http://www.methuselahfoundation.org/

There’s perhaps no group of people to better answer this question than the people of Methuselah Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by David Gobel, which supports Aubrey De Grey’s SENS research and is dedicated to enabling humans “to live longer, better and wiser, by defeating age-related disease and suffering.” I had the privilege of speaking to Roger Holzberg, the Chief Marketing Officer and Creative Director of Methuselah Foundation, about the core philosophies of the foundation and the promising research they are involved with.  I asked Mr. Holzberg, what are the areas of life extension available now, and in our short-term future? What fundamentally drives the foundation towards seeking these life extension solutions?

“The goal is really to end the extraordinary suffering at the end of the life, the suffering that is global and pretty much accepted in ours and most cultures,” Holzberg said.  “We really accept that that last 20 years of life will be filled with illness and deteriorating health.  But with a better approach to solving the diseases of aging, a lot of that human suffering can be avoided.”

“Aging is still a given,” he added, “but the diseases of aging don’t have to be inevitable.”

Speaking with Mr. Holzberg really reframed some of my ideas from my Transhumanism post.  It was easy to get caught up in the extreme predictions of Kurzweil, to think that pursuing life extension in such an extreme way in fact conflicted with many principle human values. But talking to Mr. Holzberg made me realize the very real, very present suffering we experience now as a result of people dying from diseases of aging – diseases that are preventable and manageable with the proper tools.

Indeed, treating aging as a “disease” and not a given in life is one of the principle philosophies of Methuselah Foundation.  Towards this end, the foundation takes a very methodical, systematic approach to life extension, working to prevent  and manage the diseases of aging such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, and to encourage research into new ways of prolonging life.  Their strategy is 3 pronged: they have “Near Term” goals, including their newly launched My Bridge 4 Life, a wellness site (think Facebook for health) which helps offer strategies for increasing longevity by connecting people with life-threatening diseases and enabling them to share research, information, successful therapies, and support to better navigate their illness; The foundation’s “Mid Term” goals focus on encouraging research and innovation in the field of life extension by offering the Mprize, presented to scientists and researchers  across the globe for the most promising life extension research; And finally, their “Long term” goals, which focus on investing in technologies of the future, including companies like Organovo, a regenerative medicine company that is working on “printing” new organs, and SENS Foundation, which seeks to use biological engineering techniques to restore and rejuvenate the human body before the effects of aging begin.  Each of these approaches is pursued in tandem with the basic principle of living a long, healthy life, and making good lifestyle choices that ensure the best health possible.

What research seems to be the most promising, according to Holzberg?

Some of the most exciting advancements in longevity that have come out of research inspired by the MPrize include medications that mimic calorie restriction (a calorie restricted diet, according to research, is currently the only treatment that is proven to prevent all diseases of aging including cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes and neurodegeneration).  Holzberg also forecasts, “Medications which target disease by addressing basic cellular processes, such as, say, aiding our bodies to continue to clear out bad cholesterol as we age, will be the next big wave in life extending tools”. And eventually, in the next 10-20 years, Holzberg predicts that the work of companies like Orgonovo, the bioengineering company who is working on “printing” new organs (see the video above), will be crucial in regenerative medicine.  Interestingly, he hopes this type of organ growth will replace the more “barbaric” techniques of using machine-replacement organs:

“My dream is that 50 years from now we look at machine implantations as barbaric, but regrowing a healthy organ or healthy bodypart out of the DNA of the individual that needs it? That to me is much more in line with our philosophy…I love to imagine 50 years from now, if you had cancer in an organ in your body, you could give a healthy DNA sample, grow a new organ, and replace the one that’s diseased.”

“ It won’t be a mechanized replacement part,” he said, “It will be a replacement part from you!”

Getting a read on the real status of life extension possibilities was fascinating.  There was little talk of cyborg technologies or artificial intelligence, those forces rampant in Kurzweil’s future.  Interestingly enough, I found the focus on life extension to be surprisingly focused on lifestyle.  In fact, much information on longevity has been gleaned from people across the world who live in what are known as “Blue Zones,” regions like Sardinia, Italy and the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica where people commonly live active lives past the age of 100 years old.  Interestingly, most of the people who live long lives now actually live incredibly non-technological lives.

What are their secrets?  Blue Zone researchers have identified that these centenarians share a number of similar lifestyle attributes:

-The majority of food they eat is plant-based and unprocessed

-They engage in physical activity every day, like gardening and labor around the house

-They are socially active and integrated with their communities, and they value family and living communally

-They live lives that they feel are meaningful and purposeful, and they take time out each day to relax and be stress-free

(Here’s a thought: Does this sound like the way we live in highly technologically driven cultures?)

So, the take away message from my conversation with Mr. Holzberg was somewhat the opposite of Kurzweil’s technologically dependent future.  Life-span extension today is certainly focused on technological break throughs, but even more so on promoting the basic lifestyle habits that promote good health such as diet, exercise, and living purposefully: the “Blue Zone” way of living. When it comes to pursuing technologies to living longer, “it’s a balance with lifestyle,” Holzberg says.  Indeed, Methuselah Foundation is not interested in radical life extension, wholly dependent on blending with technology, but in using knowledge and technology to live better, longer.

“Methuselah Foundation is not about immortality,” said Holzberg.  “We’re about living, longer healthier lives.”

To read more about Methuselah’s Foundation research, visit their website.

Futurist and Inventor Ray Kurzweil has a plan: He wants to never die.

In order to achieve this goal, he currently takes over 150 supplements per day, eats a calorie restricted diet (a proven technique to prolong lifespan), drinks ionized water (a type of alkalinized water that supposedly protects against free radicals in the body), and exercises daily, all to promote the healthy functioning of his body; and at 60 years old, he reportedly has the physiology of a man 20 years younger.

