NOW POSTING FROM BALTIMORE. A private, non-commercial blog begun in support of the federal Meaningful Use REC initiative, and Health IT and Heathcare improvement more broadly. Now focused on important broader STEM and societal/ethics topics. Formerly known as "The REC Blog."
NOTE: Comments are moderated, thanks to trolls and bots.
Given that my grad degree is in "Ethics and Policy Studies" (an interdisciplinary mashup of PolySci, Econ, applied Philosophy, and Jurisprudence, etc), I am innately attracted to this area. I joined. We shall see.
ABOUT US The International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE) is an academic community dedicated to the advancement of the field of information ethics. It offers a platform for an intercultural exchange of ideas and information regarding worldwide teaching and research in the field. ICIE provides an opportunity for community and for collaboration between colleagues practicing and teaching in the field. It provides news regarding ongoing activities by various organizations involved in the shared goals of information ethics… DIGITAL ETHICS Digital Ethics concerns itself with human and digital interactions, including decisions made by humans while interacting with the digital, as well as those decisions made by the digital interacting with humans. Digital Ethics includes, in order of appearance into the field, Computer Ethics, Cyberethics, and AIethics. It places a focus on ethical issues pertaining to such things as software reliability and honesty, artificial intelligence, computer crime, digital transparency and e-commerce. The origins of Digital Ethics are found in the adoption of ethical concerns into Computer Science, as influenced by Norbert Wiener's 1948 Cybernetics.
MEDIA ETHICS Media Ethics concerns itself with ethical practice in journalism and information dissemination, and includes issues as diverse as conflicts of interest, source transparency, fairness, fake news, and information accuracy. It aims to represent the best interests of the public through impartiality and balance, recognizing and addressing bias, and strives to respect individual privacy while demanding corporate and government transperency. Media Ethics makes explicit that journalism and media play a large part in shaping worldviews in society and as such demands a responsibility and personal commitment on the part of the journalist.
LIBRARY ETHICS Alongside ethical considerations for Computer Science, the field of Information Ethics was first encapsulated under the ethical practices of Libraries and Information Science in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Library Ethics focuses on issues of privacy, censorship, access to information, intellectual freedom and social responsibility. It addresses copyright, fair use, and best practices for collection development. While Library Ethics originates, in the professional sense, in 19th-century librarianship, it finds its origins in a tradition of information ethics that stretches back to ancient Greece.
INTERCULTURAL INFORMATION ETHICS Intercultural Information Ethics considers perspectives on information dissemination, ICTs and digital culture from the point of view of both globalization and localization. It provides an account of information culture as originating from all cultures, envisaged through comparative philosophies such as Buddhist and western-influenced information ethics traditions to African Ubuntu and Japanese Shinto ethics traditions in ICTs. In its applied sense, Intercultural Information Ethics strives to move beyond the presumed biases of western and greek-influenced ethical foundations for the field of Information Ethics to include globally diverse information ethics traditions. Philosophically, it endeavors to bridge a notable chasm in the field of information ethics, namely the foundational divide between information ecology and hermeneutics.
BIOINFORMATION ETHICS Bioinformation Ethics explores issues of information pertaining to technologies in the field of biology and medicine. Traditional concerns in Bioethics such as abortion, organ donation, euthanasia, and cloning form the basis of Bioinfomation Ethics, but are supplemented by questions regarding the influence of digital and information & communication technologies. Bioinformation Ethics addresses rights to biological identity, the use of DNA and fingerprints, the dissemination of biomedical information and equal rights to insurance and bank loans based on genetics.
BUSINESS INFORMATION ETHICS Business Information Ethics is the convergence of two separate fields of applied ethics, those being Information Ethics and Business Ethics. Business Information Ethics addresses informational considerations of the dissemination of goods and services, including information as a commodity, and provides ethical guidance in the analysis of the use of goods and services, including discourse on the impact they have on society. Business Information Ethics also addresses concerns for journal and information management, and includes the subfield of Organisational Information Ethics, as represented by the Centre for Business Information Ethics (CBIE).
