Robert Sparrow

Social isolation and loneliness are growing concerns around the globe that put people at increased risk of disease and early death. One much‐touted approach to addressing them is deploying artificially intelligent agents to serve as companions for socially isolated and lonely people. Focusing on digital humans, we consider evidence and ethical arguments for and against this approach. We set forth and defend public health policies that respond to concerns about replacing humans, establishing inferior relationships, algorithmic bias, distributive justice, and data privacy.

As Robert Brandom has argued, in order to possess and exercise rational agency – to make judgments and to assess the judgments of others – one must be recognised as a rational agent by other rational agents who, in turn, one recognises as competent to assess one’s rational agency. Moreover, the process of assessing the judgments of other agents is one in which participants must accept moral responsibility for – must ‘stand behind’ – their claims. Unfortunately, machines are not yet – and are unlikely ever to be – moral agents. Consequently, they are unable to recognise us and/or evaluate our claims. The more other people interact with machines, the less they can serve to establish our own status as rational agents. Human interactions with AI systems therefore constitute a profound and, as yet, mostly unrecognised threat to human agency. If we do not want our relationship to machines to reduce us to robots, we will need to rethink both the future of human–computer interaction and our account of what it means to be human.

If parents are choosing their children’s genes, there is a chance that they will all try to have healthy, long-lived, handsome, and intelligent children. While many have advertised a world of “perfect babies” as a utopia, to some critics the loss of diversity involved would be a disaster. This chapter distinguishes between different sorts of diversity, different putative beneficiaries of the existence of diversity, and different reasons for believing diversity to be valuable. Sparrow argues that the threat posed to valuable kinds of diversity by gene editing is less than critics often fear. He suggests that, where gene editing _does_ pose a plausible threat to a valuable kind of diversity, it _might_ be reasonable to limit the use of gene editing as long as conserving or securing diversity does not require sacrificing the welfare of any individual too much.

In this response to Tom Murray’s paper, “The misguided quest for _the_ ethics of enhancement”, the author argues that Murray’s focus on the ethics of enhancement in sport serves him well in illustrating how our reasons to embrace or resist technological change as it impacts on athletes and players depends crucially on “why we play” and on the nature of the excellences made possible by the current rules of the game. However, in life the “rules” are unknown and the meaning of participation and the excellences it makes possible are widely disputed. A focus on the ethics of sport therefore serves us less well when it comes to the larger question of the attitude we should take towards “human enhancement”.

In this paper the author responds to criticism of the article “Ethics, Eugenics and Politics” by Yasutaka Iachinokawa, Michelle McGowan, Gareth Jones, and Julian Savulescu. The author argues that none of these critics succeed in denying the key claim that the politics of the debate about human enhancement is more problematic than is usually acknowledged and transcends the intentions of those participating in it. However Savulescu’s response to the paper clarifies a number of important issues regarding the nature and force of “procreative beneficence”. Savulescu now concedes that in many circumstances there is no such thing as “the best child” and that procreative beneficence provides only “some reason” for parents to choose genes that would be likely to increase the welfare of their children.

This chapter sketches a political critique of recent arguments for human enhancement. While on paper it may be possible to imagine a world in which the pursuit of genetic enhancement of human beings does not lead to a renewed interest in racial hygiene and widespread violations of human rights, the political assumptions one must make in order to hold that this is possible in the real world are excessively optimistic. In reality, the pursuit of human enhancement is all-too-likely to lead us back to something that looks very much like the old eugenics wherein the state is, as a matter of routine, licensing who is allowed to have children and what sort of children they are allowed to have, and thus infringing the reproductive liberty of parents. A more realistic politics should lead us to be much more cautious about defending the “rights” of parents to enhance their children.

In their article, Savulescu, Douglas, and Persson defend the ethical propriety of enhancing moral capacity and technologically manipulating human morality (i.e., moral technology; hereafter referred to as “MT”). This commentary offers critical analysis of the debate on how MT has affected human freedom and autonomy with reference to the concept of ‘the self.’ They suggest that, if one agreed that MT violates human freedom or autonomy to some extent, then it would be constructive to consider what has justified the use of MT. As in the setting of public health practice, restraints on individual autonomy and freedom might be accepted in the pursuit of social benefit. Thus, the ethical propriety of MT should be considered from the perspectives similar to those of public health practice.

Whose interests matter when making decisions about what sort of children to have? This question is at the heart of the ethics of reproductive decision-making. If we wish to have a sensible debate about human enhancement, then we must first become clear about the question of ‘enhancement for whom?’ This chapter surveys and evaluates the claims of the three leading candidates whose interests might be thought to matter when it comes to shaping future persons: the parents, the child, and ‘the world’. It also discusses two candidates strongly associated with eugenics—the ‘race’ and ‘the species’—as well as one candidate that is more plausible, although still properly controversial—the nation. The chapter argues that the parents, child, and ‘world’ all have legitimate interests in reproductive decisions and that these interests may conflict. For this reason, it suggests, enhancement is more ethically problematic than proponents typically admit.

