Leaving Your Legacy Via Death Bots? Ethicist Shares Concerns; Medscape, August 21, 2024

Arthur L. Caplan, PhD, Medscape ; Leaving Your Legacy Via Death Bots? Ethicist Shares Concerns

"On the other hand, there are clearly many ethical issues about creating an artificial version of yourself. One obvious issue is how accurate this AI version of you will be if the death bot can create information that sounds like you, but really isn't what you would have said, despite the effort to glean it from recordings and past information about you. Is it all right if people wander from the truth in trying to interact with someone who's died? 

There are other ways to leave memories behind. You certainly can record messages so that you can control the content. Many people video themselves and so on. There are obviously people who would say that they have a diary or have written information they can leave behind. 

Is there a place in terms of accuracy for a kind of artificial version of ourselves to go on forever? Another interesting issue is who controls that. Can you add to it after your death? Can information be shared about you with third parties who don't sign up for the service? Maybe the police take an interest in how you died. You can imagine many scenarios where questions might come up about wanting to access these data that the artificial agent is providing. 

Some people might say that it's just not the way to grieve.Maybe the best way to grieve is to accept death and not try to interact with a constructed version of yourself once you've passed. That isn't really accepting death. It's a form, perhaps, of denial of death, and maybe that isn't going to be good for the mental health of survivors who really have not come to terms with the fact that someone has passed on."

Ethical, legal issues raised by ChatGPT training literature; Tech Explore, May 8, 2023

 Peter Grad , Tech Xplore; Ethical, legal issues raised by ChatGPT training literature

""Knowing what books a model has been trained on is critical to assess such sources of bias," they said.

"Our work here has shown that OpenAI models know about books in proportion to their popularity on the web."

Works detected in the Berkeley study include "Harry Potter," "1984," "Lord of the Rings," "Hunger Games," "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," "Fahrenheit 451," "A Game of Thrones" and "Dune."

While ChatGPT was found to be quite knowledgeable about works in the public domain, lesser known works such as Global Anglophone Literature—readings aimed beyond core English-speaking nations that include Africa, Asia and the Caribbean—were largely unknown. Also overlooked were works from the Black Book Interactive Project and Black Caucus Library Association award winners.

"We should be thinking about whose narrative experiences are encoded in these models, and how that influences other behaviors," Bamman, one of the Berkeley researchers, said in a recent Tweet. He added, "popular texts are probably not good barometers of model performance [given] the bias toward sci-fi/fantasy.""

Your selfies are helping AI learn. You did not consent to this.; The Washington Post, December 9, 2022

 Shira Ovide, The Washington Post; Your selfies are helping AI learn. You did not consent to this.

"My colleague Tatum Hunter spent time evaluating Lensa, an app that transforms a handful of selfies you provide into artistic portraits. And people have been using the new chatbot ChatGPT to generate silly poems or professional emails that seem like they were written by a human. These AI technologies could be profoundly helpful but they also come with a bunch of thorny ethical issues.

Tatum reported that Lensa’s portrait wizardly comes from the styles of artists whose work was included in a giant database for coaching image-generating computers. The artists didn’t give their permission to do this, and they aren’t being paid. In other words, your fun portraits are built on work ripped off from artists. ChatGPT learned to mimic humans by analyzing your recipes, social media posts, product reviews and other text from everyone on the internet...

Hany Farid, a computer science professor at the University of California at Berkeley, told me that individuals, government officials, many technology executives, journalists and educators like him are far more attuned than they were a few years ago to the potential positive and negative consequences of emerging technologies like AI. The hard part, he said, is knowing what to do to effectively limit the harms and maximize the benefits."

Ethical issues of facial recognition technology; TechRepublic, August 31, 2022

  Patrick Gray in Artificial Intelligence, TechRepublic; Ethical issues of facial recognition technology

"Facial recognition technology has entered the mass market, with our faces now able to unlock our phones and computers. While the ability to empower machines with the very human ability to identify a person with a quick look at their face is exciting, it’s not without significant ethical concerns.

Suppose your company is considering facial recognition technology. In that case, it’s essential to be aware of these concerns and ready to address them, which may even include abandoning facial recognition altogether.

When assessing these ethical concerns, consider how your customers, employees and the general public would react if they fully knew how you’re using the technology. If that thought is disconcerting, you may be veering into an ethical “danger zone.”"

