Chapter 22: Quiz — Whistleblowing and Ethical Dissent in AI Organizations

20 questions. Unless noted, each question has one best answer.

Question 1 The chapter describes ethical dissent as "a governance mechanism, not merely an individual moral act." What is the primary reason this distinction matters for AI organizations?

A) It removes individual moral responsibility from employees who stay silent about concerns B) It means that organizations have a legal obligation to create formal dissent channels C) It means that the failure of internal dissent is an organizational governance failure, not just an individual failure, with systemic consequences for problem detection D) It establishes that only formally designated whistleblowers have protected status under the law

Question 2 Timnit Gebru's co-lead on the Google Ethical AI team, who was fired in February 2021 reportedly while investigating the circumstances of Gebru's dismissal, was:

A) Joy Buolamwini B) Sophie Zhang C) Emily Bender D) Margaret Mitchell

Question 3 According to the chapter, which of Albert Bandura's moral disengagement mechanisms is most clearly operating when an engineer says: "I just write the code — what the company does with it is management's decision"?

A) Moral justification B) Euphemistic labeling C) Displacement of responsibility D) Diffusion of responsibility

Question 4 The Dodd-Frank Act's most significant protection for AI ethics whistleblowers is that it:

A) Explicitly protects employees who report AI bias to the Federal Trade Commission B) Prohibits non-disclosure agreements from preventing employees from communicating with the SEC about potential securities violations C) Requires publicly traded companies to maintain anonymous ethics hotlines accessible to all employees D) Mandates financial awards for employees who identify and report AI systems that violate securities law

Question 5 An employee at an AI company believes she was passed over for promotion in retaliation for raising concerns about a discriminatory AI hiring tool. She works in California. The most relevant state law protection for her situation is:

A) California's Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) B) California Labor Code Section 1102.5 C) California's Unfair Competition Law D) California Business and Professions Code Section 17200

Question 6 Frances Haugen's decision to disclose documents to the SEC before going to journalists was primarily motivated by:

A) Her belief that the SEC was the most likely regulator to take immediate enforcement action B) A legal strategy to establish SEC-protected disclosure before making any other disclosures, maximizing her legal protection C) Her concern that journalists would not understand the technical aspects of Facebook's algorithmic systems D) Facebook's own request that she route concerns through regulatory channels rather than the press

Question 7 The "Stochastic Parrots" paper by Gebru and co-authors was centrally concerned with which of the following AI ethics issues?

A) The use of AI in criminal justice risk assessment B) Facial recognition accuracy disparities across demographic groups C) The environmental costs, social bias encoding, and power concentration associated with very large language models D) The privacy implications of behavioral data collection for AI training

Question 8 Organizational silence, as described in this chapter, refers to:

A) The legal prohibition on employees discussing confidential AI system performance with external parties B) The collective phenomenon in which employees choose not to speak up about problems they observe, typically because they believe doing so is futile or risky C) A mandated quiet period during which employees may not comment on AI systems under regulatory review D) The deliberate suppression of employee speech through non-disclosure agreements

Question 9 Psychological safety, as defined in the chapter, most directly addresses which governance challenge?

A) Protecting board directors from liability for AI governance failures B) Ensuring that AI systems are safe for end users C) Creating conditions under which employees can raise concerns without fear of career punishment D) Making external whistleblowing to regulators legally safe for employees

Question 10 Which of the following best describes the legal protection available to Timnit Gebru under US federal law for her research and advocacy activities at Google?

A) Strong protection under Dodd-Frank because she disclosed concerns to the SEC before leaving Google B) Strong protection under Sarbanes-Oxley because Google is a publicly traded company C) Limited protection because her activities — publishing research and expressing concern to colleagues — did not fit neatly into the categories of protected activity under existing federal whistleblower statutes D) Full protection under the First Amendment because her work constituted protected speech

Question 11 The EU Whistleblower Protection Directive (2019) is most significant for AI ethics governance because it:

A) Specifically prohibits the use of non-disclosure agreements in AI ethics disputes B) Requires member states to protect whistleblowers who report violations of EU law, including GDPR and (following implementation) AI Act provisions C) Mandates that all AI companies maintain internal whistleblower protection programs regardless of company size D) Creates a specific EU AI ethics reporting authority analogous to the SEC's whistleblower program

Question 12 Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety found that teams with high psychological safety:

A) Make fewer individual errors because members fear the consequences of mistakes B) Have lower staff turnover, reducing the knowledge loss from personnel departures C) Access more information, catch more problems, and learn faster from errors than teams with low psychological safety D) Are less likely to accept new members who challenge existing team norms and practices

Question 13 Sophie Zhang's whistleblowing case, while less discussed than Frances Haugen's, contributed to the chapter's pattern analysis because it demonstrated which of the following?