Horizon scanning is intended to identify opportunities and threats associated with technology, regulatory, and social change. Here, we report the results of a new horizon scan based on inputs of an international group of 33 participants, focusing on future issues arising from the military use of artificial intelligence (AI) for augmenting human performance. The final list of 12 issues includes topics spanning from the political (educating and training individuals to accept and work with AI), to the regulatory (issues of consent to human-AI teaming and hybridization), to security (the hackability of neural devices that connect to AI), to philosophical (the nature and phenomenology of brain-to-brain interfaces). The early identification of such issues is relevant to researchers, policymakers, military practitioners, and the wider public.

Horizon scanning is intended to identify opportunities and threats associated with technology, regulatory, and social change. Here, we report the results of a new horizon scan based on inputs of an international group of 33 participants, focusing on future issues arising from the military use of artificial intelligence (AI) for augmenting human performance. The final list of 12 issues includes topics spanning from the political (educating and training individuals to accept and work with AI), to the regulatory (issues of consent to human-AI teaming and hybridization), to security (the hackability of neural devices that connect to AI), to philosophical (the nature and phenomenology of brain-to-brain interfaces). The early identification of such issues is relevant to researchers, policymakers, military practitioners, and the wider public.

The arrival of ChatGPT in 2022 led many pundits to exalt the pedagogical applications of Generative AI. In this paper, we argue that proposed uses of AI in education risk radically transforming the relationships between students, between teachers and students, and between scholars and the broader community, to the detriment of the university and the larger society. Once we understand the nature of the outputs of AI properly, it becomes clear that replacing human teachers with AI would be disastrous. However, the history of automation elsewhere suggests that AI is unlikely to be confined to the role of helping teachers for long: once AI can perform tasks currently performed by teachers, these tasks will quickly be handed over to machines. Unfortunately, the idea that AI could serve as a teacher neglects the essentially social nature of education. Students must learn “how” in order to learn “that”, via exposure to someone expert in the field demonstrating the relevant skills: teachers are fundamentally role models. Popular conceptions of the future of learning as a student-AI collaboration demand that students assess the work of AI systems before they have been taught the skills to do so. At a deeper level, education is social because knowledge is social. Insofar as universities do have an obligation to teach students how to use AI, they should do this in specialised study skills units rather than in the mainstream of the curriculum. Universities that want to avoid becoming—metaphorically and literally—empty institutions should invest in smaller class sizes and the best human teachers rather than so-called “intelligent” machines.

Horizon scanning is intended to identify opportunities and threats associated with technology, regulatory, and social change. Here, we report the results of a new horizon scan based on inputs of an international group of 33 participants, focusing on future issues arising from the military use of artificial intelligence (AI) for augmenting human performance. The final list of 12 issues includes topics spanning from the political (educating and training individuals to accept and work with AI), to the regulatory (issues of consent to human-AI teaming and hybridization), to security (the hackability of neural devices that connect to AI), to philosophical (the nature and phenomenology of brain-to-brain interfaces). The early identification of such issues is relevant to researchers, policymakers, military practitioners, and the wider public.

In this short chapter I reflect on my experience of participating in the “East-West Dialogue on Good Governance” that took place at City University of Hong Kong in mid-June 2023. I note the diversity of Confucian thought and the sophistication of Confucian philosophical anthropology. I draw attention to the challenge that anthropogenic global heating poses to political and economic orders premised on continual growth and to the justification of restrictions on the free movement of people. I suggest that the idea of good governance should extend to include the relationship between humans and the non-human world, that issues of gender-justice deserve more attention in the context of explorations of Confucian ideals of good governance than they received in our discussions, and that recent developments in artificial intelligence pose challenges to good governance by virtue of facilitating ubiquitous surveillance and making it possible for AI to take on some of the traditional roles of government. I note that future dialogues might benefit from including a more diverse range of perspectives from both “East” and “West”. I conclude by observing that perhaps the most valuable lesson I learned from participating in the East-West dialogue was how much I had left to learn.

The topic for this session is ritual, civilityCivility, and harmony for good governance. Arguably, one of the most distinctive features of Confucianism as a cultural, philosophical, and political tradition is that it takes ritual really seriously. And in the Confucian tradition, ritual is important, especially in relation to civility and harmonyHarmony. Moreover, ritual as we understand it is one of the key valuesValues that define and undergird the ideas and practicesPractice not only of the Chinese society but also of Indian and Japanese societies.