“An important aspect of today's understanding of Ethics concerns issues of individual and social responsibility with regard to the impact of our choices in light of the influence of science and technology. While information and communication technologies open doors to new technological and scientific possibilities, they also act as a catalyst to an unprecedented encounter with otherness, ensuring through digital mediums the en masse collision of hitherto closed ethical systems and cultural worldviews."
Also trying to get back on pace with my reading. I'm buried. Just a couple of new ones (I have about a dozen piled up):
I've had a good recurrent go at the massive fraud of Theranos (John Carreyrou's topic in his newly released book). Thus far a compelling "page turner." They've probably already sold movie rights.
How the Enlightenment Ends Philosophically, intellectually—in every way—human society is unprepared for the rise of artificial intelligence.
Henry Kissinger, no less.
...If AI learns exponentially faster than humans, we must expect it to accelerate, also exponentially, the trial-and-error process by which human decisions are generally made: to make mistakes faster and of greater magnitude than humans do. It may be impossible to temper those mistakes, as researchers in AI often suggest, by including in a program caveats requiring “ethical” or “reasonable” outcomes. Entire academic disciplines have arisen out of humanity’s inability to agree upon how to define these terms. Should AI therefore become their arbiter?...
Yeah. One of my grad school profs observed one day that "it is often erroneously claimed that the Nazis 'had no ethics.' They most certainly did -- an aggressive ethos of murderous elimination."
UPDATE
A fashionable (overhyped?) area of AI of late is "NLP" (Natural Language Processing).Within that topical area is the subfield "NLU" (Natural Language Understanding). Notwithstanding its obvious extant (if circumscribed) utility -- e.g., "Siri" --, I have concerns. See my prior post "Assuming / Despite / If / Then / Therefore / Else..." Could AI do "argument analysis?"
It seems rather obvious to me that one foundational element of "Information Ethics" is that of the accuracy of information (in particular information comprising "arguments") -- i.e. rationality in pursuit of truths. If you don't have that, all you have is "noise."
I'd be rather skeptical of trying to sanguinely delegate such tasks to "NLU."
_____________
Should you be asked to define "ethics," a lot of synonyms and contextually-related terms and phrases may pop to mind (assuming you even care to venture a response).
I've given the topic a ton of ongoing thought since getting my Master's in Ethics & Policy Studies (EPS) in 1998 at the age of 52. EPS was an interdisciplinary curriculum comprising Western Philosophies, Jurisprudence (incl. ConLaw), ECON, PolySci, and—in my case,—Public Health (specifically, Drug Abuse Policy).
Just finished a couple of delightful, intriguing books by Dr. Susan Liautaud.
I will certainly give these well-written-and-argued books 5-star reviews on Amazon, notwithstanding a few picks.
e.g., I'm a bit of a pedant with respect to the provision of material and adequately precise definitions in complex technical arguments, e.g.,
Dr. Liautaud finally gets around to a sort of a definition of "ethics" near the end of her first book:
You and I began this narrative journey by defining ethical decision-making on the edge. Every year, I send my students off with a forward-looking definition of ethics that spotlights the messiness, imperfection, truth, and recovery. It is this:
Above all, ethics are about creating the story we want for our lives and all the lives we are privileged to touch, by applying principled decision-making, no matter how close we are to the edge. Ethics require an unflinching commitment to truth and humanity. Ethics are recording the story that we will be proud for others to uncover as our view of a life well lived—however the facts may unravel, however we may succeed or fail, whatever luck we may or may not experience, while learning from, but leaving unedited, the inevitable human moments when we don’t live up to this definition.
The Power of Ethics: How to Make Good Choices in a Complicated World (p. 218). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
apropos, from a 2018 post of mine:
I've alluded to this a couple of times:
I reached out to these folks, and gently pointed out that their "Ethical Framework" pdf download document had no definition of "ethics." The email reply I got blew me off --"we all know what we mean, we're not gonna get bogged down in abstract academic jargon."
Right. In Silicon Valley-speak, just"Don't Be Evil"while you"Fail Fast and Break Stuff"in your Agile Scrums.