Are Robots The Solution To Understaffed Nursing Homes?; NPR, 1A, May 24, 2022

NPR, 1A; Are Robots The Solution To Understaffed Nursing Homes?

"The notion of using robots in nursing homes also raises ethical issues data privacy and the importance of human-to-human contact."

Top prize in Bioethics Cartooning Contest considers substance and style in publishing; Morgridge Institute for Research, April 11, 2022

Mariel Mohns , Morgridge Institute for Research ; Top prize in Bioethics Cartooning Contest considers substance and style in publishing

"Five prizes were awarded in the fifth annual Morgridge Institute for Research Ethics Cartooning Competition, which invites participants to make a cartoon on any ethical issue related to biomedical research.

This year’s competition drew 61 entrants from 41 different departments and programs at UW-Madison and affiliated research institutions.

A panel of judges applied the following criteria to the competition: depiction and analysis of a research ethics issue, humor, and artistry. A popular vote by the public also contributed to the results. The following winners were selected:

• First Prize: Logan Keding, School of Medicine and Public Health, Endocrinology and Reproductive Physiology Program
• Second Prize: William Mayner, School of Medicine and Public Health, Neuroscience Training Program
• Third Prize: Natalie Schudrowitz, School of Medicine and Public Health
• Honorable Mentions: Sydney Hoel, School of Medicine and Public Health, Infectious Disease; Mikaela Seemann, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Biochemistry
• Logan Keding, a graduate student in the Ted Golos Laboratory at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center at UW-Madison, took the top prize.

Keding works with rhesus macaques as a non-human primate model, and hopes to better understand fetal growth restriction during pregnancy.

“I love illustrating and frequently create figures for Golos Lab publications,” Keding says. “I have no formal training, but I have always loved creating all types of art.”

His winning cartoon addresses the balance of substance and style that researchers must often consider when publishing their researching findings.

“If your research is great and sexy, you are more likely to successfully publish in a high impact journal,” he explains. “Creating relevant, engaging, visually pleasing work is not necessarily a bad thing—but it does create an accessory incentive, outside the quality of the work at hand, for scientists to consider when pursuing research or publication.”

As a first-year PhD candidate, Keding says his laboratory colleagues are invaluable in shaping his perspective on research and ethics.

“I often turn to more senior graduate students, colleagues, or mentors to discuss questions I have about research philosophy or bioethical issues,” he says. “I often get good, candid feedback this way.”

The Morgridge Ethics Cartooning Competition, developed by Morgridge Bioethics Scholar in Residence Pilar Ossorio, encourages scientists to shed light on timely or recurring issues that arise in scientific research.

“I love seeing when our artists get to talk to others about ethical issues and what their intentions were, and the experience of making their cartoons,” says Ossorio. “I think it’s another way for them to have an impact on the world and to bring their scientific knowledge to the broader public. It’s been really great.”

The top five winning cartoons are depicted below. Ossorio’s team thanks all the contest entrants for their creative works that addressed important ethical issues in biomedical research."

Top prizes in ethics cartooning contest address COVID-19 and more; Morgridge Institute for Research, May 6, 2021

Mariel Mohns, Morgridge Institute for Research; Top prizes in ethics cartooning contest address COVID-19 and more

"Five prizes were awarded in the fourth annual Morgridge Institute for Research Ethics Cartooning Contest, which invites participants to make a cartoon on any ethical issue related to biomedical research. The competition drew 56 entrants from 35 different departments and programs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and affiliated research institutions.

A panel of judges applied the following criteria to the competition: depiction and analysis of a research ethics issue, humor, and artistry. A popular vote by the public also contributed to the results. The following winners were selected:

• First Prize: Alyssa Wiener, School of Medicine and Public Health
• Second Prize: Vivian Hsiao and Madhuri Nishtala, School of Medicine and Public Health
• Third Prize: Anjalie Schlaeppi, Morgridge Institute for Research
• Honorable Mentions: Da-Inn Lee, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery; Noah Trapp, School of Medicine and Public Health

Alyssa Wiener, a first-year postdoctoral research fellow and general surgery resident at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, took the top prize.

“Bioethics comes up a lot in my day-to-day work,” says Wiener, who does human subjects research in her postdoc. “Being involved clinically also demands bioethical consideration, because what is ‘right’ for a patient, population, or system is often not straightforward.”