An influential group of authors writing in philosophy of mind defend what has become known as the “extended mind”. The extended mind thesis (EMT) states that cognition is not confined to the brain or the body but extends into the environment. A cognitive process can include objects such as notebooks, electronic devices, or beads on an abacus. Where the objects involved in cognitive processes meet certain criteria, they can be considered part of a person’s ‘extended mind’. In this paper we develop an analogous argument for an ‘extended body thesis’ (EBT). EBT claims that bodily processes are not confined within the skin but extend into the environment. A bodily process can include objects such as machines that support respiration, circulation, mobility, or manipulation of objects. Where the objects involved in bodily processes meet certain criteria, they can be considered parts of a person’s ‘extended body’. This is a counterintuitive conclusion about bodies, with difficult practical and ethical implications. We suggest that proponents of the extended mind thesis need to either explain why arguments for EMT are valid, but the analogous argument for EBT are invalid, or bite the bullet and admit that bodies as well as minds are extended. Those who choose the latter option owe us an account of how we should relate to each other as entities who are both mentally and physically “in the world” with all the radical possibilities for entanglements that implies.

The advent of ChatGPT, and the subsequent rapid improvement in the performance of what has become known as Generative AI, has led to many pundits declaring that AI will revolutionize education, as well as work, in the future. In this paper, we argue that enthusiasm for the use of AI in tertiary education is misplaced. A proper understanding of the nature of the outputs of AI suggests that it would be profoundly misguided to replace human teachers with AI, while the history of automation in other settings suggests that it is naïve to think that AI can be developed to assist human teachers without replacing them. The dream that AI could teach students effectively neglects the importance of ‘learning how’ in order to ‘learn that’, that teachers are also role models, and the social nature of education. To the extent that students need to learn how to use AI, they should do so in specialized study skills units. Rather than creating a market for dodgy educational AI by lowering their ambitions about what they can offer, universities should invest in smaller class sizes and teachers who are passionate about their disciplines. To flourish in the future, just as much as they do today, societies will need people who have learned to think and not—or not just—intelligent machines.

Most people who have considered the matter have concluded that machines cannot be moral agents. Responsibility for acting on the outputs of machines must always rest with a human being. A key problem for the ethical use of AI, then, is to ensure that it does not block the attribution of responsibility to humans or lead to individuals being unfairly held responsible for things over which they had no control. This is the “responsibility gap”. In this paper, we argue that the claim that machines cannot be held responsible for their actions has unacknowledged implications for the conditions under which the outputs of AI can serve as reasons for belief. Following Robert Brandom, we argue that, because the assertion of a claim is an action, moral agency is a necessary condition for the giving and evaluating of reasons in discourse. Thus, the same considerations that suggest that machines cannot be held responsible for their actions suggest that they cannot be held to account for the epistemic value — or lack of value — of their outputs. If there is a responsibility gap, there is also a “testimony gap.” An under-recognised problem with the use of AI, then, is to ensure that it does not block the attribution of testimony to human beings or lead to individuals being held responsible for claims that they have not asserted. More generally, the “assertions” of machines are only capable of serving as justifications for belief or action where one or more people accept responsibility for them.

Poultry production makes a substantial contribution to global food security, providing energy, protein, and essential micro-nutrients to humans. Modern intensive poultry farming systems are challenged by the evolution of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza strains. The presence of avian influenza in poultry flocks poses a significant risk of an avian origin influenza that is easily transmittable between human beings evolving. By reducing contact between humans and fowl, the use of automation in poultry production has the potential to improve biosecurity and thus reduce the risk of pandemic influenza. Many poultry facilities are already highly automated. The rapid rate of progress in robotics and AI suggests that “lights out”—fully automated—poultry production systems may soon be possible. In this paper we consider the ethical and policy issues that would be raised by lights-out poultry production. There is a strong animal and human welfare case for reducing the risk of pandemic influenza via increased use of automation. However, lights-out farming looks to be the ultimate endpoint of dynamics already present in industrial agriculture, which led to the dangers of zoonotic infection from animal agriculture in the first place. Whether nations should respond to that risk by doubling down on industrial models of animal production and embracing fully automated farms or by reconsidering the current model of animal agriculture altogether is, we suggest, both the most important, and the most difficult, question posed by the prospect of lights out farms.

A novel advantage of the use of machine learning (ML) systems in medicine is their potential to continue learning from new data after implementation in clinical practice. To date, considerations of the ethical questions raised by the design and use of adaptive machine learning systems in medicine have, for the most part, been confined to discussion of the so-called “update problem,” which concerns how regulators should approach systems whose performance and parameters continue to change even after they have received regulatory approval. In this paper, we draw attention to a prior ethical question: whether the continuous learning that will occur in such systems after their initial deployment should be classified, and regulated, as medical research? We argue that there is a strong prima facie case that the use of continuous learning in medical ML systems should be categorized, and regulated, as research and that individuals whose treatment involves such systems should be treated as research subjects.