Dudes, I'm not talkin' obtuse ivory tower "Dialectical Hermeneutics,"or hypothetical "gotcha" moral dilemma "Trolley Problems," etc, just a common-sense primer of sufficient detail. e.g., from a book I got onto viaScience Based Medicine:
Ethical Frameworks and Principles Ethical considerations of any problem or issue can be divided into two major categories: (a) nonconsequentialist and (b) consequentialist approaches. 1 Nonconsequentialism considers that the action (or even just the motivation behind an action) is the crucial ethical factor. In other words, the action itself is more important than the actual outcome (consequence) of the action. By contrast, consequentialism holds that outcomes (as opposed to actions) should be the crucial determinants of ethical decisions…
Principlism The inherent subjectivity of ethics presents a problem: even when reflexive and uncritical responses (such as the ‘gut reactions’ of tabloid readers) are excluded, along with religious outlooks, medical ethicists still do not all agree on which ethical principles are best.
It was in response to this reality that an approach to ethical analysis known as principlism was developed. Principlism attempts to factor in both nonconsequentialist and consequentialist approaches. The standard version is based on four core principles:
(1) Respect for autonomy (a nonconsequentialist principle—but one that utilitarianism also supports). (2) Nonmaleficence (‘first, do no harm’—a nonconsequentialist principle). (3) Beneficence (increase overall utility—a consequentialist principle; it is essentially utilitarianism). (4) Justice (fairly distribute benefits, risks and costs—a nonconsequentialist principle).
Principlists apply this approach to an ethical case by examining how each of the four principles (in turn) applies to the issues raised by the case. It is quite common for medical ethics committees to use this method to reach decisions. Principlism can be very useful as a structured ‘checklist’ method to address ethical problems and therefore finds favour amongst laypeople or non-ethically trained professionals, who predominate on ethics committees…
Ernst, Edzard.More Harm than Good?: The Moral Maze of Complementary and Alternative Medicine(Kindle Locations 83-208). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.
That entire chapter is excellent. One need not, however, even go to that much trouble. Any quick Google search will get you tons of relevant, succinct definitional information on the topic ofEthics.
Below, a good, accessible, inexpensive resource:
I still have all of my many grad school texts, but I keep this in my Kindle as a handy refresher.
It was emphasized to us in grad school early on that "Ethics" was not about some lookup cookbook of "right/wrong," but rather a frequently arduous process of rational moral deliberation comprising evidence (including accrued wisdoms), logic, and -- yes -- "values" fused in honest attempts to derive just decisions and policies.
Way more to come. For now, an hour with the author, in her own words.
UPDATE
I watched the entire hour of the above. Pretty good discussion of the issues and methods as Susan sets them forth in her books. This is probably not practical, but I'd have liked to have viewed a substantial bit less Zoom chat "talking heads" in favor of some deftly placed graphics overlays—even if mostly bullet list Powerpoint-type deck cards. I think it'd be helpful for those who've yet to read her books (which I unreservedly recommend your doing).
A RELATED SUSAN LIAUTAUD INITIATIVE
OK, I remain a tad clueless as to what is meant by "innovative ethics."
But, continue to drill down for contextual clues.
Our Ethos HUMANITY : We respect humanity. Effective ethics tethers us to our humanity as technology and science blur the boundaries between human and machine and global risks spiral to inhuman scale. INNOVATION : We are a laboratory and platform for ethics innovation. Effective ethics happens along with, or prior to, the science and technology. It is a partner in progress not an impediment to innovation or a clean-up act for its unwanted consequences. CREATIVITY: We seek ethical wisdom everywhere from the arts to astronomy. Effective ethics is creative and solution-oriented: a forward-looking catalyst for positive change and “first evers” not a backward-looking limitation. TRUTH : We seek and support truth. Effective ethics rigorously and relentlessly insists on verifiable truth and questions bias, subjectivity, and context. COMMITMENT : We are “all in.” Effective ethics requires commitment not compromise--even in the most challenging situations. REALITY: We do real world ethics. Effective ethics has concrete impact on real people in real situations. It is not an abstract or theoretical matter. TRANSPARENCY: We share all our learning (whether revealing success or failure). Effective ethics requires transparency and exchange of ideas. It is a public good for shared benefit not a private possession. CHALLENGE: We humbly tackle today’s most challenging ethics topics. Effective ethics requires collaboration and cross-pollination. We invite you to join us… and to challenge us.
