Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: ethics – Page 37

The Era of Genetically Modified Superhumans

The late 21st century belongs to Superhumans. Technological progress in the field of medicine through gene editing tools like CRISPR is going to revolutionize what it means to be human. The age of Superhumans is portrayed in many science fiction movies, but for the first time in our species history, radically altering our genome is going to be possible through the methods and tools of science.

The gene-editing tool CRISPR, short for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, could help us to reprogram life. It gives scientists more power and precision than they have ever had to alter human DNA.

Genetic engineering holds great promise for the future of humanity. A growing number of scientists including David Sinclair believe that we will soon be able to engineer and change our genes in a way that will help us live longer and healthier lives.

But how much should we really tinker with our own nature? What is the moral responsibility of scientists and humans towards future generations?

With technological advances in molecular biology like CRISPR that allow for specific gene editing approaches, many scientists argue that there are strong potential benefits as well as risks to human genetic engineering.
David Sinclair is a geneticist at Harvard Medical School. He believes it’s possible to unlock the fountain of youth.

The potential uses of such gene editing techniques could range from the treatment of disease to the enhancement of beauty and intelligence.

Continue reading “The Era of Genetically Modified Superhumans” | >

Experts Fear Lab-Grown Brains Will Become Sentient, Which Is Upsetting

A thought-provoking new article poses some hugely important scientific questions: Could brain cells initiated and grown in a lab become sentient? What would that look like, and how could scientists test for it? And would a sentient, lab-grown brain “organoid” have some kind of rights? Buckle up for a quick and dirty history of the ethics of sentience. We associate the term with computing and artificial intelligence, but the question of who (or what) is or isn’t “sentient” and deserving of rights and moral consideration goes back to the very beginning of the human experience. The debate colors everything from ethical consumption of meat to many episodes of Black Mirror.

Well, we don’t want that… or do we?

Mahabbah: I am pleased to announce that my science fiction story “Mahabbah” has been published by After Dinner Conversation

My story centers on the concept of a genetically modified virus (named) which infects the brain and gives people enhanced empathy. The narrative takes place in a fictional middle eastern city called Fakhoury and explores bioethical themes. Love acts as a central motif which ties the story together. Note that this piece will be available online for a limited time, after which you will need to pay for the magazine. I encourage you to check out my story!

Read Philosophy Ethics Short Stories with your friends, family, book club, and students. Each story comes with suggested discussion questions.

This 1,992 paper was included on best-selling CDR World Philosophy compilation (before internet) and I claim some credit for circulated it and popularising the “Transhuman sidetrack”

Since 1,988 and formation of the Posthuman Movement, and articles by early adopters like Max Moore were a sign our message was being received — although I always argued on various Extropian & Transhuman bulletin boards & Yahoo groups &c that “Trans” was a redundant middle and we should move straight to Posthuman, now armed with the new MVT knowledge (also figures on the CDR). There will be a new edition of World Philosophy, the first this millennium, to coincided with various Posthuman University events later this year. Here is the text:

THE EXTROPIAN PRINCIPLES V. 2.01 August 7 1992.

Max More Executive Director, Extropy Institute.

1. BOUNDLESS EXPANSION — Seeking more intelligence, wisdom, and.
personal power, an unlimited lifespan, and removal of natural, social.
biological, and psychological limits to self-actualization and self-realization. Overcoming limits on our personal and social.
progress and possibilities. Expansion into the universe and infinite existence.

2. SELF-TRANSFORMATION — A commitment to continual moral.
intellectual, and physical self-improvement, using reason and critical.
thinking, personal responsibility, and experimentation. Biological and.
neurological augmentation.

3. INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY — Applying science and technology to.
transcend “natural” limits imposed by our biological heritage and environment.

