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?
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
This article received an Honourable Mention in the undergraduate category of the 10th National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics. Written by David Logan. Benign Carnivorism (BC) is a practice where a farmer (i) creates animals with pleasurable lives worth living, (ii) painlessly kills them after a significant proportion of their natural lifespan, and (iii)… Read More »National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: When Eating Meat is OK: A Defence of Benign Carnivorism
This article received an honourable mention in the graduate category of the 2024 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics. Written by Beatrice Marchegiani. Introduction Recent advancements in Large Language Models have enabled AI systems to engage in conversations with users that are virtually indistinguishable from human interactions. The proliferation of advanced Conversational AIs (CAIs)1… Read More »National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Undisclosed Conversational AIs: A Threat to Users’ Autonomy
The 10th Annual National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics Final Presentation and Reception HT24 Week 9, Tuesday 12th March, 5:30pm – 7:45pm. We are pleased to announce the four finalists of the 10th National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics and to invite you to attend the final where they will present their entries.… Read More »Announcement of the Finalists of the 10th Annual National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics
Dominic Wilkinson, University of Oxford. In 2020, in a medical facility in one of the southern states of the US, a patient wandered into an unsecured nursery for extremely premature children. Unfortunately, the patient managed to accidentally disconnect multiple babies from their life support. Worried that they would get in trouble, they fled the scene.… Read More »Why a US State Court Ruling on the Rights of Children Before Birth is Unjust
What could be better to relaunch our new blog than a picture of my favourite socks? “Socks!?’, I hear you cry. But these are no ordinary socks. They are Soc. Soc. Socks, presented to me after not so long ago I was invited to participate in a debate at the Socratic Society in Oxford on… Read More »Objective Morality
Written by Dominic Wilkinson, Consultant Neonatologist and Professor of Ethics, University of Oxford
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Imagine that you are on the waiting list for a non-urgent operation. You were seen in the clinic some months ago, but still don’t have a date for the procedure. It is extremely frustrating, but it seems that you will just have to wait.
However, the hospital surgical team has just got in contact via a chatbot. The chatbot asks some screening questions about whether your symptoms have worsened since you were last seen, and whether they are stopping you from sleeping, working, or doing your everyday activities.
Your symptoms are much the same, but part of you wonders if you should answer yes. After all, perhaps that will get you bumped up the list, or at least able to speak to someone. And anyway, it’s not as if this is a real person.Read More »Cross Post: What’s wrong with lying to a chatbot?
