Tag Archives: ethics

The White House issued draft rules today that would require federal agencies to evaluate and constantly monitor algorithms used in health care, law enforcement, and housing for potential discrimination or other harmful effects on human rights. Once in effect, the rules could force changes in US government activity dependent on …

This article was syndicated from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which has covered human-made threats to humanity since 1945. The main artery in Montreal’s Little Italy is lined with cafés, wine bars, and pastry shops that spill into tree-lined, residential side streets. Generations of farmers, butchers, bakers, and fishmongers sell …

Consider the octopus. Smart and sophisticated, it has a brain larger than that of any other invertebrate. With 500 million or so neurons, its nervous system is more typical of animals with a backbone. In lab experiments, the octopus can solve mazes, open jars, and complete tricky tasks to get …

The tan macaque with the hairless pink face could do little more than sit and shiver as her brain began to swell. The California National Primate Center staff observing her via livestream knew the signs. Whatever had been done had left her with a “severe neurological defect,” and it was …

Six months ago this week, many prominent AI researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on development of AI systems more capable than OpenAI’s latest GPT-4 language generator. It argued that AI is advancing so quickly and unpredictably that it could eliminate countless jobs, …

While recently reading about leg-lengthening surgery, I couldn’t help but sense a touch of absurdity in the whole enterprise. Although I’m no taller than average—I’m 5'9", thank you very much—dispensing sincere sympathy for the men featured in the article didn’t come naturally. Even when it did, my sympathy was mixed …

Researchers and futurists have been talking for decades about the day when intelligent software agents will act as personal assistants, tutors, and advisers. Apple produced its famous Knowledge Navigator video in 1987. I seem to remember attending an MIT Media Lab event in the 1990s about software agents, where the …

For centuries, mentalists astounded crowds by seeming to plumb the depth of their souls—effortlessly unearthing audience members’ memories, desires, and thoughts. Now, there’s concern that neuroscientists might be doing the same by developing technologies capable of “decoding” our thoughts and laying bare the hidden contents of our mind. Though neural …

This article was copublished with The Markup, a nonprofit, investigative newsroom that challenges technology to serve the public good. Sign up for its newsletters here. Less than 10 days after the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022, Axon Enterprises CEO Rick Smith announced the company had …

it’s become a veritable meme subgenre at this point: a photo of Linda Hamilton as The Terminator’s Sarah Connor, glaring into the camera, steely eyed, with some variant of the caption “Sarah Connor seeing you become friends with ChatGPT.” Our society has interpreted the sudden, dizzying rise of this new …