SOME TOPICAL ERRATA BEARING ON "CRITICAL THINKING"
apropos of "The Power of Ethics."
Some things that bedevil our thinking, particularly as it goes to persuasion and influence:
There is no first-person singular present-tense active voice usage of the word "wrong." No one ever says "IAMwrong."
[props to Kathryn Schulz] Our aggregate default is that we're right about everything. To the extent that we continue to survive, that's an understandable assumption—as it pertains to minor, inconsequential issues, anyway, and it inexorably tilts us toward "confirmation bias."
Our education system mostly tells us there'sone"right answer" to every question—lurking amid a boatload of "wrong ones."
And, those who quickly alight on the "right answer" get reinforced and nurtured as they move through the system.
Being wrong is not a synonym for being "stupid" or ignorant.
Neither is "ignorant" a synonym for "stupid." But it's mostly epithetically spun that way
Humans "reason" to WIN the argument.
Should truth happen along the way, so much the better. (See"Why Do Humans Reason?"by Sperber & Mercier) Evolutionary adaptive utility,"The Pen is Mightier Than The Sword."
He/She with the best story WINS!
Trial Lawyering 101. Prior to writing and movable type, stories were the whole ballgame. Hence, our evolved affinity.
Once you decide that X is right or wrong / good or bad, you cannot unring that bell.
A staple look-before-you-leap admonishment of mine back when I was teaching "Critical Thinking."
If, when it's all said and done, your logic is impeccable, and your facts and evidence are bulletproof, yet you remain unpersuasive, what have you really accomplished?''
Another classroom staple of mine. That one was "exceeding my brief" as it were, but my Sups never noticed or cared. Anyway, my overall teach-to-the-text priority focus as a piddly Adjunct necessarily had to be"OK, here's how this stuff works. Take it or leave it."
BACK TO ZOE
Once you finish her book you will have a firm grip on just why.
WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT the individual genetic and developmental differences that impact the sensory portions of our nervous systems, it’s remarkable that we can agree on a shared reality at all. Linden, David.Unique(p. 253). Basic Books. Kindle Edition
A lot to think about and discuss here. "Truth?" Yeah.
SUSAN'S SECOND BOOK
The Six Forces Driving Ethics
Throughout this book, you will have seen references to six forces that I believe influence the ethics of every choice we make…
Banish the binary: Ethics are not a “yes or no” or “do it or don’t do it” choice. Some ethics failures are indeed straight-up unacceptable: racism, sexual misconduct, and disregarding science-based evidence about Covid-19. But most questions we face require navigating a gray zone…
Scattered power: Today, power is no longer concentrated only in the hands of a few; it’s more scattered than ever. Think of the power you have with your cell phone—to contribute to a political campaign or tutor a child across the country… or incite violence. The challenge today is to reconnect power to ethical responsibility… and to recognize that we each have a role…
Contagion: Ethics are contagious—for good or for ill. But we often focus so much on the unwanted behavior (fraud, social media data privacy, not wearing masks) that we ignore the factors that drove the spreading of the behavior—leaving them to fester and spur further trouble…
Pillars of ethics: Transparency and (un)informed consent are two long-standing pillars of ethical decision making. They depend on understanding what’s at stake in our decisions (short- and longer-term) but are crumbling in today’s complex, technological world…
Blurred boundaries: Blurred boundaries are everywhere today: human and machine, human and animal, and increasingly work and home. We are in uncharted, sometimes uncomfortable, territory as we think about the role of robots in society (receptionists, caring for the elderly, nannies, driverless cars), looking to animals for medical treatment (growing organs in pigs for human transplant), and beyond. We must keep humanity front and center and assure that humans take responsibility for the blur… and for reclarifying boundaries.
Compromised truth: Ethics hinge on truth. There is no such thing as post-truth or alternatively factual ethics. Today, truth is under threat in unprecedented ways from denial of science and other factual information to distrust of experts to algorithmic distortion of our news feeds and social media bubbles shielding us from diverse views. This compromised truth removes our choices from reality…
Liautaud, Susan. The Little Book of Big Ethical Questions (pp. 277-280). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
OK, LET'S BACK UP TO THE OUTSET OF SUSAN'S FIRST BOOK
Core considerations for contemplating pending ethically-sound decisions.
