Tag: moral machines

Robot and human facing each other. silhouetted against lit background

Please and Thank You: Do we Have Moral Obligations Towards Emotionally Intelligent Machines?

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff 3 Comments

By Sonia Sethi

Do you say “thank you” to Alexa (or your preferred AI assistant)?

A rapid polling among my social media revealed that out of 76 participants, 51 percent thank their artificial intelligence (AI) assistant some or every time. When asked why/why not people express thanks, a myriad of interesting—albeit, entertaining—responses were received. There were common themes: saying thanks because it’s polite or it’s a habit, not saying thanks because “it’s just a database and not a human,” and the ever-present paranoia of a robot apocalypse.

But do you owe Alexa your politeness? Do you owe any moral consideration whatsoever? Read More

Reality star Kim Kardashian at the CFDA Awards at the Brooklyn Museum on June 4, 2018.

Can Kim Kardashian Help Bioethics? Celebrity Data Breaches and Software for Moral Reflection

Mark Dennis Robinson Leave a comment

In 2013, Kim Kardashian entered Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

During her hospitalization, unauthorized hospital personnel accessed Kardashian’s medical record more than fourteen times. Secret “leaks” of celebrities’ medical information had, unfortunately, become de rigueur. Similar problems befell Prince, Farah Fawcett, and perhaps most notably, Michael Jackson, whose death stoked a swelling media frenzy around his health. While these breaches may seem minor, patient privacy is ethically important, even for the likes of the Kardashians.

Since 2013, however, a strange thing has happened.

Across hospitals both in the U.S. and beyond, snooping staff now encounter something curious. Through software, staff must now “Break the Glass” (BTG) to access the records of patients that are outside their circle of care, and so physicians unassociated with Kim Kardashian’s care of must BTG to access her files.

As part of the BTG process, users are prompted to provide a reason why they want to access a file. Read More