Brian Green

In this article, we focus on questions of agency in emerging technologies related to decision-making in medicine. We discuss three principles that were subsumed when bioethics embraced principlism: consent, confidentiality, and veracity. We argue that the advent of artificial intelligence and its employment within health care, impacts the physician-patient relationship in a way that its inclusion in other areas does not. In particular, we take up ethical dilemmas caused by AI related to trust, and illustrate how reflection on these subsumed principles helps to critique accurately policies related to the use of AI in health care and to navigate dilemmas associated with a loss of trust. We conclude by contrasting these principles with the proposed “five principles” system for AI, highlighting some areas of agreement, but also showing where consent, confidentiality, and veracity are necessary additions for ethically employing AI.

Because greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow, it is increasingly challenging to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2.0 degrees Celsius. As such, there is a growing debate on whether or not to deploy geoengineering to reduce warming. Geoengineering is controversial, and many arguments have been raised against it, including the “playing God” critique. When understood through the philosopher Moti Mizrahi’s reinterpretation, the playing God critique does not eliminate the possibility of using geoengineering, but rather informs how its governance can be improved. We use Mizrahi’s interpretation of the playing God critique to claim that the existing governance literature lacks sufficiently actionable proposals which duly incorporate three components of effective governance: control, knowledge, and benevolence. We then go on to suggest some actionable governance mechanisms aimed at supporting the benevolent use of geoengineering. We believe that a three legged approach to geoengineering governance can both respond to the playing God critique and encourage the development of a more robust, well rounded governance regime.

Because greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow, it is increasingly challenging to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2.0 degrees Celsius. As such, there is a growing debate on whether or not to deploy geoengineering to reduce warming. Geoengineering is controversial, and many arguments have been raised against it, including the “playing God” critique. When understood through the philosopher Moti Mizrahi’s reinterpretation, the playing God critique does not eliminate the possibility of using geoengineering, but rather informs how its governance can be improved. We use Mizrahi’s interpretation of the playing God critique to claim that the existing governance literature lacks sufficiently actionable proposals which duly incorporate three components of effective governance: control, knowledge, and benevolence. We then go on to suggest some actionable governance mechanisms aimed at supporting the benevolent use of geoengineering. We believe that a three legged approach to geoengineering governance can both respond to the playing God critique and encourage the development of a more robust, well rounded governance regime.

Since 2013, many organizations, governments, and coalitions have issued ethics guidelines aimed at achieving ethically sound artificial intelligence (AI). The literature evaluating these guidelines has so far focused more on what is in them (e.g., principles) than on who is expected to enact them (e.g., developers). We argue that ethical agency in AI Ethics guidelines has been under-scrutinized in the literature, and we seek here to fill that gap. This study relies on transitivity analysis to evaluate 87 operational ethics guidelines for the representation of moral agents and their agency. We identified normative key words, their linguistic function, and agency attribution in 6,935 statements. Our findings reveal 11 distinct agents, with deployers, developers, and AI systems being the most frequently invoked. However, the ethical agency attributed to developers and deployers was overwhelmingly implied, while the tasks assigned to them were more often normative than descriptive. That the agency of the two most powerful agents in AI development is so often hidden in ethics guidelines reveals that the challenges associated with implementing AI ethics guidelines does not stem merely from the “principles to practice” problem, but from a more deeply rooted issue regarding how guideline authors conceive of ethical agency. We evaluate the findings through the dual lenses of agent backgrounding and agent suppression and conclude with advice for authors of ethics guidelines.

The field of AI ethics has gained much attention in recent years, not only as technology has failed in crucial ways, such as spreading misinformation, biasing data evaluations, and even killing people in autonomous vehicle accidents, but also as it has succeeded almost too well, gathering precious data, making huge piles of money, and stealing our attention from our loved ones in order to look at screens. The technology industry has proliferated principles and begun to practice them, while the Roman Catholic Church has wondered what to make of this contemporary technological situation. Several organizations within the Catholic Church have been investigating the ethics of AI from a much deeper philosophical and theological level than that of mere principles and their operationalization (not to malign the clear importance of such practical work). When faced with technologies that can turn society upside-down, corporations don’t do philosophy, they do damage control and cost-benefit analysis, while individual people, and particularly religious individuals and religious and educational organizations, should think about these subjects philosophically and theologically. This paper will compare these different approaches, both in terms of what is being done and what should be done.

Artificial intelligence developers, machine learning engineers, and data scientists occupy a contradictory role in the modern marketplace. While they are central to the business and science of AI, they are marginalized as moral agents. Consequently, the marketplace has cultivated environments in which developers can be unthinking in their own roles and responsibilities, while at the same time tasking them with creating “thinking machines.” The central aim of this article is to show that this state of affairs is morally unjustifiable. To accomplish this, we draw from Arthur Isak Applbaum’s work on adversary roles and Alasdair MacIntyre’s framework for professional moral agency to establish the context dependencies for a “good” AI developer. We then draw from available studies that have engaged developers in questions about their moral agency and place them in conversation with Dennis Thompson and Helen Nissenbaum about the excuses associated with “the problem of many hands,” a concept that has beguiled accountability in the AI community for decades. We then return to MacIntyre’s framework to provide evidence from the same set of studies that AI developers do understand themselves as being responsible for more than just the role, yet they lack a robust community to whom they can submit their choices for ethical scrutiny and work environments that are often non-conducive to their moral actualization. We conclude with specific recommendations for bringing developers’ moral agency more fully into the discourse about AI ethics.