Question #1: What are my guiding principles? Who are you, as an individual or an organization? What do you stand for?
Our principles define our identity and tell the world what to expect from us, as well as how we expect others to behave. Principles apply to ethics choices in all aspects of our lives… The Power of Ethics (p. 24). Question #2: Do I have the information I need to make this decision? And what important information lies in the gap between the information you should know and the information you can know?
Entrepreneurs increasingly launch new products before we can fully assess the ways they might be used or misused, or before the creators fully comprehend the power and capability of the technologies behind them. We, as consumers, employees, and parents then use these new technologies before fully understanding their opportunities and risks. In between the two, regulators fail to keep pace. The complexity of technology has increased the complexity and unpredictability of information we must consider in order to make thoughtful ethical decisions before we launch, use, or regulate innovations. (p. 27) Question #3: Who or what stakeholders matter to my decision? Who or what could influence, or be affected by, your decision?
I define a stakeholder as any person, organization, object, or factor that could influence, or be affected by, a decision or situation. We often think stakeholders are only human beings, but stakeholders can also be inanimate objects if they have an impact on (or are impacted by) our choices. Even the digital assistant in your kitchen is a stakeholder if it gives you information (“It’s 35 degrees Fahrenheit outside”) that influences your decisions (I should put on a coat). Stakeholders can be a company, a policy, an algorithm, a chat bot, a test score, fake news, an edited gene, a government organization, and more. They can make positive or negative contributions to your decisions, and you can affect them positively or negatively. (p. 30)
Question #4: What are the potential consequences of my decision in the short, medium, and long term? Have you considered the immediate and future impact of your decision at the time of the decision?
The framework requires us to a look at the short-, medium-, and long-term consequences of our decisions at the time they are being made. We should then do regular framework check-ins, so we can monitor consequences over time and keep up with evolving developments… (p. 32)
Dr. Liautaud's four-facet overarching framework combined with the Six Forces criteria provide a rather comprehensive (yet broadly accessible) decision model for ethically sound small-d "democratic" decisionmaking.
The stakes have never been higher.
After re-reading the foregoing assertion several times, I've warmed to it (at first blush I'd found it perhaps a tad hyperbolic in places). Humanity is up to its aggregate eyeballs in existential alligators. No one's coming to our rescue.
First, the annual Health 2.0 Conference draws nigh. I will be there loaded for bear this year. The central topic of this post, below, is of particular relevance.
Next, I was reading this interesting book ("neurophilosophy?" Lordy),
when this one jumped to the head of the line. (Compelling -- finished it in short order; back to "Touching a Nerve" shortly):
Yet another in my lengthy and growing list of reading and reviewing these "futurist" writers, apropos of Health IT writ large.
While there are a breadth of timely and important issues set forth in Gerd's book worthy of citation and discussion here, let's start with "digital obesity."
Chapter 7 Digital Obesity: Our Latest Pandemic As we wallow and pig out on a glut of news,
updates, and algorithmically engineered information that may be
anything but, we entertain ourselves in a burgeoning tech-bubble
of questionable entertainment. Obesity is a global issue, and,
according to McKinsey, it’s costing an estimated US $ 450
billion per year in the US alone, both in terms of healthcare
costs and lost productivity. The Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention stated in 2015 that more than two-thirds of
Americans are overweight, and an estimated 35.7% are obese. I believe we are reaching a similar or
bigger challenge as we gorge on technology and bring on digital
obesity.
I define digital obesity as a mental and
technological condition in which data, information, media, and
general digital connectedness are being accumulated to such an
extent that they are certain to have a negative effect on
health, well-being, happiness, and life in general.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, and despite those
shocking health factoids, there is still little support globally
for stricter regulation of the food industry to curb the use of
addiction-building chemical additives, or to stop marketing
campaigns that promote overconsumption. In America’s
never-ending war on drugs, harmful foodstuffs and sugars are
never so much as hinted at. Just as organic foods now seem to be
largely the preserve of the well-off and wealthy, so too can we
expect anonymity and privacy to become expensive luxuries— out
of reach for most citizens.
