Ethical Interventions Means Giving Consumers A Say

Susan Liautaud
Wired Magazine
Originally published June 12, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Increasingly, the people and companies with the technological or scientific ability to create new products or innovations are de facto making policy decisions that affect human safety and society. But these decisions are often based on the creator’s intent for the product, and they don't always take into account its potential risks and unforeseen uses. What if gene-editing is diverted for terrorist ends? What if human-pig chimeras mate? What if citizens prefer to see birds rather than flying cars when they look out a window? (Apparently, this is a real risk. Uber plans to offer flight-hailing apps by 2020.) What if Echo Look leads to mental health issues for teenagers? Who bears responsibility for the consequences?

Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier’s landmark 2014 article in Science, “The new frontier of genome engineering with CRISPR-Cas9,” called for a broader discussion among “scientists and society at large” about the technology's responsible use. Other leading scientists have joined the call for caution before the technique is intentionally used to alter the human germ line. The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine recently issued a report recommending that the ethical framework applied to gene therapy also be used when considering Crispr applications. In effect, the experts ask whether their scientific brilliance should legitimize them as decision-makers for all of us.

Crispr might prevent Huntington’s disease and cure cancer. But should errors occur, it’s hard to predict the outcome or prevent its benign use (by thoughtful and competent people) or misuse (by ill-intentioned actors).

Who should decide how Crispr should be used: Scientists? Regulators? Something in between, such as an academic institution, medical research establishment, or professional/industry association? The public? Which public, given the global impact of the decisions? Are ordinary citizens equipped to make such technologically complex ethical decisions? Who will inform the decision-makers about possible risks and benefits?

The article is here.

The first autonomous, entirely soft robot

By Leah Burrows
Harvard Gazette
Originally published August 24, 2016

Here are two excerpts:

Soft robotics could help revolutionize how humans interact with machines. But researchers have struggled to build entirely compliant robots. Electric power and control systems — such as batteries and circuit boards — are rigid, and until now soft-bodied robots have been either tethered to an off-board system or rigged with hard components.

(cut)

“One longstanding vision for the field of soft robotics has been to create robots that are entirely soft, but the struggle has always been in replacing rigid components like batteries and electronic controls with analogous soft systems and then putting it all together,” said Wood. “This research demonstrates that we can easily manufacture the key components of a simple, entirely soft robot, which lays the foundation for more complex designs.”

The article and video are here.

Computer creates high-tech Rembrandt counterfeit

Michael Franco
Gizmag
Originally posted April 6, 2016

In conversations about artificial intelligence and the time when machines will be able to functions as well as — or better than — human beings, it's often said that one thing computers will never be able to do is create art and music the way we do. Well, that argument just lost a bit of steam thanks to a project that's been carried out by Microsoft and ING. Working with the Technical University of Delft and two museums in the Netherlands, the project, called "Next Rembrandt," used algorithms and a 3D printer to create a brand-new Rembrandt painting that looks like it could easily have been delivered by Dutch Master's own hand about 350 years ago.

The article and video are here.

Corporates Manipulate and Succeed: Is this the way forward for start-ups?

By Robert Parmer
The Startup Magazine
Originally posted August 3, 2015

Here is an except:

Companies aren't always as independent, benevolent, or community-oriented as they seem. In fact, many popular companies are actually owned and operated by much larger (and often less popular) corporations.

I was once in the body care store “The Body Shop” and overheard a conversation between a customer and employee. They were talking about how they only use cruelty free products and only support companies that have that overall mindset, no excuses! I quickly picked up on a flaw in their logic.

While the Body Shop itself may represent a brand that is cruelty free, as a whole the company that backs them does not. That company is oddly enough Nestle which also owns the controversial brand L’oreal.

The article is here.

The Perspective Gap Is Killing Your Business. Here’s How to Fix It

Empathy is a basic quality that we all crave. So why is it so difficult to demonstrate ourselves?

By Justin Bariso
Inc.com
Originally published April 29, 2015

Getting designers to show consideration for those taking care of warranty problems proved difficult. Initially, the company attempted a process-based solution, designing 26 new KPIs (including a 'repairability' scorecard and incentive), along with variable compensation.

