^CategoryEthics

^{Type
post

Author
News

Date
September 13, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Religion, Social Media

Tagged
BlessU-2, Buddhism, David O'Hara, Facebook, Japan, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Bird, Robots, Virtual Ifta}

Will We Outsource Religion and Spirituality to AI ?

_{A philosopher makes the case. But he worries, are we really outsourcing caring about others?} _{News

September 13, 2020

Ethics, Religion, Social Media}

Last Sunday, we looked at the question raised by Professor David O’Hara of Augustana University (South Dakota) as to whether AI could someday have mystical experiences. Of course, a lot depends on whether AI can have any experiences at all. An agnostic himself, O’Hara has also asked us to consider how robot priests will “change human spirituality”: What matters is not whether we have invented true artificial intelligence, but whether we believe we have invented it. If we trust the machine, we might let it function as a mystic or a priest, even if it isn’t one. This raises the interesting question of what to do when someone makes a machine that is actually intended to play the role of…

^{Type
post

Author
News

Date
September 12, 2020

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Ethics

Tagged
Extraterrestrials (ET), Matt Williams, Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), Prime Directive, Return of the Archons (Star Trek), Science fiction, Square Kilometer Array, Star Trek, Symbiosis (Star Trek), Technosignatures, Uncyclopedia}

Are the Aliens We Never See Obeying Star Trek’s Prime Directive?

_{The Directive is, don’t interfere in the evolution of alien societies, even if you have good intentions} _{News

September 12, 2020

Arts & Culture, Ethics}

Using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope, astronomers recently scoured a part of the sky known to contain at least 10 million star systems for evidence of alien technology (“techno signatures”). And the result? “With this dataset, we found no technosignatures — no sign of intelligent life.” Professor Tingay said even though this was the broadest search yet, he was not shocked by the result. “As Douglas Adams noted in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, ‘space is big, really big’.” International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, “Australian telescope finds no signs of alien technology in 10 million star systems” at ScienceDaily The paper is open access. Various sources offer explanations for the absent aliens; the most popular is that…

^{Type
post

Author
Robert J. Marks

Date
September 7, 2020

Categorized
Education, Ethics

Tagged
__featured, Academic dishonesty, Cell phone, Cheating (on exams), Chegg, COVID-19, Virtual exams}

What’s To Be Done About Cheating with Chegg in the COVID era?

_{College-level solutions to specific problems can be texted, for a fee, to students writing exams} _{Robert J. Marks

September 7, 2020

Education, Ethics}

Academic dishonesty is a fancy term for cheating. With profit-motivated websites like Chegg.com, cheating is now easier than ever. When taking an exam, take a photo of a problem that stumps you and send it to Chegg. In literally minutes, you’ll be sent the answer over your cell phone. How do they do it? Often they employ smart nerds from poor countries who, by local standards, are paid big bucks for their efforts.Chegg, which charges $14.95 per month for its service, does not see itself as a site for cheaters but as a resource to help with homework. It advertises: With over 21 million homework solutions, you can also search our library to find similar homework problems & solutions. Browsing…

^{Type
post

Author
News

Date
August 18, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
___longform, Aggression, Empathy, Molly Crockett, Morality Pill, Noa Eren, Oxytocin, Patricia Churchland, Paul Crutchfield}

The “Morality Pill” Hormone Does Not Make People “Nicer”

_{After an initial buzz as a “love hormone” we should all be dosed with, oxytocin started to reveal a big down side} _{News

August 18, 2020

Ethics, Philosophy of Mind}

Recently, we looked at the revival of enthusiasm for a morality pill on the grounds that it could make people do what authorities say with respect to COVID-19. Many of these proposals focus on the neuropeptide oxytocin. As a current advocate explains, These substances interact directly with the psychological underpinnings of moral behavior; others that make you more rational could also help. Then, perhaps, the people who choose to go maskless or flout social distancing guidelines would better understand that everyone, including them, is better off when they contribute, and rationalize that the best thing to do is cooperate. Paul Crutchfield, The Conversation, “‘Morality pills’ may be the US’s best shot at ending the coronavirus pandemic, according to one ethicist”…

^{Type
post

Author
News

Date
August 16, 2020

Categorized
Ethics

Tagged
___longform, Agata Sagan, Daniel Munro, Julian Savulescu, Molly Crockett, Parker Crutchfield, Peter Singer, Richard Weikart}

COVID-19 Drives the Latest Proposal for a “Morality Pill”

_{Those who don't comply with government policy would be urged or forced to take it} _{News

August 16, 2020

Ethics}

University of Western Michigan philosophy professor Parker Crutchfield (pictured) recently suggested getting people to take a pill to promote more “pro-social” behavior in order to better fight off COVID-19. He argues that the United States is not equipped for a fight against the disease just by expecting everyone to work together, as in, say, World Wars I and II: It seems that the U.S. is not currently equipped to cooperatively lower the risk confronting us. Many are instead pinning their hopes on the rapid development and distribution of an enhancement to the immune system—a vaccine. But I believe society may be better off, both in the short term as well as the long, by boosting not the body’s ability to…

Incognito warrior in iron helmet and red cloak.

