From embryo editing to dreams of eternal life, Silicon Valley’s new faith in machines blurs the line between progress and eugenics, raising the question of what humanity is willing to sacrifice for perfection.
Tag: ethics
Surrogacy’s health risks raise ethical issues over whether the practice is exploitative and should be banned.
The porn industry and amateur and professional adult content plays a role in the Israeli war on Gaza. Some pornographic companies did not only provide support to Israel, but adult content also contributed to drawing a violative imagination about Israeli soldiers and their relationship with the battlefield and the Gazan victims. It is part of a long history linking pornography and war.
The initiative led by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to create a global identity system through iris scanning has landed in Brazil. But what about privacy, transparency and the ethical implications of such a vast biometric project?
The porn industry and amateur and professional adult content plays a role in the Israeli war on Gaza. Some pornographic companies did not only provide support to Israel, but adult content also contributed to drawing a violative imagination about Israeli soldiers and their relationship with the battlefield and the Gazan victims. It is part of a long history linking pornography and war.
More and more teachers are finding a successful side career on social media as influencers. But commenting on exam results, dancing with students and even sharing personal stories about pupils raises ethical and legal questions.
Social networks are full of false gurus who claim to be experts in mental health and well-being. Do we need new laws against these kinds of charlatans to restore credibility to professional psychology?
Francesco Profumo, a former Italian education minister and the current rector of the Open Institute of Technology, explains why artificial intelligence needs a voice like Father Paolo Benanti, the only theologian on the UN Committee on Artificial Intelligence.
To avoid succumbing to machines, we must understand the difference between risk and danger, argues noted Italian technology ethicist Paolo Benanti.
Putting the latest AI breakthroughs at the service of national security raises major practical and ethical questions for the Pentagon.
Follow a coffee enthusiast and professor of marketing who studies justice in capitalist systems through the aisles of all the java claiming to be doing the right thing. Not all so-called *ethical coffee merits the label.
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If We Were All Conscientious Objectors
Our Naples-based psychiatrist imagines a world where all professionals could deny care on the basis of religious objection.
Numerous cities have acquired dog-like robots for policing. Researchers say the lack of transparency and other practical and ethical questions are worrying.
A study shows that a rising tide of consumers are prioritizing their wallets over organic products, switching to more budget-friendly, non-organic options as the cost of living crisis continues.
With technological advances happening every day, the future of universities lies in the conversations we have about human interaction, technology and ethics.
France’s much discussed citizens’ convention on assisted dying has just delivered its conclusions, including some proposals the government deems too ambitious. But the freedom to choose one’s own death is the ultimate achievement of self-control, says French philosopher Gaspard Koenig.
Opening bee skulls. Electric shocks for cockroaches. Some researchers want to grant more invertebrates ethical consideration, questioning long-held assumptions on consciousness.
Instead of ending ICU treatment and allowing relatives to say goodbye peacefully, doctors often keep patients alive for too long. The pandemic has forced us to revisit eternal dilemmas and shown that Intensive Care Units are often unprepared to confront tough ethical questions.
News of the acquittal in Italy of a man who confessed to killing his 92-year-old disabled mother comes just as the country is discussing the reversal of a law that bans assisted suicide. For La Stampa, Luigi Mancone argues that legislators cannot leave assisted suicide in a grey zone.
Lockdowns can be justified on an ethical basis to achieve an important public health benefit, even though they restrict individual freedoms. Whether selective lockdowns are justified, though, depends on what they are intended to achieve.
Surrogacy is still considered quite controversial, especially in Italy where a story has made headlines after would-be parents renounced a baby born in Ukraine. The author says we must face the ethical (and other) questions rather than dismiss the practice as “uterus for rent.”
New companies have been launched around the world that employ women to pump breast milk on contract. Yet it could lead to women pumping for profit, and even sacrificing the nutrition of their own child.
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Dissecting The Ethics Of Eating Bugs
While bugs and insects have less of an environmental impact than other protein sources, the question remains of how to humanly harvest them.
Affluent countries have begun offering COVID-19 boosters to already fully vaccinated citizens. Meanwhile in some low-income countries, access to doses is virtually non-existent.
Technological progressions have always changed how we behave. But AI has much more far-reaching potential to change the very meaning of what it is to be a human.
For all its resources, the South American country still struggles with high inflation and extreme poverty. The solution must be both deep and long-term changes.
With his untruths, bad choice of friends and unwillingness to apologize, India’s prime minister is everything our parents taught us not to be.
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It’s Time To Stop Demonizing Big Data
Information gleaned from digital sources must be used in strict accordance with the law. But it’s too useful to simply vilify and disregard.
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The Eros And Ethics Of Sex Robots
Imagine if machines could do the job of strippers — or prostitutes. Where would it lead us?
PARIS — The 2017 edition of “Paris Plages,” the artificial beaches installed each summer along the banks of the river Seine, will be sans sable— sandless! Why? Because on Monday, the City of Paris announced that it will end its 14-year-old partnership with French-Swiss group LafargeHolcim. But the decision here matters less than what actually […]
Big Brother, if and when he arrives, will start out looking small. Take that mundane office badge or key card you use to pass security before entering your office. Rather than having to carry one around, and risk losing it, technological advances make it easy enough these days to get an RFID microchip implanted in […]
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump will face wide-ranging questions about his ethics and integrity from the moment he enters the White House in January. The president-elect says he’ll turn over his vast financial holdings to his kids. But many doubt a blind trust will insulate him completely, potentially exposing him to conflicts of interest or the appearance of such conflicts on a range of domestic and foreign issues as no president before. During the campaign, Trump branded his opponents with nicknames such as “Lyin Ted” and “Crooked Hillary.” Yet more than Ted Cruz or Hillary Clinton, he lied and shrewdly assumed […]
Skype founder Jaan Tallinn wants to program machines to keep them from becoming a threat to the human race. Yes, he believes, the threat is real.
Though the technology now exists to clone humans, and mercenaries are at the ready if allowed, most of the mainstream geneticist community points to other ways to get life-saving stem cells.
It is time to start asking harder questions about the world’s largest company, both how it runs its business and how it conditions our lives.
In order to maximize profits, the German automaker wants to eliminate paid 15-minute breaks for its workforce.
The American-invented dream of averting the finality of death by freezing one’s body is a world unto its own. Now it’s spreading to the UK, France and beyond.
MUNICH — Pharmaceutical companies know that doctors more frequently prescribe medicine produced by companies whose sales representatives visit them regularly. That very logic means that these same companies are also busy trying to “recruit” future doctors across Germany, according to a recent survey of German medical school deans and some 1,100 med students. The study, […]
Natural reproduction and the adaptability of genes will always outperform the machinations of multinationals like Monsanto, accused of wanting world domination with GMO crop production.
BEIJING — When he was 17, Zhao Bowen was a bored student who made an audacious decision. In a country where the cult of diplomas knows no boundaries, he quit school and decided not to take the exam that would have allowed him university entry. “All that fuss just to learn things that you can […]