Wiener’s winning cartoon explores the ethical and existential challenge of communicating scientific findings to society at large in order to effect practical change.

“This challenge can sometimes escalate to the proportions of an ‘epic battle’ with tremendous collateral damage, as I think is the case with the COVID-19 pandemic response,” says Wiener. “Just as comics function on both an emotional and intellectual level, I hope we can communicate the scientific process and research findings in an impactful but accurate manner.”

The Morgridge Ethics Cartooning Competition, developed by Morgridge Bioethics Scholar in Residence Pilar Ossorio, encourages scientists to shed light on timely or recurring issues that arise in scientific research.

“Ethical issues are all around us,” says Ossorio. “An event like the competition encourages people to identify some of those issues, perhaps talk about them with friends and colleagues, and think about how to communicate about those issues with a broader community of people.”

The COVID-19 pandemic served as a major influence on the competition this year, with many submissions focused on COVID-related topics. Many researchers needed to reassess their day-to-day engagement with ethics issues as they worked remotely away from colleagues and the university research environment."

Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore; Harvard Business Review, December 10, 2019

Greg Satell, Harvard Business Review; Why “Move Fast and Break Things” Doesn’t Work Anymore

"Shift 2: From Rapid Iteration to Exploration. Over the past 30 years, we’ve had the luxury of working with technologies we understand extremely well. Every generation of microchips opened vast new possibilities, but worked exactly the same way as the last generation, creating minimal switching costs. The main challenge was to design applications.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that rapid iteration emerged as a key strategy. When you understand the fundamental technology that underlies a product or service, you can move quickly, trying out nearly endless permutations until you arrive at an optimized solution. That’s often far more effective than a more planned, deliberate approach.

Over the next decade or two, however, the challenge will be to advance technology that we don’t understand well at all. Quantum and neuromorphic computing are still in their nascent stages. Exponential improvements in genomics and materials science are redefining the boundaries of those fields. There are also ethical issues involved with artificial intelligence and genomics that will require us to tread carefully.

So in the future, we will need to put greater emphasis on exploration. We will need to spend time understanding these new technologies and how they relate to our businesses. Most of all, it’s imperative to start exploring early. By the time many of these technologies hit their stride, it may be too late to catch up."

For Vulnerable Populations, the Thorny Ethics of Genetic Data Collection; Undark, September 30, 2019

Adrian Pecotic, Undark; For Vulnerable Populations, the Thorny Ethics of Genetic Data Collection

To be equitable, genetics research needs more diverse samples. But collecting that data could present ethical issues.

"“When we do genetic studies, trying to understand the genetic basis of common and complex diseases, we’re getting a biased snapshot,” said Alicia Martin, a geneticist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute, a biomedical and genomics research center affiliated with Harvard and MIT.

Research to capture these snapshots, called genome-wide association studies, can only draw conclusions about the data that’s been collected. Without studies that look at each underrepresented population, genetic tests and therapies can’t be tailored to everyone. Still, projects intended as correctives, like All of Us and the International HapMap Project, face an ethical conundrum: Collecting that data could exploit the very people the programs intend to help."

For Vulnerable Populations, the Thorny Ethics of Genetic Data Collection; Undark, September 30, 2019

Adrian Pecotic, Undark; For Vulnerable Populations, the Thorny Ethics of Genetic Data Collection

"Research to capture these snapshots, called genome-wide association studies, can only draw conclusions about the data that’s been collected. Without studies that look at each underrepresented population, genetic tests and therapies can’t be tailored to everyone. Still, projects intended as correctives, like All of Us and the International HapMap Project, face an ethical conundrum: Collecting that data could exploit the very people the programs intend to help."

Tech predictions for 2019: It gets worse before it gets better; The Washington Post, December 27, 2018

Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post; Tech predictions for 2019: It gets worse before it gets better

"2018 is a year the tech industry wishes it could forget. But 2018’s problems aren’t going anywhere.

It was the year we came to grips with how little we can trust Facebook and how much we’re addicted to our screens. It was the year that online hate and misinformation became an unavoidable reality and Google, Microsoft and Amazon faced revolts from their own employees over ethical lapses. It was the year Apple became the first trillion-dollar company — and then lost a quarter of that when we yawned at its new iPhones.