^{Type
post

Author
Michael Egnor

Date
August 3, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
___longform, __featured, Aristocracy, Aristotle, Darwinism, democracy, Edward Feser, government, Hannah Arendt, Karl Marx, Mob rule, Oligarchy, Plato, Republic (book), soul, Spirit, Timocracy, totalitarianism, Tyranny}

What would Plato Say About Antifa? Or Darwin?

_{A careful reading of Plato and Arendt goes a long way toward explaining the current scene—but it is unsettling reading} _{Michael Egnor

August 3, 2020

Ethics, Philosophy of Mind}

In college, I hated Plato. We read his Republic, and, as a patriot and an idealistic young (small “d”) democrat, I was appalled at the hegemony of the Guardians and at Plato’s disdain for democracy. It seemed to me that his Guardians were the archetypal totalitarians, and that it was a fundamental human right — enshrined in the Constitution — to be ruled only by consent of the governed. In my dotage, I am more sympathetic to Plato — it’s remarkable how much smarter the old philosopher has gotten in the past 40 years! I am still uncomfortable with Guardians, at least of the secular sort. But I think John Adams got it right when he observed that “our Constitution…

^{Type
post

Author
News

Date
July 31, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Ethics, Technocracy

Tagged
__featured, Bob Kelly, China, Gary Rieschel, George Gilder, Jay Richards, Trade, Trade war, United States, Wendy Liu}

Tech Investment Analysts Strategize How to Deal With China Today

_{China’s assertions of power in recent years have left many uncertain about the future of business relationships} _{News

July 31, 2020

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Ethics, Technocracy}

Recently, Jay Richards interviewed Dr. Bob Kelly, Managing Partner of Ignition Partners, focusing on the panel he moderated at COSM 2019,“The Crisis of Big Tech: The US and China.” They explored the technological competition between the U.S. and China and what it means for the future. The panelists were futurist George Gilder, Wendy Liu, China market strategy analyst at multinational investment bank UBS, and Gary Rieschel, a venture capitalist in China and the United States. From the interview: Jay Richards: So what was the core controversy if you had to summarize it neutrally? Bob Kelly: I guess I’d say the core controversy really is what stance do we as Americans, or in the technology arena, take towards China? And there’s…

Man In A Tesla Car. Behind The Wheel Concept.

^{Type
post

Author
Jonathan Bartlett

Date
July 15, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Ethics

Tagged
__featured, Autopilot, Elon Musk, Germany, self-driving cars}

German Court Rules: Tesla Autopilot Is False Advertising

_{In America, for reasons many people can’t quite comprehend, the regulatory agencies haven’t said much about the inflated claims} _{Jonathan Bartlett

July 15, 2020

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Ethics}

Here at Mind Matters News, we have long been critics of Elon Musk’s claims about his “self-driving” Teslas. Autopilot is a cool feature but marketing it as “full self-driving” is simply a lie, and a dangerous one at that. Musk (right) has been making false claims about Autopilot for almost half a decade now. He claimed in 2016 that all Teslas that left the factory were equipped with the hardware for Level 5 full self-driving. If you’re not aware of the levels of self-driving defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), Level 5 means that the car will take you wherever you want to go and you can sleep in the back. Level 4 means that, in some situations…

Shaved male nape and a lot of usb cables connected to it. Concept of dependence in thinking and information

^{Type
post

Author
News

Date
July 14, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
___longform, Bagging, Boosting, David Watson, Deep neural networks (DNNs), Lasso penalties, Wisdom of Crowds (book)}

AI Expert: Artificial Intelligences Are NOT Electronic People

_{AI makes mistakes no human makes, so some experts are trying to adapt human cognitive psychology to machines} _{News

