Skip to content

Hazem Zohny’s Posts

Practically Prompted #1: Should We Screen the Womb? Ethical Questions Raised by the New Miscarriage-Risk Test

This is the first in a trial blog series called “Practically Prompted” – an experiment in using large language models to independently select a recent, ethically rich news story and then write a Practical Ethics blog-style post about it. The text below is the model’s work, followed by some light human commentary. See this post… Read More »Practically Prompted #1: Should We Screen the Womb? Ethical Questions Raised by the New Miscarriage-Risk Test

Practically Prompted: Introducing an experiment in LLM-generated blog posts

This post introduces a trial blog series called “Practically Prompted” – an experiment in using large language models (LLMs) to write a Practical Ethics blog-style post, with some light human commentary about the output. So, why try this? The experiment is driven by several key motivations: A final note on the method for this trial:… Read More »Practically Prompted: Introducing an experiment in LLM-generated blog posts

Press Replay on Ethics: How AI Debate Panels Surface Hidden Value-Trade-Offs

TL;DR High-stake policy decisions often involve conflict between values, like fairness versus efficiency, or individual rights versus the common good. The various committees (like hospital ethics boards or policy advisory groups) tasked with resolving these conflicts often work in ways that are hard to scrutinize, their conclusions shaped by the specific people in the room.… Read More »Press Replay on Ethics: How AI Debate Panels Surface Hidden Value-Trade-Offs

Dire Wolves and Deep Prompts: Language Models in Applied Ethics

You might have seen the headlines: Colossal Biosciences claims to have brought back the dire wolf. Except, it’s not quite a direct resurrection. What Colossal actually created are genetically engineered proxies: grey wolves modified to have some dire wolf traits. I wondered if the news might renew interest in the ethics of “de-extinction” and perhaps… Read More »Dire Wolves and Deep Prompts: Language Models in Applied Ethics

Cross Post: Why Government Budgets are Exercises in Distributing Life and Death as Much as Fiscal Calculations

Written by Hazem Zohny, University of Oxford

Sacrificial dilemmas are popular among philosophers. Should you divert a train from five people strapped to the tracks to a side-track with only one person strapped to it? What if that one person were a renowned cancer researcher? What if there were only a 70% chance the five people would die?

These questions sound like they have nothing to do with a government budget. These annual events are, after all, conveyed as an endeavour in accounting. They are a chance to show anticipated tax revenues and propose public spending. We are told the name of the game is “fiscal responsibility” and the goal is stimulating “economic growth”. Never do we talk of budgets in terms of sacrificing some lives to save others.

In reality, though, government budgets are a lot like those trains, in philosophical terms. Whether explicitly intended or not, some of us take those trains to better or similar destinations, and some of us will be left strapped to the tracks. That is because the real business of budgets is in distributing death and life. They are exercises in allocating misery and happiness.Read More »Cross Post: Why Government Budgets are Exercises in Distributing Life and Death as Much as Fiscal Calculations

We Should Regulate Politicians’ Public Statements Like Advertisements

Written by Hazem Zohny

There are strict regulations in place to stop businesses falsely advertising their products or services — why not the same for politicians? Lizz Truss and Rishi Sunak are currently trying to appeal to the Conservative party members who will determine the UK’s next prime minister in September – why can they largely get away with saying pretty anything about how their proposed policies will improve the status quo?

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has a clear code governing the public statements businesses can make about their products and services. They cannot mislead consumers by omitting key information or by exaggerating the performance of a product or service, and they must state any significant limitations and qualifications. In contrast, politicians are free to make misleading public statements about how they will tackle, say, inflation or recession using (potentially fudged) figures with little context or caveats.Read More »We Should Regulate Politicians’ Public Statements Like Advertisements

Slaps VS Jokes at the Oscars

By Hazem Zohny

Most of us draw a strict-ish line between actions that physically hurt and words that psychologically hurt. This is especially so when violence is used in response to words – hence the near universal condemnation of Will Smith’s cringey Oscars interruption. A slap is deemed a pathetic response to a joke, or any assortment of words for that matter (in some cultures anyway – blasphemy and certain other utterances can get you legally killed in some places).

But is there something intrinsically worse about physical violence compared to words that (we will assume) hurt? I have a strong intuition that violence is indeed inherently worse than words that hurt, but I wonder how easy it is to appeal to some principled basis to ground that claim. I’m not sure.

Read More »Slaps VS Jokes at the Oscars

Spiderman and the Meaning of Hope

Written by Hazem Zohny.

In Marvel’s latest ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’, Peter Parker’s girlfriend MJ has a simple philosophy: “If you expect disappointment, then you can never really be disappointed.”

She repeats this at various interludes in the movie, except as the plot gears up to the inevitable showdown with the villains, Peter Parker says to her:

“Here goes nothing. What’s that thing you always say? ‘Expect disappointment and–‘”, but MJ, in a somewhat ham-fisted moment of character development, interrupts him: “No, no, no. No. We’re gonna kick some ass!”

While this exchange was designed to trigger some inner-high five with the audience, I found MJ’s shift from quasi-stoic hopelessness to giddy hopefulness disappointing – here’s yet another story about how we need hope  to defeat the baddies/The Empire/Sauron/Thanos/the aliens/the comet/cancer.Read More »Spiderman and the Meaning of Hope

Might Going to Space Morally Enhance Billionaires?

By Hazem Zohny.

 

Billionaire Richard Branson blasted off to the edge of space this month on his Virgin Galactic rocket plane, and Jeff Bezoz just followed suit in his own Blue Origin rocket ship – Elon Musk may well venture into space as well.

The billionaire space race is certainly on, and while there are at least half a dozen ways to scoff at it, it’s interesting to wonder what the impact on billionaires’ moral outlook might be once they go to space and look back at the planet. Might they experience the overview effect?

Read More »Might Going to Space Morally Enhance Billionaires?

Stowaway, Self-Defense, and the Sheriff Case

Written by Hazem Zohny.

You and your two fellow astronauts are on your way to Mars when you uncover a stowaway in your spaceship. His mere presence means there won’t be enough oxygen for anyone to survive the journey. You toss him out the spaceship, of course. But what if that stowaway is there by accident – through absolutely no fault of his own? Would you still throw him out, though perhaps feel extra bad about it?

That, without giving too much of the plot away, is the moral dilemma on which the recent Netflix film ‘Stowaway’ is built. It’s an enjoyable watch, especially if you are into the kind of old school science fiction that involves those tense but fairly long scenes of someone just walking on the outside of a spaceship in a spacesuit. Crucially, as films go, it deals with its moral dilemma fairly thoughtfully.

Read More »Stowaway, Self-Defense, and the Sheriff Case