Even YouTube’s “Rewind 2018” video is already the most-disliked video in history.

When my Post colleagues and I looked into a crystal ball to make this list of nine intentionally provocative headlines we might see in 2019, it was hard to see past the problems we’re bringing with us into the new year.

New technologies like 5G networks, alternative transportation and artificial intelligence promise to change our lives. But even these carry lots of caveats in the near term.

I’m still optimistic technology can make our world better. So here’s a glass half-full of hope for the new year: 2019 is tech’s chance to make it right."

Who Gets to Read the Research We Pay For?; Slate, August 21, 2018

Aaron Mak, Slate; Who Gets to Read the Research We Pay For?: Scientific journals’ lock on new studies has ignited tension for years. When it comes to access for people with rare diseases, it becomes an ethical issue too.

"This does not sit well with academics and other members of the research community, who often publicly complain about the company’s profit margins, its allegedly restrictive copyrights, and the fact that much of the research it sells access to is taxpayer-funded. This public outrage seems to have gotten under the skin of William Gunn, Elsevier’s director of scholarly communications. When one user argued that people in rare-disease families “shouldn’t have to jump through additional hoops to access information,” Gunn responded, “Yes, everyone should have rainbows, unicorns, & puppies delivered to their doorstep by volunteers. Y’all keep wishing for that, I’ll keep working on producing the best knowledge and distributing it as best we can.”

This is just one reckless tweet in the heat of a Twitter spat (though it’s worth bearing Gunn’s job title in mind), and, sure, he later apologized. But the issue of rare-disease families trying to avoid the high fees associated with accessing research on potential treatments goes beyond this Twitter spat: It’s a real problem that has not been adequately fixed by the company."

MIA Ethics Bowl Team Best in State; Coastal Breeze News, April 12, 2018

Barry Gwinn, Coastal Breeze News; MIA Ethics Bowl Team Best in State

"Ground zero for this change at MIA is the Ethics Bowl Team, a little known group who have been immersed in ethical issues for the past three years. On January 27, the current team won the Florida State Ethics Bowl championship and will get a shot at a national championship, beginning on April 20 at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The issues they discuss are provided by the National High School Ethics Bowl (NHSEB), headquartered on the campus of the University of North Carolina. The NHSEB oversees both regional and national competitions.

Mentoring and coaching the MIA team is math teacher, Chris Liebhart, who doubles as head baseball coach and assistant coach on three other varsity teams at the school...

For the national championships, the NHSEB had provided them with 16 case studies which were laid out like a law school hornbook, complete with references and case citations. The topics ranged from the Electoral College, Confederate monuments, male circumcision, and eminent domain, to dating on Tinder. The team would have to be prepared to discuss eight of these cases, but would not know in advance which ones they would draw." 

Social scientists set to decipher various shades of ethics; The Peninsula: Qatar's Daily Newspaper, 12/1/16

Irfan Bhukhari, The Peninsula: Qatar's Daily Newspaper; Social scientists set to decipher various shades of ethics:

"On the academic landscape of Qatar, an international ethics summit is set to appear which will cover dozens of topics having contemporary importance from corporate citizenship in global context to ethics revolving around gender, religion, business and conflict.

A three-day International Ethics Summit themed “Morality in the Global Era: Theory, Policy and Praxis” will start from December 4 at HBKU Students Centre at Education City.

The summit will be an international opportunity for scholars, academia and audiences representing various segments of society to explore and understand a number of issues such as: Ethical Leadership and Social Responsibility; Ethics in the Professions; Integrity in Business; Corporate Citizenship in a Global Context; Ethics and the Environment; Immigration and Moral Tragedy; Ethics and Technology in the Global Age; Ethics and Sports; Ethics and Gender among others according to university’s call-for-papers and leaflet pertaining to programme-details. The summit is being sposored by RasGas."

Patent Pending; The Crimson, 10/20/16

C. Ramsey Fahs, The Crimson; Patent Pending:

"One way to ensure that offices truly act in the public good, says Rooksby, is to promote broader public understanding of the tech transfer process.

“Intellectual property as a topic is misunderstood… but the issues are important,” says Rooksby. “They are important in isolation and in aggregate. These problems are too important and too impactful on the public to just let the lawyers figure them out.”"