July 14, 2020

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

David Watson of the Oxford Internet Institute and the Alan Turing Institute has published an interesting and quite readable paper in Minds and Machines on the way in which artificial intelligence experts often endow their creations — mistakenly — with human characteristics. In his open access paper, “The Rhetoric and Reality of Anthropomorphism in Artificial Intelligence,” he fills us in on some of the limitations of AI and proposes fixes based on human thinking. First, thinking that AI is like a human or about to become like a human is not new: The biomimetic approach to AI has always inspired the popular imagination. Writing about Rosenblatt’s perceptron, the New York Times declared in 1958 that “The Navy has revealed the…

iron chain and castle on the silk national flag of Hong Kong with beautiful folds, the concept of a ban on tourism, political repression, crime, violation of the rights and freedoms of citizens

^{Type
post

Author
Heather Zeiger

Date
July 9, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance, Data Privacy, Ethics, Global Technology, Surveillance, Technocracy

Tagged
___longform, __featured, Apple (company), China, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Facebook, Google, Great Firewall, Hong Kong, Hong Kong National Security Law, Instagram, Microsoft, Telegram, Tik Tok, Twitter, WhatsApp, Zoom}

Hong Kong: Tech Companies Face Serious Ethical Decisions

_{As Hong Kong is transformed into a police state, Western companies, faced with demands for snitching on users, are rethinking cozy relationships with China} _{Heather Zeiger

July 9, 2020

Business and Finance, Data Privacy, Ethics, Global Technology, Surveillance, Technocracy}

The semi-autonomous region of Hong Kong is no longer semi-autonomous, at least in practice. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), circumventing Hong Kong’s parliament and courts, passed the Hong Kong National Security Law on June 30 that effectively abolishes the “one country, two systems” regime outlined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration. The law was passed one day before the anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to China (July 1, 1997), in time to quash any pro-democracy candidates who would likely win in the September elections. Although the CCP justifies its moves from the Hong Kong Basic Law and claims that Hong Kong will maintain autonomy, in practice, it has already arrested dissidents and formed a secretive agency called the Office…

^{Type
post

Author
Gary Smith

Date
July 7, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance, Ethics

Tagged
__featured, Charles Ponzi, Ponzi scheme, stock market, Tan Lui, Tim Denning}

Stocks Are Not a Ponzi Scheme and Here’s Why Not

_{Gary Smith

July 7, 2020

Business and Finance, Ethics}

When you mail a letter to someone in another country, you can enclose an international reply coupon (IRC) that can be exchanged for that country’s postage stamps and used to mail a letter back to you. It is like enclosing a self-addressed stamped envelope except that you do not need to figure out how to buy foreign postage stamps. It is the polite thing to do but also the source of the most famous swindle in history. In 1920, a Massachusetts man named Charles Ponzi (right, in 1920) promised to pay investors 50 percent interest every 45 days. Compounded eight times a year, the effective annual rate of return was 2,463 percent! He said that his profits would come from…

Artificial Intelligence and Transhumanism - illustration

^{Type
post

Author
News

Date
July 7, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Technocracy

Tagged
__featured, 2084 (book), John Lennox, New Soviet Man, transhumanism}

John Lennox: Transhumanism Is Not a New Idea

_{News

July 7, 2020

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Technocracy}

In his just-published book, 2084, Oxford mathematician John Lennox points out that, in the 20th century, both the Communists and the Nazis had attempted transhumanist projects. For example, In the former Soviet Union, attempts were made to use science to create a “New Man.” In 1924, Leon Trotsky wrote: “Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.” What that program of eugenics involved is explained by historian Andrey Zubov as cited by…

^{Type
post

Author
Jed Macosko

Date
June 9, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics

Tagged
Artificial Ethics, Hal 9000, Trolley problem}

Artificial Ethics May Make Poor Choices

_{Whether or not AI can become powerful enough to follow its own rules is still an open question} _{Jed Macosko and Bradley A. Alaniz

June 9, 2020

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics}

We’ve all heard about computers that make poor ethical choices. One of the most memorable is HAL 9000 in the 1968 classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the film, HAL kills four humans and attempts to kill a fifth. The concurrently written book elaborates on HAL’s murderous plans, explaining that they were due to HAL’s inability to properly make the correct ethical choice: lie to the humans or kill them (and, thus, no longer be forced to lie to them). Poor HAL 9000! If only people had developed a new field of academic inquiry in time to help him (or should we say, “it”?) make better fictional ethical choices! Putting aside Hollywood’s imaginary universes, the real need for the new…

Free-range red angus cattle on pasture, Argentina.

