Can we build and use AI ethically? Walter Sinnott-Armstrong discusses how this can be achieved in his new book ‘Moral AI and How We Get There’ co-authored with Jana Schaich Borg & Vincent Conitzer. Edmond Awad talks through the ethical implications for AI use with Walter in this short video. With thanks to the Atlantic… Read More »Moral AI And How We Get There with Prof Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
written by Ben Davies and Gabriel De Marco Many illnesses that risk death or serious harm are at least partly due to behaviours such as smoking, lack of exercise, or extreme sports. The WHO notes that the global prevalence of preventable, noncommunicable diseases is rising, and accounts for a large proportion of deaths worldwide. Some… Read More »Book Launch: Responsibility and Healthcare
Imagine the following case: A few years in the future, neuroscience has advanced considerably to the point where it is able to artificially support conscious activity that is just like the conscious activity in a human brain. After diagnosis of an untreatable illness, a patient, C, has transferred (uploaded) his consciousness to the artificial substrate… Read More »Would You Survive Brain Twinning?
Introducing two journal special issues and a conference Written by Alberto Giubilini Two special issues of the journals Bioethics and Monash Bioethics Review will be devoted to, respectively, “New (Bio)technology and Human Identity” and “Medical Humanities in the 21st Century” (academic readers, please consider submitting an article). Here I would like to briefly explain why… Read More »(Bio)technologies, human identity, and the Medical Humanities
Written by Joseph Moore Gus O’Donnell, once the highest official in the British Civil Service and now a member of the House of Lords, has said, on the topic of well-being, ‘If you treasure it, measure it’.[1],[2] I’ve heard this slogan repeated by empirically-minded researchers of happiness, well-being and flourishing. And to anyone with a… Read More »Do We Need To Measure Well-Being?
by Dominic Wilkinson In an interesting legal case earlier this year, the court held an emergency hearing about the medical care of a 16 year old, recently diagnosed with acute leukaemia. The hearing, conducted remotely in the middle of the night, was to decide whether she should have medical treatment imposed against her wishes. Should an “intelligent… Read More »Quasi-Refusal and Teens
written by Neil Levy and Keith Raymond Harris There’s a lot of debate over the harms of misinformation today: whether it is more prevalent now than in the past, how often it misleads people, whether people act on misleading misinformation, and on whether the costs of content moderation or algorithmic depriorisation mightn’t be higher than… Read More »Truthful Misinformation
In a recent paper I published with my colleagues Lavinia Marin (TU Delft) and Constantin Vica (University of Bucharest), titled “Digital Slot Machines: Social Media Platforms as Attentional Scaffolds” we take a step back from AI and return to an older problem in digital ethics, that despite its urgency, is often overlooked: the impact of… Read More »Social Media Platforms as Digital Slot Machines
This essay was the winner of the Graduate category of the 10th National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2024. Written by Jakob Lohmar. Many people believe that we sometimes ought to produce one larger benefit rather than any number of smaller benefits. For example, many believe that in a choice between saving a human… Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: The Moral Importance of Low Welfare Species
Written by Joseph Moore Last week, 4-8 March 2024, Professor Thomas Hurka, the Chancellor Henry N. R. Jackman Distinguished Professor of Philosophical Studies at the University of Toronto, delivered the 2023 Annual Uehiro Lectures in Practical Ethics, entitled ‘Knowledge and Achievement: Their Value, Nature, and Public Policy Role’. The lecture series was rescheduled from the… Read More »Event Summary: Thomas Hurka’s 2023 Uehiro Lectures
