibilist account of free will suggests that an agent can be held morally responsible for actions that she wills, even if the agent is not free to act otherwise. Using Frankfurt’s analysis, I suggest that videogames represent deterministic worlds in which players lack the ability to freely choose what they do, and yet players can be held morally responsible for some of their actions, specifically those actions that the player wants to do. Finally, I offer some speculative comments on how these considerations might impact our understanding of the player’s moral psychology as it relates to the ethics of imagined fictional events.     

改进型贝叶斯算法网络垃圾邮件信息过滤技术

针对传统的朴素贝叶斯算法对垃圾邮件的过滤率不高等问题,提出了一种基于最小风险贝叶斯网络垃圾邮件信息过滤技术,提出的最小风险贝叶斯能够减少正常邮件判为垃圾邮件的风险,最后实验表明,与传统的算法相比较,本文提出的方法过滤效果有较大的提高。     

From agency to apperception: through kinaesthesia to cognition and creation

My aim in this paper is to go some way towards showing that the maintenance of hard and fast dichotomies, like those between mind and body, and the real and the virtual, is untenable, and that technological advance cannot occur with being cognisant of its reciprocal ethical implications. In their place I will present a softer enactivist ontology through which I examine the nature of our engagement with technology in general and with virtual realities in particular. This softer ontology is one to which I will commit Kant, and from which, I will show, certain critical moral and emotional consequences arise. It is my contention that Kant’s logical subject is necessarily embedded in the world and that Kant, himself, would be content with this view as an expression of his inspired response to the “scandal to philosophy… that the existence of things outside us… must be accepted merely on faith” [Bxl]. In keeping with his arguments for the a priori framing of intuition, the a priori structuring of experience through the spontaneous application of the categories, the synthesis of the experiential manifold, and the necessity of a unity of apperception, I will present an enactivist account of agency in the world, and argue that it is our embodied and embedded kinaesthetic engagement in our world which makes possible the syntheses of apprehension, reproduction and recognition, and which, in turn, make possible the activity of the reproductive or creative imagination.     

Artificial agency, consciousness, and the criteria for moral agency: what properties must an artificial agent have to be a moral agent?

In this essay, I describe and explain the standard accounts of agency, natural agency, artificial agency, and moral agency, as well as articulate what are widely taken to be the criteria for moral agency, supporting the contention that this is the standard account with citations from such widely used and respected professional resources as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I then flesh out the implications of some of these well-settled theories with respect to the prerequisites that an ICT must satisfy in order to count as a moral agent accountable for its behavior. I argue that each of the various elements of the necessary conditions for moral agency presupposes consciousness, i.e., the capacity for inner subjective experience like that of pain or, as Nagel puts it, the possession of an internal something-of-which-it is-is-to-be-like. I ultimately conclude that the issue of whether artificial moral agency is possible depends on the issue of whether it is possible for ICTs to be conscious.