It is estimated that one in three women experience intimate partner violence (IPV) across the course of their life. The popular uptake of “smart speakers” powered by sophisticated AI means that surveillance of the domestic environment is increasingly possible. Correspondingly, there are various proposals to use smart speakers to detect or report IPV. In this paper, we clarify what might be possible when it comes to combatting IPV using existing or near-term technology and also begin the project of evaluating this project both ethically and politically. We argue that the ethical landscape looks different depending on whether one is considering the decision to develop the technology or the decision to use it once it has been developed. If activists and governments wish to avoid the privatisation of responses to IPV, ubiquitous surveillance of domestic spaces, increasing the risk posed to members of minority communities by police responses to IPV, and the danger that more powerful smart speakers will be co-opted by men to control and abuse women, then they should resist the development of this technology rather than wait until these systems are developed. If it is judged that the moral urgency of IPV justifies exploring what might be possible by developing this technology, even in the face of these risks, then it will be imperative that victim-survivors from a range of demographics, as well as government and non-government stakeholders, are engaged in shaping this technology and the legislation and policies needed to regulate it.

When asked about humanity’s future relationship with computers, Marvin Minsky famously replied “If we’re lucky, they might decide to keep us as pets”. A number of eminent authorities continue to argue that there is a real danger that “super-intelligent” machines will enslave—perhaps even destroy—humanity. One might think that it would swiftly follow that we should abandon the pursuit of AI. Instead, most of those who purport to be concerned about the existential threat posed by AI default to worrying about what they call the “Friendly AI problem”. Roughly speaking this is the question of how we might ensure that the AI that will develop from the first AI that we create will remain sympathetic to humanity and continue to serve, or at least take account of, our interests. In this paper I draw on the “neo-republican” philosophy of Philip Pettit to argue that solving the Friendly AI problem would not change the fact that the advent of super-intelligent AI would be disastrous for humanity by virtue of rendering us the slaves of machines. A key insight of the republican tradition is that freedom requires equality of a certain sort, which is clearly lacking between pets and their owners. Benevolence is not enough. As long as AI has the power to interfere in humanity’s choices, and the capacity to do so without reference to our interests, then it will dominate us and thereby render us unfree. The pets of kind owners are still pets, which is not a status which humanity should embrace. If we really think that there is a risk that research on AI will lead to the emergence of a superintelligence, then we need to think again about the wisdom of researching AI at all.

In ‘in vitro eugenics’ (IVE), I outlined a theoretical use of a technology of artificial gametogenesis, wherein repeated iterations of the derivation of gametes from embryonic stem cells, followed by the fusion of gametes to create new embryos, from which new stem cells could be derived, would allow researchers to create multiple generations of human embryos in the laboratory and also to produce ‘enhanced’ human beings with desired traits. As a number of commentators observed, my purpose in publishing this paper was to provoke ethical discussion of a largely unremarked upon technological possibility and surrounding issues. Even if this was, as Murphy observes archly, to aim ‘low’, discussion of IVE is valuable for three reasons. First, it may render us better prepared should IVE become practical. I noted of my original discussion that it was speculative and several of the respondents suggest that IVE is even less likely to come about than I allowed there. Nevertheless, second, discussion of IVE is valuable for what it reveals about the ethics of new reproductive technologies (NRTs) more generally and, third, about the ethics of genetic human enhancement in particular. The responses to my paper demonstrate this nicely by (a) illustrating the selective way in which arguments about risk are mobilised in debates about NRTs and (b) highlighting the tension between any obligation of ‘procreative beneficence’ and a concern for genetic relatedness. Even if IVE should never be pursued, then, discussion of this possibility may help us better understand the ethics of other NRTs and means of genetic human enhancement.

A series of recent scientific results suggest that, in the not-too-distant future, it will be possible to create viable human gametes from human stem cells. This paper discusses the potential of this technology to make possible what I call ‘in vitro eugenics’: the deliberate breeding of human beings in vitro by fusing sperm and egg derived from different stem-cell lines to create an embryo and then deriving new gametes from stem cells derived from that embryo. Repeated iterations of this process would allow scientists to proceed through multiple human generations in the laboratory. In vitro eugenics might be used to study the heredity of genetic disorders and to produce cell lines of a desired character for medical applications. More controversially, it might also function as a powerful technology of ‘human enhancement’ by allowing researchers to use all the techniques of selective breeding to produce individuals with a desired genotype