Consumers are buying gadgets and apps that
will supposedly help them reduce food consumption and increase
fitness, such as the Fitbit, Jawbone, Loseit, and now Hapifork—
which alerts you by trembling if you eat too fast— very useful
indeed. It appears the idea is to buy (download) and consume
yet another product or service that will miraculously, and
without much effort, fix the original problem of
overconsumption. Cravability means prosperity The obvious bottom line is that the more
people eat, the better it is for those who produce and sell our
food— for example, growers, food processors, grocery stores,
supermarkets, fast-food joints, restaurants, bars, and hotels.
In addition, we may be shocked to find that, every year, every
consumer in developed countries unwittingly ingests an estimated
150 pounds of additives— mostly sugar, yeast, and antioxidants,
as well as truly nasty stuff such as MSG. These substances
are the lubricants of overconsumption. Not only do they make
food prettier and more durable, they also make it taste better—
as debatable as that is. Thus consumers are strung along by
cleverly engineering a “need-for-more” so that it becomes very
hard to find the exit from that kingdom of endless, happy
consumption.
If this sounds like Facebook or your
smartphone, you are getting my drift. The food industry actually
calls this cravability or crave-ability. In the world of
technology, marketers call it magic, stickiness,
indispensability, or more benignly, user engagement. Craving and addiction— tech’s business model Generating this kind of craving, or fueling our digital
addictions in such a seemingly benign way, is clearly a powerful
business model. It is easy to apply the cravability concept to
the leading social-local-mobile (SoLoMo) super-nodes such as
Google and Facebook, or to platforms such as WhatsApp. Many of us
literally crave connectivity as we conduct our daily lives, and
when we disconnect we feel incomplete.
Yet somehow, I wonder if it really could be in the interest of
big Internet firms that a large number of their users end up with
digital obesity issues? Is that really in the best interests of
the predominantly US-owned technology and Internet giants? At
the same time, we should not underestimate the strong temptation
to make consumers dependent on these marvelous digital foods— to
addict us to that serotonin-producing tsunami of likes, comments,
and friend updates...
'eh? Is "digital obesity" a real thing -- i.e., "clinically"? Or is this just a clicky-sticky metaphor?
Stay tuned. Keep checking back. Just getting started. A lot to discuss, including "Digital Ethics."
Chapter 10: Digital Ethics – In this chapter, I argue that, as technology permeates every aspect of human life and activity, digital ethics will evolve into a burning, un-ignorable issue for every individual and organization. At present we do not even have a common global language to discuss the issue, let alone agreement on accepted rights and responsibilities. Environmental sustainability is often brushed aside by the developing economies as a first world problem and is always sidetracked during economic recessions. In contrast, digital ethics will force its way to a permanent position at the front and center of our political and economic lives. It’s time to have the ethical conversation about digital technology— a potentially greater threat to continued human flourishing than nuclear proliferation. [ibid, Locations 109-114]
Day five. My Jaco remains lost. I'm starting to fear I will never see him again. A continuing kick to the gut. Difficult to get motivated to do anything this weekend.
__
Monday update: Some prior KHIT posts of relevance to Gerd Leonhard's book;
In the simplest categorical tabulation, "ethics" (arriving at the "should/should not") comes in three flavors: [1] Consequentialism (utilitarianism), [2] "Deontology" ("duty theory"), and [3] "Virtue Ethics." The latter comes fraught with a bit of question-begging circularity to many. to wit,
Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach which emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or that which emphasizes the consequences of actions (consequentialism). Suppose it is obvious that someone in need should be helped. A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequences of doing so will maximize well-being, a deontologist to the fact that, in doing so the agent will be acting in accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you would be done by” and a virtue ethicist to the fact that helping the person would be charitable or benevolent. [Stanford Encyclodedia of Philosophy]
Aristotle waxed eloquent on the subject of "virtue." One becomes "virtuous" via habituation -- by consistently performing "virtuous acts." Noble enough, in the unremarkable cases, where knowing a priori what counts as virtuous is an easy call. The petitio principii problem is a potential liability here ("begging the question"). "Charitable," "benelovent?" I'm down with those moral principles. I can readily think of others, though, who are not. A big part of the core purpose of moral deliberation is the rational determination of what counts as "virtuous." The "appeal to tradition" (which accounts for the bulk of "social/moral norms") does not summarily equate to "evidence" in support of an argument.