The result? In the end, the process had almost zero impact. So the company decided to try something different.

The next time around, design engineers were informed that in three years (once the car was launched on the market) they would move to the after sales network and take charge of the warranty budget. In essence, they would deal with any problems caused by their own design.

This inspired what I like to call 'self-empathy'--empathy for your future self. The designers were moved to invest extra effort now to promote easy repairability later, since they were the ones who would have to deal with negative consequences.

Although very different in concept, the goal of these two methods is the same: See things from another perspective.

The entire article is here.

Ethics in the age of acceleration

By Vivek Wadhwa
The Washington Post
Originally posted July 13, 2013

Here are some excerpts:

Advances in technology are changing who we are and what we are. Today’s bio-engineered devices and exoskeletons are just a start. Over time, they will become larger components of our bodies, playing more critical roles. As the Glenn case on human-machine mergers shows, modern-day business practices lack an understanding of changes in technology.

But this is the tip of the iceberg. Preeta Bansal says that law and ethics, too, lag behind advances in technology. Bansal is the former White House general counsel and senior policy Advisor and prior to that served as Solicitor General of the state of New York. For example, she asks, how will existing rules of liability be applied when a self-driving car, such as the autonomous vehicle Google is designing, hits a pedestrian? Will robotic devices with attributes of human sentience be subject to criminal laws – either as victims or perpetrators? To what extent will individuals have the right to control the collection, maintenance, dissemination, and accessibility of private information?

The entire story is here.

The Ethics of Innovation

By Chris MacDonald
The Business Ethics Blog
Originally published February 21, 2013


Innovation is a hot topic these days. It’s been the subject of studies and reports and news reports. In fact, I spent the entire day this past Monday at the Conference Board of Canada’s “Business Innovation Summit,” listening to business leaders and civil servants talk about how Canada is lagging on innovation, and how much is left to be done to promote and manage innovation. And certainly technological innovations like Google’s new glasses and 3D printing make for compelling headlines.

So sure, hot topic. But how is it connected to ethics? What is an ethics professor like me doing at an event dedicated to innovation?

If you understand the domain of ethics properly, the connection is clear. In point of fact, innovation is an ethical matter through and through, because ethics is fundamentally concerned with anything that can promote or hinder human wellbeing. So ethics is relevant to assessing the goals of innovation, to the process by which it is carried out, and to evaluating its outcomes.

Let’s start with goals. Innovation is generally a good thing, ethically, because it is aimed at allowing us to do new and desirable things. Most typically, that gets expressed in the painfully vague ambition to ‘raise productivity.’ Accelerating our rate of innovation is a worthy policy objective because we want to be more productive as a society, to increase our social ‘wealth’ in the broadest sense.

The entire blog post is here.

Intellectual property law and the psychology of creativity

By Jessica Bregant, JD, and Jennifer K. Robbennolt, JD, PhD, University of Illinois
The Monitor on Psychology - The Judicial Notebook
January 2013, Vol 44, No. 1
Print version: page 21

Creativity and the process of innovation are fertile grounds for psychological research, with applications spanning education, the arts, business and science. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court took up the topic of creativity in the context of patent law. The case, Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., revisited a long-observed legal prohibition on patenting the "laws of nature" and illustrates one of the many ways in which law, particularly intellectual property law, can be informed and shaped by psychological principles.

(cut)

The court, in Mayo, identified the competing incentives created by the availability of patents: The rights granted by patents are intended to provide an economic incentive for innovation but may also restrict the flow of information and cross-fertilization of ideas among inventors. To balance these interests, patents are generally issued only for inventions that are novel, not obvious and useful. The court also recognized the breadth of the fields to which patent law (and, more broadly, intellectual property law) applies. Different types of creative activities may involve different aspects of creativity.

Psychologists have much to contribute to an understanding of the cognitive processes by which people engage in creative activity, how those processes are similar and different across substantively different fields, what motivates creative activity, whether and how the rules of intellectual property can encourage or stifle innovation, and what else might be done to cultivate innovation.


The entire article is here.