Oxford News
Expert Comment: Ethics-washing and Us-washing
Professor Edward Harcourt
Given the surge of recent interest in AI ethics – which comes on the back of understandable worries about AI itself – most people are now familiar with the term ‘ethics-washing’.
Trickling into a linguistic channel already worn smooth by ‘green washing’ and before it of course ‘whitewashing’, ethics-washing means something like this: appearing to take some ethical anxiety about AI seriously and then tactfully dismissing it by applying a meaningless kitemark. It’s the AI ethics equivalent of getting a clean bill of health from a dishonest doctor.
An expression people will likely be less familiar with – or so I hope, because I think I have just invented it – is ‘us-washing’. This too is to be avoided, but because it’s a less familiar idea, some explanation is needed.
Us-washing is like ethics-washing except that what gets ethically whitewashed is not AI, but ourselves. It’s an important notion because it’s important to avoid an implication that’s all too easy to draw from my (justified) disdain for ethics-washing, that the bit of the world occupied by AI – a bit of the world that’s growing all the time – is ethically black and white: on one side big bad AI, and on the other good little us, with only ethics to defend ourselves. A serious AI ethics – indeed the serious ethical examination of anything – should not be in the business of lending respectability to these simplistic oppositions or to the idea that it is always the business of ethics to oppose AI, any more than it should be in the business of ethics-washing.
But why ‘us-washing’? The answer is that the simplistic picture which pits big bad AI against good little us ethically flatters us, and flatters us because to the extent that AI is bad – and surely it sometimes is and sometimes isn’t – its badness is our badness. Wagging our fingers at AI is thus a convenient way of whitewashing ourselves.
But why ‘us-washing’? The answer is that the simplistic picture which pits big bad AI against good little us ethically flatters us, and flatters us because to the extent that AI is bad – and surely it sometimes is and sometimes isn’t – its badness is our badness. Wagging our fingers at AI is thus a convenient way of whitewashing ourselves.
The mechanism at work here is the same as in scapegoating: the badness of the community is loaded symbolically onto the sacrificial animal so the community comes out ritually purified. Psychoanalysts find this mechanism all over the place, especially perhaps in practices of blaming: we project disquieting aspects of ourselves onto others and condemn them at a safe distance. That’s a lot easier than facing up to something disagreeable that’s within us.
Here is a more concrete example of what I have in mind. A few years back I was paying for something at a railway station and leant across – this bit of the story shows it must have been pre-COVID – to get my change. It was then that I spotted a little notice taped to the back of the cash register, ‘smile when you give change’. But what is a smile to order really worth? Routinizing smiles in this way nullifies the value of the human presence by reducing it to an instrument – supposedly – of customer satisfaction. But now don’t be surprised that the same species that invented these working practices also invented LLMs, indeed LLMs with human faces, that ‘ask’ you how you are feeling, or ‘commiserate’ with you when you have lost a relative. Humans – that is to say, we – did our very best with the production line to reduce our conspecifics to machines. No surprise, then, that we have now invented actual machines to do the same thing. (Indeed, that might be an improvement, as long as the humans can be found something else to do.)
Nor should this line of thought be mistaken for a counterblast against greedy producers, in which consumers are the innocents. That would be us-washing all over again.
It’s still a puzzle to me why people ‘chat’ to LLMs, because the very fact that LLMs are machines should mean that their ability to ‘listen’ for hours on end isn’t a sign of patience, and so has nothing like the value a patient human being would have.
But our appetite as consumers for instrumentalization – that is, for reducing something to its ability to gratify our desires – which is so vividly on display here has been well honed already by pre-digital consumerism, starting with people who are all smiles at the checkout but also roping in the Lonely Hearts column – remember those? – in which people recite a checklist of what they’re after in their perfect romantic partner.
The latest AI-driven iterations of these things – whether chatbots, dating websites or some third thing – should be no surprise at all. If we are uncomfortable with those inclinations within us that lead us to instrumentalize our fellow human beings, we’re surely not wrong.
But we should rein in our inclination always to point the finger at AI and own those less flattering features of ourselves.
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On Wednesday, September 2, it was the Concours judging and private viewings to dominate the agenda for the day.
Twelve Concours classes were held across almost a century of motoring, including The Golden Age of Motoring, 100 Years of Carrrozzeria Touring, La Dolce Vita, 60 Years of the Lamborghini Miura and Passione Ferrari.
Two new classes also made their debut for 2026, Rare Breeds of the Digital Age and Hypercar Heaven, which recognise the growing importance of contemporary performance cars within the international collector market.
Judging will take place across Wednesday and Thursday, with the show field bringing together a 70-strong collection of classics, supercars and hypercars from around the world.
Some of the cars include Aa Maserati 8C 3000, Alfa Romeo Sprint Berlinetta, a one-off Maserati 3500GT Spyder Prototipo by Vignale, a very early Porsche 356 Split Window Coupé, Aston Martin DB3S, Lamborghini Miura P400S, Bizzarrini 5300GT, Ferrari 250 GT Series 1 Cabriolet, Bugatti EB110 Prototype, Aston Martin Valiant Prototype and the extraordinary Bugatti Bolide, one of just 40 produced worldwide.
