September 11, 2024
(STAT News) – A single question doesn’t give context, ask what’s most important to you to guide this decision, or share why we may recommend do-not-resuscitate (DNR) when CPR likely won’t work and cause further suffering. Popular shows like “Grey’s … Read More
September 10, 2024
(Nature) – Questions surrounding an often-repeated statistic about Indigenous Peoples and biodiversity show that researchers should take more care when sourcing facts. For at least two decades, scientists, policymakers and journals, including Nature, have cited a statistic without determining its … Read More
September 9, 2024
(New York Times) – A generation ago, bioethicists fought over whether assisted reproductive technology would be normalized or made taboo. Now there’s strong public consensus that it should be not only tolerated but also celebrated. But this may be a … Read More
September 3, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Assisted suicide was sold as compassionate. In practice it has turned out to be monstrous. The new law dropped safeguards, such as the minimum 10-day assessment period between request and provision. It also proposed mental illness … Read More
August 23, 2024
(Undark) – Debate over Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying law shows the need to rethink the biological model of mental illness. I was horrified by the news of the law’s latest expansion — a reaction that surprised me. Having grown … Read More
August 23, 2024
(The Conversation) – Australia currently finds itself in the unusual position of being both in an opioid epidemic and experiencing a shortage of these critical medicines. The Therapeutic Goods Administration has placed eight oral morphine products on its shortage list. … Read More
August 23, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – There are plenty of reasons to be wary of AI, but let’s not dismiss the possibilities it offers for improving accessibility. While the New York Times sues OpenAI over ChatGPT’s scraping of its content and everyone … Read More
August 21, 2024
(Rolling Stone) – The tech in Elon Musk’s electric vehicles is supposed to prevent accidents, but in several cases, it nearly caused one When the “Full Self-Driving” setting is enabled in a Tesla, according to the automaker’s own description, the … Read More
August 19, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – One day in the maybe-not-so-distant future, YouTube won’t exist and its videos may be lost forever. Facebook—and your uncle’s holiday posts—will vanish. There is precedent for this. MySpace, the first largish-scale social network, deleted every photo, … Read More
August 16, 2024
(The Conversation) – I’m a medical anthropologist and bioethicist who studies the values and experiences driving prenatal gene therapy developments, including genome editing. Human prenatal genome editing has not happened yet – as far as we know. Prenatal genome editing … Read More
August 13, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Google’s Android chief told our columnist the voice assistant was designed to impersonate humans, but he doesn’t want anyone getting romantic with it I’m not saying I prefer talking to Google’s Gemini Live over a real … Read More
August 9, 2024
(Undark) – Many of life’s biggest questions can’t be answered by an algorithm. We must learn to embrace uncertainty instead. I’ve seen the tendency to ask AI life-and-death questions first-hand. After hearing I was a computer scientist, a professor at … Read More
August 8, 2024
(Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) – It is often said that autonomous weapons could help minimize the needless horrors of war. Their vision algorithms could be better than humans at distinguishing a schoolhouse from a weapons depot. They won’t be … Read More
August 5, 2024
(The Guardian) – Sam Altman’s ChatGPT promises to transform the global economy. But it also poses an enormous threat. Here, a scientist who appeared with Altman before the US Senate on AI safety flags up the danger in AI – … Read More
July 26, 2024
(The Atlantic) – Whenever AI companies present a vision for the role of artificial intelligence in the future of searching the internet, they tend to underscore the same points: instantaneous summaries of relevant information; ready-made lists tailored to a searcher’s … Read More
July 25, 2024
(BMJ Blog) – While deepfake technology may be promising for certain patients, it also raises significant ethical and legal questions. Deepfakes may be viewed as disturbing and are often associated with sci-fi stories. The grief counselling case is reminiscent of … Read More
July 19, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – If we’re going to protect ourselves from genetic discrimination, we first have to figure out what it is. Unfortunately, no one has a good handle on how widespread it is, says Yann Joly, director of the … Read More
July 12, 2024
(The Hastings Center) – The Biden Administration is struggling with a dilemma that has a clinical ethics component. Where does the President’s right to privacy about his health end and the public’s right to know begin? This question has recurred … Read More
July 5, 2024
(The Hedgehog Review) – Humans are, in fact, the necessary ingredient in the ongoing success of generative AI. I don’t mean that the business model of generative AI depends on consumer interest—that is obviously true. What I am proposing is … Read More
July 4, 2024
(The Dispatch) – Something about the human heart works hard to avoid honest reflection on the meaning of our existence. And yet at the same time, a life without meaning is hardly worth living. Such is the dual nature of … Read More
July 2, 2024
(Aeon) – Even happy families cannot avoid the reality – my reality – that adoption is predicated on transacting the life of a child. In truth, it can only ever be a happier ending. Of course, every kid who escapes … Read More
July 2, 2024
(The Atlantic) – In 2010—well before the rise of ChatGPT and Claude and all the other sprightly, conversational AI models—an army of bots briefly wiped out $1 trillion of value across the NASDAQ and other stock exchanges. Lengthy investigations were … Read More
July 1, 2024
(RNS) – Perhaps it is the time your childhood friend, still so young, posts a photo of her first grandchild on social media. Perhaps it is when the first grandchild is born to your sibling. Perhaps it is the first … Read More
June 24, 2024
(The Atlantic) – I trained as a physician and have asked patients the very same question thousands of times, so I think hard about how to quantify the sum of the sore hips, the prickly thighs, and the numbing, itchy … Read More
June 21, 2024
(AEI) – Recent advances in AI should generate optimism for, not fear of, the future. Yes, it will be disruptive. But workers in the United States have undergone multiple waves of disruptive technological change throughout history, and emerged better off … Read More