Recently many methods for reducing the risk of human extinction have been suggested, including building refuges underground and in space. Here we will discuss the perspective of using military nuclear submarines or their derivatives to ensure the survival of a small portion of humanity who will be able to rebuild human civilization after a large catastrophe. We will show that it is a very cost-effective way to build refuges, and viable solutions exist for various budgets and timeframes. Nuclear submarines are surface independent, and could provide energy, oxygen, fresh water and perhaps even food for their inhabitants for years. They are able to withstand close nuclear explosions and radiation. They are able to maintain isolation from biological attacks and most known weapons. They already exist and need only small adaptation to be used as refuges. But building refuges is only “Plan B” of existential risk preparation; it is better to eliminate such risks than try to survive them.

What does it mean to consider the world of AI through a Christian lens? Rapid developments in AI continue to reshape society, raising new ethical questions and challenging our understanding of the human person. Encountering Artificial Intelligence draws on Pope Francis’ discussion of a culture of encounter and broader themes in Catholic social thought in order to examine how current AI applications affect human relationships in various social spheres and offers concrete recommendations for better implementation. The document also explores questions regarding personhood, consciousness, and the kinds of relationships humans might have with even the most advanced AI. Through these discussions, this book investigates the theoretical and practical challenges to interpersonal encounter raised by the age of AI. (AI Research Group for the Centre for Digital Culture of the Dicastery of Culture and Education of the Holy See)

Why do representatives of different religious traditions find the transhumanist vision of the future not only theologically compatible but even inspiring? Transhumanism is a global movement seeking radical human enhancement. The trans in transhumanism marks the transition from the present stage in human evolution into the future, namely, post-human existence. Containing chapters written by adherents to a variety of religious traditions, _Religious Transhumanism and Its Critics_ provides first-hand testimony to the value of the transhumanist vision perceived by the religious mind. In addition, the contributors critique both secular and religious transhumanism in light of realistic science and commitment to social justice.

Purpose Islands have long been discussed as refuges from global catastrophes; this paper will evaluate them systematically, discussing both the positives and negatives of islands as refuges. There are examples of isolated human communities surviving for thousands of years on places like Easter Island. Islands could provide protection against many low-level risks, notably including bio-risks. However, they are vulnerable to tsunamis, bird-transmitted diseases, and other risks. This article explores how to use the advantages of islands for survival during global catastrophes. Methodology: Preliminary horizon scanning based on the application of the research principles established in the previous global catastrophic literature to the existing geographic data. Findings The large number of islands on Earth, and their diverse conditions, increase the chance that one of them will provide protection from a catastrophe. Additionally, this protection could be increased if an island were used as a base for a nuclear submarine refuge combined with underground bunkers, and/or extremely long-term data storage. The requirements for survival on islands, their vulnerabilities, and ways to mitigate and adapt to risks are explored. Several existing islands, suitable for the survival of different types of risk, timing, and budgets, are examined. Islands suitable for different types of refuges and other island-like options that could also provide protection are also discussed. Originality/value The possible use of islands as refuges from social collapse and existential risks has not been previously examined systematically. This article contributes to the expanding research on survival scenarios.

Artificial Intelligence technology presents a multitude of ethical concerns, many of which are being actively considered by organizations ranging from small groups in civil society to large corporations and governments. However, it also presents ethical concerns which are not being actively considered. This paper presents a broad overview of twelve topics in ethics in AI, including function, transparency, evil use, good use, bias, unemployment, socio-economic inequality, moral automation and human de-skilling, robot consciousness and rights, dependency, social-psychological effects, and spiritual effects. Each of these topics will be given a brief discussion, though each deserves much deeper consideration.

Pandemics have been suggested as global risks many times, but it has been shown that the probability of human extinction due to one pandemic is small, as it will not be able to affect and kill all people, but likely only half, even in the worst cases. Assuming that the probability of the worst pandemic to kill a person is 0.5, and assuming linear interaction between different pandemics, 30 strong pandemics running simultaneously will kill everyone. Such situations cannot happen naturally, but because biotechnology is developing analogously to Moore’s law, it may become possible in the near future (10-50 years from now), because of biohackers, CRISPR, bioprinters, AI-assisted DNA-programing, and weapons of “knowledge-enabled mass destruction” published on the Internet. It could also happened in case of large-scale biological war, or if a rogue country released its entire biological arsenal simultaneously. We also will address other scenarios and risk increasing factors as well as mitigation and adaptation strategies.