^{Type
post

Author
Michael Egnor

Date
May 31, 2020

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Ethics, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
__featured, Agatha Christie, criminal justice, Determinism, free will, Jerry Coyne, Murder at the Vicarage (novel)}

No Free Will Means No Justice

_{Materialist biologist Jerry Coyne doesn’t seem to understand what denying free will would mean for the criminal justice system} _{Michael Egnor

May 31, 2020

Arts & Culture, Ethics, Philosophy of Mind}

Without free will, no one is innocent. Who asks cattle on the way to the abattoir if they are guilty or innocent?

^{Type
post

Author
Heather Zeiger

Date
April 5, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Global Technology, Social Media, Technocracy

Tagged
___longform, China, COVID-19, Featured, Twitterbots}

The Dragon’s Deception: Conspiracy Theories and False Numbers

_{China’s global attempt to rewrite the history of coronavirus (COVID-19) is running up against incriminating evidence} _{Heather Zeiger

April 5, 2020

Ethics, Global Technology, Social Media, Technocracy}

The Chinese Communist Party has touted the superiority of an authoritarian government over a democratic one in handling the virus outbreak. But American intelligence sources say that it was the punishment that local officials might receive from the authoritarian system that led to the initial coverup of the outbreak.

^{Type
post

Author
Brendan Dixon

Date
March 24, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Ethics

Tagged
AI Winter, Starsky Robotics, Stefan Seltz-Axmacher}

Star self-driving truck firm shuts; AI not safe enough soon enough

_{CEO Stefan Seltz-Axmacher is blunt about the cause: Machine learning “doesn’t live up to the hype”} _{Brendan Dixon

March 24, 2020

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Ethics}

Starsky Robotics was not just another startup overwhelmed by business realities. In 2019, it was named one of the world’s 100 most promising start-ups (CNBC) and one to watch by FreightWaves, a key trucking industry publication. But the AI breakthroughs did not appear.

^{Type
post

Author
Jay Richards

Date
March 22, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance, Ethics, Religion

Tagged
Catholicism, Featured, Microsoft, Pontifical Academy for Life, Regulatory capture, Vatican}

Why Does the Vatican Need Microsoft?

_{Should the Church really partner with IBM and Microsoft to make pronouncements on tech regulation?} _{Jay Richards

March 22, 2020

Business and Finance, Ethics, Religion}

When giant corporate actors like IBM and Microsoft promote “transparency and compliance with ethical principles?”, we run the risk that they are helping to craft regulations that hinder future competitors (“regulatory capture”). Rather than partner with them in making statements, the Church should stay clear.

^{Type
post

Author
Heather Zeiger

Date
March 19, 2020

Categorized
Ethics, Medicine and Health, Technocracy

Tagged
___longform, China, COVID-19, Featured, media}

China: Rewriting the History of COVID-19

_{Making the government the improbable hero of the tale} _{Heather Zeiger

March 19, 2020

Ethics, Medicine and Health, Technocracy}

Chinese scientists worked together swiftly and seamlessly to sequence the virus, (completed February 25), even as the government was downplaying the extent of the problem and silencing doctors who attempted to warn colleagues and the public. The Wuhan public erupted in anger when the government demanded a show of gratitude for its efforts rather than theirs.

^{Type
post

Author
Jonathan Bartlett

Date
March 17, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance, Ethics, Global Technology, Medicine and Health, Work

Tagged
Alameda County, China, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Elon Musk, Quarantine, Tesla}

COVID-19: Do Quarantine Rules Apply to Mega-Geniuses?

_{How did Elon Musk, who has a cozy relationship with China, get his upscale car factory classified as an essential business during the pandemic?} _{Jonathan Bartlett

March 17, 2020

Business and Finance, Ethics, Global Technology, Medicine and Health, Work}

If we are going to hold some people up as business icons, why should it be those who—in the present COVID-19 troubles—have relations with China that necessarily raise questions?

^{Type
post

Author
Brendan Dixon

Date
March 16, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Machine Learning

Tagged
Deep Learning, Moral decision-making}

All AI’s Are Psychopaths

_{We can use them but we can’t trust them with moral decisions. They don’t care why} _{Brendan Dixon

March 16, 2020

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Machine Learning}

Building an AI entails moving parts of our intelligence into a machine. We can do that with rules, (simplified) virtual worlds, statistical learning… We’ll likely create other means as well. But, as long as “no one is home”—that is, the machines lack minds—gaps will remain and those gaps, without human oversight, can put us at risk.