Helen Pike has decided to step down as Master of Magdalen College School at the end of the 2026/27 academic year, the school in east Oxford announced in March.
MCS is one of the top performing schools in the country, ranking in the top 20 independent secondary schools in The Sunday Times Parent Power Schools Guide 2026.
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The new academic year will start next week, with Ms Pike preparing for one more year in charge before she hands over to her successor, who will take over in September 2027.
The first female Master at MCS, Ms Pike guided the board of governors to one of the most significant decisions in the school’s history, to become fully co-educational from 2027.
While there has been a co-educational sixth form at the school for 15 years, the school last month announced it will become fully co-educational over the coming decade.
Ms Pike said earlier: “I love MCS, and it is a perennial privilege to lead this remarkable school.
“Being Master of MCS is a brilliant job, and I am declaring my intention early in order to give MCS the very best opportunity to find the right Master for September 2027. I shall continue to do all in my power to further the fortunes of this wonderful school until then.
“I look forward to a new phase in my own professional life, one that builds on all that I have enjoyed and achieved in my career during the past 30 years.
“Having encouraged many cohorts of pupils to take sensible risks and to do something creative and different when the time feels right, I am doing just that.”
During Ms Pike’s tenure, MCS has been recognised as a Top 20 Independent School and South East School of the Year by the Sunday Times and won Independent School of the Year for Social Mobility.
Thanking her in his letter to the school community, chair of governors, Bob Price, said earlier this year: “Helen is an outstanding leader and will go with our sincere gratitude and warm thanks for her exceptional headship.
“She will leave the school in excellent shape for her successor.”
Recruitment for a replacement for Ms Pike is now under way.
Last month, Ms Pike congratulated pupils on their “outstanding success” in this year’s A-Level exams, after more than a quarter of pupils (43) achieved three A*s or more and 25 secured all A*s.
In total, 39 pupils from the 2026 cohort are heading to Oxbridge, while 22 have secured places to study medicine.
As part of the school’s expansion plans, MCS is preparing to build a new Science, Library and Partnerships building.
A spokeswoman said the new building will offer an exciting opportunity to reimagine the senior school site as staff look ahead to full co-education.
She added earlier: “With a vision to create a sector-leading science building in the centre of Oxford, the development will enable us to support an ambitious and forward-looking science curriculum, expanding to the emerging and rapidly advancing areas of robotics, AI and Big Data.”
Holding banners which read ‘For f**k’s sake, just stop oil’, the demonstrators took to the road in Parliament Square at noon today (Wednesday, September 2).
This was as Andy Burnham faced his first Prime Minister’s Questions, and many of the protestors glued themselves to the road.
The group demanded that the UK government stop approving all further oil and gas developments, and sign a Fossil Fuel Treaty to stop oil and gas extraction.
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Just Stop Oil say that the police are expected to arrest all those blocking the road, and that one lane has been left free of glued-on action takers to permit access for emergency vehicles.
Andy Burnham is due to make a decision on whether to allow more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea.
Reverend James Crote, a Baptist Minister and grandfather from Chesterton near Bicester, said: “Today is my grandson’s first birthday. I have to take action for the sake of his future.
The 69-year-old added: “The government has been dilly-dallying about whether to say yes or no to the Rosebank oil field but, if we want a future for our children, there is no choice – it has to say ‘no’.
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“I am here as a Christian Minister because the Church has to speak out and demand that the government stops approving further oil and gas developments now. It’s time for us all to say ‘For God’s sake, Just Stop Oil’.”
Data from the Met Office indicates that 2026 was the hottest summer in UK recorded history, beating 2025, which was the previous hottest summer on record.
2026 was also one of the driest summers on record, delivering record-low food harvests.
Climbing temperatures have triggered wildfires across the country, and national fire chiefs said the wildfire risk facing the UK is “like nothing we have seen before”.
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Taking action, grandmother Victoria Ann Lynch-Staunton from Leamington Spa, said: “What is happening is beyond a tragedy.”
The 71-year-old added: “I beg everyone to join Just Stop Oil or governments will continue to prioritise endless growth and corporate profit over billions of lives – yours and your children.
“Wake up and smell the coffin. It is the responsibility of all of us to act now!”
A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said today: “We are all Just Stop Oil.
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“Every single person who fears deadly wildfires, devastating droughts, and spiralling food shortages is Just Stop Oil.
“The first duty of government is to keep the public safe – but by greenlighting oil and gas drilling, they endanger our survival while corporates and billionaires laugh their way to the bank.
“Every one of us feels alone and powerless in the face of this insanity, but we know there is massive political and public support for our demand.
“So we’re inviting everyone to join us at an online call on 3rd October 2026 – because it’s when we work together that we are powerful and win.”
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