While a lot of ethics debates dwell (interminably?) on abstract (or the difficult, sometimes far-fetched "use case" scenario) "thought experiments" in pursuit of ostensibly rational moral guidance, as we've encountered in the 2005 post-Katrina "Playing God?" dustup at NOLA's Memorial Hospital, applied normative ethics in the bio-clinical space frequently require time-pressured dispositive decisions and action in exigent circumstances, lest people be injured or die.
What of Gerd's "Digital Ethics?"
Chapter 10 Digital Ethics
Technology has no ethics— but humanity depends on them. Let’s do some exponential math. If we continue on the current path, in just eight to 12 years— depending on when we start counting— overall technological progress is going to leap from today’s pivot point of four to 128. At the same time, the scope of our ethics will continue to limp along on a linear, step-wise, and human scale of improvement, from four to five or six if we’re lucky; it will improve just a little bit as we adapt to a new framework.
Even if Moore’s Law may eventually cease to apply as far as microchips are concerned, many of the fields of technology, from communications bandwidth to artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning, are still likely to grow at least exponentially and with combinatorial effects— the changes reinforcing one another.
Zoom forward another ten years, and we may indeed end up 95% automated, hyperconnected, virtualized, uber-efficient, and much less human than we could ever imagine today. A society that sleepwalks down the exponential growth-path of the Megashifts (see chapter 3), a society that does not pause to consider the consequences for human values, beliefs, and ethics, a society that is steered by technologists, venture capitalists, stock markets, and the military, is likely to enter a true machine age.
So what are ethics? Going beyond the simple answer, how one should live, the Greek word ethos means custom and habit. Today, we often use ethics as a synonym or as shorthand for morals, values, assumptions, purposes, and beliefs. The primary concern of ethics is to question whether something is right or not in a given circumstance. What feels right to you is governed by your ethics, and in many cases it’s hard to explain why something does not feel right. That is clearly one of the challenges of agreeing on even the most basic ethical rules for the exponential age we are about to enter... [Leonhard, op cit, Kindle Locations 2318-2333]
Leonhard gives much deliberation to the speculative relative merits of technological "precaution" vs "proaction." He goes on to call for establishment of a "GDEC."
Creating a Global Digital Ethics Council: How would we define ethics that are fit for the exponential age? I would like to address two main concerns: Firstly, to try and define what a globally agreeable set of ethics could be for an exponentially Digital Age; and secondly, to try and define what we would need to do to ensure that human well-being and ethical concerns actually remain on top of the agenda globally, and are not taken over by machine thinking. We need to define a set of bottom-line digital ethics— ethics that are fit for the Digital Age: open enough not to put the brakes on progress or hamper innovation, yet strong enough to protect our humanness. A compass, not a map, towards a future that will see increasingly powerful technologies first empower, then augment and then increasingly threaten humanity.
To this end, I propose that we create a Global Digital Ethics Council (GDEC) tasked with defining what the ground rules and most basic and universal values of such a dramatically different, fully digitized society should be... [ibid, Kindle Locations 2401-2409]
Very intriguing stuff, all of it. Gerd clearly comes down on the "humanist" side of things
If we don’t want to become technology ourselves; if we don’t want to be increasingly assimilated into the powerful vortex created by the Megashifts; if we want to remain “naturally human” in spite of the powerful lures of those magical technologies; if we want to safeguard what truly makes us happy and not just what makes us function, we must take action while we still have the wiggle room. That time is now.
We must start asking why, followed by who, and when, not just if and how. We must ask questions about purpose, not just about profits. We must increasingly question industry leaders and especially technologists and the firms that employ them. We must compel them all to take a more holistic view, to consider the good as well as the not-so-good implications of what they are proposing. We must also ask them to acknowledge and address those unintended consequences, and to include the externalities of whatever they are creating in their business plans and revenue models.
