Category: Ethics

It’s Westworld. What’s Wrong With Cruelty to Robots?

April 24, 2018

“If we did create conscious beings, conventional morality tells us that it would be wrong to harm them — precisely to the degree that they are conscious, and can suffer or be deprived of happiness. Just as it would be wrong to breed animals for the sake of torturing them, or to have children only to enslave them, it would be wrong to mistreat the conscious machines of the future.

“But how will we know if our machines become conscious?”

 

Psychological Weapons of Mass Persuasion

April 22, 2018

First, we need to distinguish attempts to manipulate and influence public opinion, from actual voter persuasion. Repeatedly targeting people with misinformation that is designed to appeal to their political biases may well influence public attitudes, cause moral outrage, and drive partisans further apart, especially when we’re given the false impression that everyone else in our social network is espousing the same opinion. But to what extent do these attempts to influence translate into concrete votes?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychological-weapons-of-mass-persuasion/?utm_source=facebook

Somaly Mam saved countless girls in Cambodia. Does it matter if her campaign is built on a web of lies?

January 28, 2018

SOMALY MAM: THE HOLY SAINT (AND SINNER) OF SEX TRAFFICKING

Late last year, Ratha finally confessed that her story was fabricated and carefully rehearsed for the cameras under Mam’s instruction, and only after she was chosen from a group of girls who had been put through an audition. Now in her early 30s and living a modest life on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Ratha says she reluctantly allowed herself to be depicted as a child prostitute: “Somaly said that…if I want to help another woman I have to do [the interview] very well.”

http://www.newsweek.com/2014/05/30/somaly-mam-holy-saint-and-sinner-sex-trafficking-251642.htmlhttp://www.newsweek.com/2014/05/30/somaly-mam-holy-saint-and-sinner-sex-trafficking-251642.html

‘We have a responsibility’: CVS vows to stop altering beauty images in its ads and stores

January 17, 2018

Do companies have a responsibility for the effects of their advertising?

“The connection between the propagation of unrealistic body images and negative health effects, especially in girls and young women, has been established,” she said. “As a purpose-led company, we strive to do our best to assure all of the messages we are sending to our customers reflect our purpose of helping people on their path to better health.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/01/15/we-have-a-responsibility-cvs-vows-to-stop-altering-beauty-images-in-its-stores-ads/?utm_term=.5ce5197dba0d

 

Designing babies or saving lives in Mexico?

November 25, 2017

“While specialists are calling it breakthrough technology, critics of assisted reproductive technology (ART) warn doctors about playing God.

“The US team at New Hope Fertility Clinic in New York, led by Dr John Zhang, had to travel to their Mexico clinic in Guadalajara to carry out the procedure, which is effectively banned in the United States.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-37505751

Radiolab Podcast: Driverless Dilemma

October 14, 2017

“Most of us would sacrifice one person to save five. It’s a pretty straightforward bit of moral math. But if we have to actually kill that person ourselves, the math gets fuzzy.

“That’s the lesson of the classic Trolley Problem, a moral puzzle that fried our brains in an episode we did about 11 years ago. Luckily, the Trolley Problem has always been little more than a thought experiment, mostly confined to conversations at a certain kind of cocktail party. That is until now. New technologies are forcing that moral quandry out of our philosophy departments and onto our streets. So today we revisit the Trolley Problem and wonder how a two-ton hunk of speeding metal will make moral calculations about life and death that we can’t even figure out ourselves.”

http://www.radiolab.org/story/driverless-dilemma/

MASH Final Episode Scene

October 14, 2017

Similar to the dilemma raised by the trolley car problem: is it right to sacrifice one person to save many?

“Here’s the story: Hawkeye has gone insane and is spending time at a hospital. Throughout the episode, he tells this story about how they were able to go out to a beach and have a great day. Just playing at the beach. They all pile up on a bus to head home. Suddenly, they realise that the enemy is nearby, so they shut off the engine, turned out all the lights and everybody got quiet. Except this woman in the back who has a chicken that won’t get quiet. In this scene, BJ shows up to tell Hawkeye that he (BJ) is going home but can’t because Hawkeye is getting very upset. So BJ calls in the DR.”

SELF-DRIVING CARS WILL KILL PEOPLE. WHO DECIDES WHO DIES?

October 14, 2017

“It’s tempting to hope that someone else will come along and solve the trolley problem. After all, finding a solution requires confronting some uncomfortable truths about one’s moral sensibilities. Imagine, for instance, that driverless cars are governed by a simple rule: minimize casualties. Occasionally, this rule may lead to objectionable results — e.g., mowing down a mother and her two children on the sidewalk rather than hitting four adults who have illegally run into the street. So, the rule might be augmented with a proviso: Minimize casualties, unless one party put itself in danger.”

https://www.wired.com/story/self-driving-cars-will-kill-people-who-decides-who-dies

Why ‘killer robots’ are becoming a real threat – and an ethics test

September 17, 2017

More ethical than humans?

Many ethicists and artificial intelligence developers want to ensure people are kept in the loop when lethal force is applied. At the moment, that’s a given, at least from those nations adhering to the law of war. Robots struggle to differentiate between soldiers and civilians in complex battle settings.

But the day may come, some say, when robots are able to be more ethical than human troops, because their judgment wouldn’t be clouded by emotions such vengefulness or self-preservation, which can shape human judgment.

“Unfortunately, humanity has a rather dismal record in ethical behavior in the battlefield,” Ronald Arkin, director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology, wrote in a guest blog for the IEEE, a technical professional organization. “Such systems might be capable of reducing civilian casualties and property damage when compared to the performance of human warfighters.”

https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/amphtml/USA/Military/2017/0831/Why-killer-robots-are-becoming-a-real-threat-and-an-ethics-test