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."

Supreme Court Justices: Ethics, recusal and public perception; WOUB Public Media, June 28, 2024

WOUB Public Media; Supreme Court Justices: Ethics, recusal and public perception

"The U.S. Supreme Court has hit an all-time low in public trust and confidence.

In this episode of “Next Witness…Please,” retired judges Gayle Williams-Byers and Tom Hodson explore the reasons behind this decline and the immense power wielded by Supreme Court justices.

They delve into why the public sees the court as more political than judicial, eroding faith in the rule of law.

The episode also addresses shady financial dealings, unreported gifts, and questionable public actions and statements by justices, including Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

These issues raise serious ethical concerns and undermine the court’s integrity, much to the consternation of many legal analysts and ethicists.

Tune in to “Next Witness…Please” as the judges discuss potential solutions to these ethical challenges and ways the Supreme Court can restore public trust."

Collaborative ethics: innovating collaboration between ethicists and life scientists; Nature, June 20, 2024

Jeantine E. Lunshof & 

Julia Rijssenbeek 

, Nature ; Collaborative ethics: innovating collaboration between ethicists and life scientists

"Is there a place for ethics in scientific research, not about science or after scientific breakthroughs? We are convinced that there is, and we describe here our model for collaboration between scientists and ethicists.

Timely collaboration with ethicists benefits science, as it can make an essential contribution to the research process. In our view, such critical discussions can improve the efficiency and robustness of outcomes, particularly in groundbreaking or disruptive research. The discussion of ethical implications during the research process can also prepare a team for a formal ethics review and criticism after publication.

The practice of collaborative ethics also advances the humanities, as direct involvement with the sciences allows long-held assumptions and arguments to be put to the test. As philosophers and ethicists, we argue that innovative life sciences research requires new methods in ethics, as disruptive concepts and research outcomes no longer fit traditional notions and norms. Those methods should not be developed at a distance from the proverbial philosopher’s armchair or in after-the-fact ethics analysis. We argue that, rather, we should join scientists and meet where science evolves in real-time: as Knoppers and Chadwick put it in the early days of genomic science, “Ethical thinking will inevitably continue to evolve as the science does”1."

Right or wrong?: How La Crosse health-care leaders use ethics to make decisions; NEWS 8000, December 29, 2021

 Jordan Fremstad, NEWS 8000; Right or wrong?: How La Crosse health-care leaders use ethics to make decisions

Gundersen Health System ethicist Tom Harter helps providers make best decisions for critical care

"As hospitals fill up and medical supplies are needed for more people, health-care leaders are forced to make even more tough decisions. How do you decide who’s health matters more?

Most of us strive to do what is right.

“We have to be cognizant of the needs of everybody in the hospital,” said Dr. Wayne Bottner, a hematologist at Gundersen Health System...

Bottner has to decide who receives the available resources. However, he doesn’t do it alone.

“We would never want a physician at the bedside to do that,” said Tom Harter, Gundersen’s bioethics and humanities director. “The psychological stress of that is extremely high.”

Health-care decisions are a wide, murky river that Harter helps bring into focus."

Scientists Create Early Embryos That Are Part Human, Part Monkey; NPR, April 15, 2021

Rob Stein, NPR ; Scientists Create Early Embryos That Are Part Human, Part Monkey

""This work is an important step that provides very compelling evidence that someday when we understand fully what the process is we could make them develop into a heart or a kidney or lungs," said Dr. Jeffrey Platt, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Michigan, who is doing related experiments but was not involved in the new research.

But this type of scientific work and the possibilities it opens up raises serious questions for some ethicists."

A study of ethicists finds they’re no more ethical than the rest of us (and no better at calling their mothers); Quartz, March 27, 2019

Olivia Goldhill, Quartz;

A study of ethicists finds they’re no more ethical than the rest of us (and no better at calling their mothers)

 

"For all their pontificating and complex moral theories, ethicists are just as disappointingly flawed as the rest of humanity. A study of 417 professors published last week in Philosophical Psychology found that, though the 151 ethics professors expressed stricter moral views, they were no better at behaving ethically."

Scientist Who Edited Babies’ Genes Is Likely to Face Charges in China; The New York Times, January 21, 2019

Austin Ramzy and Sui-Lee Wee, The New York Times; Scientist Who Edited Babies’ Genes Is Likely to Face Charges in China

"Dr. He’s announcement raised ethical concerns about the long-term effects of such genetic alterations, which if successful would be inherited by the child’s progeny, and whether other scientists would be emboldened to try their own gene-editing experiments.