4. SPONTANEOUS ORDER — Promotion of decentralized, voluntaristic.

Continue reading “This 1,992 paper was included on best-selling CDR World Philosophy compilation (before internet) and I claim some credit for circulated it and popularising the “Transhuman sidetrack”” | >

Google is developing a new superintelligent AI but ethical questions remain

Dean’s appearance at TED comes during a time when critics—including current Google employees —are calling for greater scrutiny over big tech’s control over the world’s AI systems. Among those critics was one who spoke right after Dean at TED. Coder Xiaowei R. Wang, creative director of the indie tech magazine Logic, argued for community-led innovations. “Within AI there is only a case for optimism if people and communities can make the case themselves, instead of people like Jeff Dean and companies like Google making the case for them, while shutting down the communities [that] AI for Good is supposed to help,” she said. (AI for Good is a movement that seeks to orient machine learning toward solving the world’s most pressing social equity problems.)

TED curator Chris Andersen and Greg Brockman, co-founder of the AI ethics research group Open AI, also wrestled with the unintended consequences of powerful machine learning systems at the end of the conference. Brockman described a scenario in which humans serve as moral guides to AI. “We can teach the system the values we want, as we would a child,” he said. “It’s an important but subtle point. I think you do need the system to learn a model of the world. If you’re teaching a child, they need to learn what good and bad is.”

There also is room for some gatekeeping to be done once the machines have been taught, Anderson suggested. “One of the key issues to keeping this thing on track is to very carefully pick the people who look at the output of these unsupervised learning systems,” he said.

Voice clone of Anthony Bourdain prompts synthetic media ethics questions

A New Yorker review of “Roadrunner,” a documentary about the deceased celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain by the Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville, reveals that a peculiar method was used to create a voice over of an email written by Bourdain. In addition to using clips of Bourdain’s voice from various media appearances, the filmmaker says he had an “A.I. model” of Bourdain’s voice created in order to complete the effect of Bourdain ‘reading’ from his own email in the film. “If you watch the film, other than that line you mentioned, you probably don’t know what the other lines are that were spoken by the A.I., and you’re not going to know,” Neville told the reviewer, Helen Rosner. “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.”

On Twitter, some media observers decided to start the panel right away.

“This is unsettling,” tweeted Mark Berman, a reporter at the Washington Post, while ProPublica reporter and media manipulation expert Craig Silverman tweeted “this is not okay, especially if you don’t disclose to viewers when the AI is talking.” Indeed, “The ‘ethics panel’ is supposed to happen BEFORE they release the project,” tweeted David Friend, Entertainment reporter at The Canadian Press.

UK May Ban Boiling Lobsters Alive Under “Sentient Being” Law, So Can They Really Feel Pain?

Boiling lobsters alive may be banned under a new law in the UK designed to protect the welfare rights of animals considered sentient beings. So, are lobsters sentient, do they feel pain, and what does science have to say about the moral quagmire of crustacean agony and cooking pots?

Back in May 2021, the UK government introduced a bill to formally recognize animals as sentient beings. Among the many facets of the bill, it aimed to limit the import of products from trophy hunting, push for fairer space requirements for farm animals, and stop people from owning primates as pets.

However, the bill only covered animals with a backbone and didn’t include any protections for non-vertebrates, which includes octopuses, squid, insects, and crustaceans. The Times reports that ministers are now preparing to back an amendment to the House of Lords, the upper house of the UK Parliament, to extend the legislation to shellfish and cephalopod mollusks. As per the report, this is likely to involve an outright ban on boiling lobsters alive.

5 Sustainable Eating Tips for People Serious About Life Extension

A serving of mushrooms is just 0.08 kg of CO2 emissions—only lentils have a lower per serving CO2 emission level.

One common question J.P. and I get over and over again is about the problem of overpopulation—if human life extension is a humanitarian goal worth pursuing, won’t there be an inevitable environmental crisis? One worse than what we’re already facing?

When we covered the ethics of life extension we partially answered this question based on what we know about population and consumption trends now (tl;dr: we’re more likely to face a crisis of under population than overpopulation). That said, it’s practically impossible to be able to fully forecast environmental trends 50200, and further years into the future. We noted, “Spanners actually need to address it because we will have to continue living through the consequences of climate change if we don’t.”

In other words, if you’re interested in indefinitely extending your own life, sustainable eating should be a priority today because you’ll most likely be alive in the trash-filled, resource-scarce world of tomorrow.

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