We must hold the creators and financiers of tomorrow— and of course ourselves, as users and consumers— responsible at every turn. We need to start denying customership to those companies that don’t care enough, and we must stop being the content for those platforms that are seeking to automate us. We must stop being silent contributors to machine thinking because everything else is less convenient.
If we don’t want to end up with what I call the Oppenheimer Regret— named after the famous physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose inventions made the atomic bomb a reality, and who subsequently regretted his actions and their consequences— we must commit to being on “team human,” to put humanity first and above all... [ibid, Kindle Locations 2719-2731]
"We must start asking why..."
Yeah. But, at Health2con next week, I'm sure the "why" is gonna mostly have to do with money, -- frenzied VC spending and market capture opportunities.
A highly recommended read. I know that he will get pushback on the "humanism" ethos, as some equally smart futurist thinkers regard the coming "Singularity" (which Gerd discusses) that eclipses biological humans as an inevitable next step in evolution (should we continue to survive). Cultural evolution, moreso than biological evolution, is firmly in the driver's seat these days. And, "first-world culture" is all about exponentially advancing technology, much if not most of it digital.
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Amazon is gumshoeing me, unsurprisingly, mining my purchase and browsing histories. Got this recommendation in my email today.
But, hold on a second. There's but one reader review, a 4-star.
...the cases in the book are entirely retrospective — there isn't any speculation about the sorts of hypotheticals that philosophical ethicists love to worry about (and which don't have to be as tedious as the infamous trolley problems). While she doesn't mention the quote I cited above, SJ does invoke the famous Rumsfeldian "folk epistemology" of "known knowns / known unknowns / unknown unknowns" when criticizing risk assessment; her excellent point is that "scientific" risk assessment is limited to known unknowns, and ignores what often is most troubling to people, the unknown unknowns. So it's ironic that her book does the same thing, or even stick to known knowns (though arguably matters dealing with values aren't really "knowns"): every problem she mentions is illustrated with a case that occurred in the past. One of the benefits of philosophical ethics, though, is that an imaginative author can often pluck problems from the realm of the unknown and bring them into the realm of the known unknown, at least. Here are some junior high school-level examples: suppose some mad genius or company really invents robot warriors, or an AI that could bring about the "singularity," surpassing human intelligence by orders of magnitude — what are the ethical choices they ought to consider? Suppose someone invents some new creature or microbe in her bathtub and thinks it would be fun to release it into the wild? How do we deal with the fact that many inventors are loners, and far from the reach of governance institutions? People are really trying to do such things, so these aren't idle questions. As SJ herself points out, experts often cop out on these questions with expressions like "But that seems unlikely for now": she notes that "silenced in this account is the what-if question" (@252). She's right, and yet I felt the book was doing something similar. Movies like Scarlett Johansson's "Her" and TV shows like "Person of Interest" actually do a better job of raising the ethical issues I was hoping to see more soberly considered here. And even some here-and-now examples, such as private drones, military drones, and driverless cars, don't get analyzed — perhaps because there hasn't yet been a lawsuit about them...
Lordy. Think I'll pass, notwithstanding the four stars net. There are only so many hours in the day, and only so many dollars in my bank account.
Maybe I'll do this one next (after I finish up with "Touching a Nerve").
From the Amazon blurb:
...Nicholas Carr cuts through Silicon Valley’s unsettlingly cheery vision of the technological future to ask a hard question: Have we been seduced by a lie? Gathering a decade’s worth of posts from his blog, Rough Type, as well as his seminal essays, Utopia Is Creepy offers an alternative history of the digital age, chronicling its roller-coaster crazes and crashes, its blind triumphs, and its unintended consequences.
Carr’s favorite targets are those zealots who believe so fervently in computers and data that they abandon common sense. Cheap digital tools do not make us all the next Fellini or Dylan. Social networks, diverting as they may be, are not vehicles for self-enlightenment. And “likes” and retweets are not going to elevate political discourse. When we expect technologies—designed for profit—to deliver a paradise of prosperity and convenience, we have forgotten ourselves. In response, Carr offers searching assessments of the future of work, the fate of reading, and the rise of artificial intelligence, challenging us to see our world anew...
