Building An Ethical Framework for the 22 nd Century
With the rapid development of technology in the domains of artificial intelligence , chemistry and biology , we are confronted by an increasingly diverse and bewildering range of ethical dilemmas . Indeed , some of these dilemmas are so novel that all of our existing notions of what is ‘ right ’ and ‘ wrong ’ will be severely upturned and may even be judged completely irrelevant when we attempt to apply them to new scientific knowledge .
Most of us ( hopefully ) have a well-developed code of individual ethics which is practical , consistent , and helps to guide us towards good personal conduct in our daily lives . We would generally know , for example , how to behave / react if we , as teachers , were offered a bribe to change a grade in an exam . However , while we would not need to think about how to respond in this particular situation , there are a large number of emerging ethical dilemmas which might leave us confused and uncertain as to what is the ‘ right ’ course of action to take . To cite just a few of these :
• Is it right to use facial recognition technology to monitor the public ?
• Is it right to geoengineer the planet to offset the threat from climate change ?
• Is it right to create a ‘ robot army ’ for national defence ?
• Is it right to afford robots ‘ human ’ rights ?
• Is it right to edit our future children ’ s genes (‘ designer babies ’)?
• Is it right to bring extinct species back to life (‘ de-extinction ’)? even be outraged that we are not permitted to walk in the street without being monitored for reasons unknown . It is likely that our objections would be framed in an Orwellian language of totalitarian surveillance states dragging us down into a dystopian nightmare … But then we might , after a few minutes ’ sober reflection , welcome the prospect of living in a society where crime , both minor and serious , is ( almost ) completely eradicated . What then should be our ethical stance and who is to guide us ?
Another real-world illustration of this is provided by the case of Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui who was imprisoned in January 2020 having created the world ’ s first known gene-edited embryos . This episode gives rise to a number of interesting ethical questions : Did the researcher know that what he was doing was ‘ wrong ’? Was it really ‘ wrong ’ anyway ? If so , why exactly was it ‘ wrong ’? By what ethical standard could we interpret his action as ‘ wrong ’? When answering these questions , we can feel the sand shifting beneath our feet , there is no certainty or solidity in our responses .
In this year ’ s edition of ComitTED , we asked our students to act as latter-day moral philosophers to examine some of the ethical challenges which will shape their lives and the society in which they will live . While technology is advancing at a breakneck speed , the ethical framework needed to guide our attitudes and behaviour towards scientific developments is lagging behind …
From the Editorial Board
With questions such as these , there is no real precedent , societal consensus or shared experience to help anchor our ethical beliefs . Apart from an instinctual ‘ gut reaction ’, how do we decide what is the ‘ right ’ and proper ethical response to a completely sui generis application of science ? We may , for example , instinctively feel that facial recognition technology is an unacceptable violation of our right to privacy . We may
All this makes for an especially interesting edition of CommitTED . Because many of the questions under discussion have not yet been treated systematically , there is no consensus over what we should consider to be the ‘ correct ’ ethical response to these technologies . As such , all opinions are equally valid and each deserves serious consideration .