A) The effectiveness of going to the SEC before going to the press B) Internal channels were tried before external disclosure; the disclosing individual was prominent and credible; and organizations offered formal explanations for adverse actions that critics attributed to retaliation C) The limitations of California's whistleblower protection statutes compared to federal law D) The specific protections available to employees who write internal memos documenting organizational misconduct

Question 14 When the chapter states that "responsible disclosure" in AI ethics is analogous to responsible disclosure in security research, it means:

A) AI ethics whistleblowers should only disclose to government regulators, not to journalists or the public B) AI ethics concerns should be reported to the organization first, allowing an opportunity for internal correction before external disclosure C) AI ethics disclosures require technical certification from an independent security research organization D) Responsible disclosure means AI researchers are responsible for disclosing their own systems' vulnerabilities before deployment

Question 15 The "diffusion of responsibility" moral disengagement mechanism operates primarily at which level?

A) The individual level — each person separately convinces themselves they are not responsible B) The group level — when many people are involved in a decision, each person's sense of individual responsibility is diluted by the collective C) The organizational level — responsibility is formally diffused through governance structures D) The regulatory level — government oversight diffuses moral responsibility from private actors

Question 16 Haugen's disclosure of Facebook's internal documents (rather than simply her account of what they contained) was strategically important primarily because:

A) It provided legal evidence of securities fraud that qualified her for financial awards under Dodd-Frank B) Internal documents could not be easily disputed or characterized by Facebook as misunderstood, unlike her personal account alone C) It was required by the EU Whistleblower Protection Directive to qualify for European disclosure protections D) Journalists at the Wall Street Journal would not report on whistleblower accounts without documentary evidence

Question 17 The chapter identifies which of the following as a significant limitation of ethics hotlines as a mechanism for AI ethics concern-raising?

A) Ethics hotlines generate too many concerns for organizations to address systematically B) Ethics hotlines are prohibited by most employment contracts from receiving AI-related concerns C) The effectiveness of anonymous reporting channels depends on whether employees believe, based on organizational track record, that using them will result in genuine review rather than retaliation D) Ethics hotlines are not legally recognized as formal channels for whistleblower protection under federal law

Question 18 What was the organizational reason Haugen gave for the disbanding of Facebook's Civic Integrity team shortly after the 2020 US presidential election?

A) The team had completed its mandate and its findings had been fully incorporated into platform policy B) Facebook's management decided that election integrity work was no longer needed once the election was over, and disbanded the team that might have pushed back on future decisions C) The team was restructured and expanded into a broader platform integrity function D) Team members had requested to be reassigned to other projects after an intense election period

Question 19 An employee who signs a separation agreement with a non-disclosure clause and later wants to report AI misconduct to the SEC is most importantly protected by which legal provision?

A) The First Amendment's protection of free speech B) Dodd-Frank's prohibition on NDA provisions that prevent communication with the SEC about potential securities violations C) California Labor Code 1102.5's protection of employees who disclose violations of California law D) The False Claims Act's qui tam provision allowing employees to sue on behalf of the government

Question 20 The chapter's conclusion about the future of AI whistleblowing focuses primarily on:

A) The inevitability that AI companies will develop cultures of genuine ethical openness as the technology matures B) The need for legal, organizational, and cultural conditions that make dissent effective rather than merely heroic, as AI systems become more consequential C) The superiority of external regulatory oversight over internal dissent as an AI ethics governance mechanism D) The role of professional associations in creating enforceable codes of conduct for AI practitioners

Answer Key

1-C, 2-D, 3-C, 4-B, 5-B, 6-B, 7-C, 8-B, 9-C, 10-C, 11-B, 12-C, 13-B, 14-B, 15-B, 16-B, 17-C, 18-B, 19-B, 20-B