Scientists inside and outside China criticized Dr. He’s work, which highlighted fears that the country has overlooked ethical issues in the pursuit of scientific achievement. The Chinese authorities placed Dr. He under investigation, during which time he has been kept under guard at a guesthouse at the Southern University of Science and Technology in the city of Shenzhen."

Mashable; What an AI ethics expert thinks of 'Black Mirror' Season 4; January 12, 2018

Angie Han, Mashable; What an AI ethics expert thinks of 'Black Mirror' Season 4

Spoilers in the linked Mashable article 

[Kip Currier: I recently finished watching not-too-distant-future-tech anthology series Black Mirror's six new Season 4 episodes over the course of a week. In terms of audacious creativity, corkscrew concept, and visual effects, "U.S.S. Callister" was the clear "ep-to-remember" of this season. Just as 2017 Emmy Award winner for Outstanding Television Movie, "San Junipero", was the stand-out of Black Mirror Season 3--and, for me, the most memorable (and uncharacteristically upbeat) Black Mirror episode to date. The 80's and 90's "earworm" music callbacks were a big part of San Junipero's charms too!]

"The best Black Mirror episodes don't just leave you wondering whether these futures could happen. They force you to consider what it would mean if they did.

For John C. Havens, these aren't just idle TV musings. He's the executive director of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, a program that aims to inspire the creation of IEEE Standards around the design and development of artificial intelligence.

In other words, he and his team are the ones trying to keep us from hurtling, unprepared and unaware, into a Black Mirror dystopia. He also happens to be a big Black Mirror fan, which is why we called him up to ask him all the questions that kept us up at night after we finished Season 4."

Gene Editing for ‘Designer Babies’? Highly Unlikely, Scientists Say; New York Times, August 4, 2017

Pam Belluck, New York Times; Gene Editing for ‘Designer Babies’? Highly Unlikely, Scientists Say

"In the future, will there be nations that allow fertility clinics to promise babies with genetically engineered perfect pitch or .400 batting averages? It’s not impossible. Even now, some clinics in the United States and elsewhere offer unproven stem cell therapies, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

But R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, who co-led the national committee on human embryo editing, said historically ethical overreach with reproductive technology has been limited.

Procedures like I.V.F. are arduous and expensive, and many people want children to closely resemble themselves and their partners. They are likely to tinker with genes only if other alternatives are impractical or impossible.

“You hear people talking about how this will make us treat children as commodities and make people more intolerant of people with disabilities and lead to eugenics and all that,” she said.

“While I appreciate the fear, I think we need to realize that with every technology we have had these fears, and they haven’t been realized.”"

The Psychiatric Question: Is It Fair to Analyze Donald Trump From Afar?; New York Times, 8/15/16

Benedict Carey, New York Times; The Psychiatric Question: Is It Fair to Analyze Donald Trump From Afar? :

"In the midst of a deeply divisive presidential campaign, more than 1,000 psychiatrists declared the Republican candidate unfit for the office, citing severe personality defects, including paranoia, a grandiose manner and a Godlike self-image. One doctor called him “a dangerous lunatic.”

The year was 1964, and after losing in a landslide, the candidate, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, sued the publisher of Fact magazine, which had published the survey, winning $75,000 in damages.

But doctors attacked the survey, too, for its unsupported clinical language and obvious partisanship. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association adopted what became known as the Goldwater Rule, declaring it unethical for any psychiatrist to diagnose a public figure’s condition “unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.”

Enter Donald J. Trump."

Ethicists: Clinton team violated ‘spirit’ of pledge; Politico, 8/11/16

Katy O'Donnell, Politico; Ethicists: Clinton team violated ‘spirit’ of pledge:

"Ethicists tended to agree that while there may be no evidence of a deliberate violation of Clinton’s pledge, the emails underscored the blurry lines between the globe-spanning charity and Clinton’s work as the nation’s top diplomat.

“The Clinton Foundation was taking money from anybody who would give it, and the biggest contributions were from people who had business before the State Department,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen.

“They didn’t follow the pledge. … I don’t think anyone in the foundation sought to deliberately violate the pledge, I just don’t think they cared about it,” he added."