But the human body, no matter how well you take care of it, is susceptible to illness, disease, and senescence – the process of cellular change in the body that results in that little thing we all do called “aging.”  (This cellular process is why humans are physiologically unable to live past the age of around 125 years old.)  Kurzweil is well aware of this, but has a solution: he is just trying to live long enough in his human body until technology reaches the point where man can meld with machine, and he can survive as a cyborg with robotically enhanced features; survive, that is, until the day when he can eventually upload his consciousness onto a harddrive, enabling him to “live” forever as bits of information stored indefinitely; immortal, in a sense, as long as he has a copy of himself in case the computer fails.

What happens if these technological abilities don’t come soon enough? Kurzweil has a back-up plan.  If, for some reason, this mind-machine  blend doesn’t occur in his biological lifetime, Kurzweil is signed up at Alcor Life Extension Foundation to be cryonically frozen and kept in Scottsdale, Arizona, amongst approximately 900 other stored bodies (including famous baseball player Ted Williams) who are currently stored.  There at Alcor, he will “wait” until the day when scientists discover the ability to reanimate life back into him– and not too long, as Kurzweil believes this day will be in about 50 years.

Watch a video on Alcor and Cryonics here:

Ray Kurzweil is a fascinating and controversial figure, both famous and infamous for his technological predictions.  He is a respected scientist and inventor, known for his accurate predictions of a number of technological events, and recently started “The Singularity University” here in Silicon Valley, an interdisciplinary program (funded in part by Google) aimed to “assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders” around issues of accelerating technologies.

Ray Kurzweil

Kurzweil’s most well-known predictions are encapsulated in this event he forecasts called “The Singularity,” a period of time he predicts in the next few decades when artificial intelligence will exceed human intelligence, and technologies like genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and computer technology will radically transform human life, enabling mind, body and machine to become one.

He is also a pioneer of a movement called “transhumanism”, which is defined by this belief that technology will ultimately replace biology, and rid human beings of all the things that, well, make us human, like disease, aging, and – you guessed it—death. Why be human when you can be something better? When  Artificial intelligence and nanotechnology comes around in the singularity, Kurzweil thinks, being biologically human will become obsolete. With cyborg features and enhanced cognitive capacities, we will have fewer deficiencies, and more capabilities; we will possess the ability to become more like machines, and we’ll be better for it.

Watch A Preview For A Film About Kurzweil entitled “Transcendent Man”:

Kurzweil outlines his vision of our technological future  in his article “Reinventing Humanity: The Future of Machine-Human Intelligence” for Futurist Magazine, which raises some juicy points to consider from the perspective of ethics and technology. He explains The Singularity, in his own words,:

“We stand on the threshold of the most profound and transformative event in the history of humanity, the “singularity”.

What is the Singularity? From my perspective, the Singularity is a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so fast and far-reaching that human existence on this planet will be irreversibly altered. We will combine our brain power—the knowledge, skills, and personality quirks that make us human—with our computer power in order to think, reason, communicate, and create in ways we can scarcely even contemplate today.

This merger of man and machine, coupled with the sudden explosion in machine intelligence and rapid innovation in the fields of gene research as well as nanotechnology, will result in a world where there is no distinction between the biological and the mechanical, or between physical and virtual reality. These technological revolutions will allow us to transcend our frail bodies with all their limitations. Illness, as we know it, will be eradicated. Through the use of nanotechnology, we will be able to manufacture almost any physical product upon demand, world hunger and poverty will be solved, and pollution will vanish. Human existence will undergo a quantum leap in evolution. We will be able to live as long as we choose. The coming into being of such a world is, in essence, the Singularity.”

The details of the coming Singularity, Kurzweil outlines, will occur in three areas: The genetic revolution, the nanotech revolution, and strong AI: which means, essentially, machines that are smarter than humans.

The first he describes is the nanotechnology revolution, which refers to a type of technology that manipulates matter on an atomic and molecular scale, potentially allowing us to reassemble matter in a variety of ways. Kurzweil believes nanotechnology will give us the capability to create atomic size “robots” that can clean our blood cells and eradicate disease; he also thinks nanotechnology will allow us to create essentially anything by ‘assembling’ it through nanobots (for example, he thinks that nanotechnology will enable us to e-mail physical things like clothing, much like we can currently e-mail audio-files).  He explains:

The nanotechnology revolution will enable us to redesign and rebuild—molecule by molecule—our bodies and brains and the world with which we interact, going far beyond the limitations of biology.

In the future, nanoscale devices will run hundreds of tests simultaneously on tiny samples of a given substance. These devices will allow extensive tests to be conducted on nearly invisible samples of blood.

In the area of treatment, a particularly exciting application of this technology is the harnessing of nanoparticles to deliver medication to specific sites in the body. Nanoparticles can guide drugs into cell walls and through the blood-brain barrier. Nanoscale packages can be designed to hold drugs, protect them through the gastrointestinal tract, ferry them to specific locations, and then release them in sophisticated ways that can be influenced and controlled, wirelessly, from outside the body.

In regards to AI, Kurzweil envisions what will eventually become a post-human future, where we upload our consciousness to computers and live forever as “stored information”:

The implementation of artificial intelligence in our biological systems will mark an evolutionary leap forward for humanity, but it also implies we will indeed become more “machine” than “human.” Billions of nanobots will travel through the bloodstream in our bodies and brains. In our bodies, they will destroy pathogens, correct DNA errors, eliminate toxins, and perform many other tasks to enhance our physical well-being. As a result, we will be able to live indefinitely without aging.

Despite the wonderful future potential of medicine, real human longevity will only be attained when we move away from our biological bodies entirely. As we move toward a software-based existence, we will gain the means of “backing ourselves up” (storing the key patterns underlying our knowledge, skills, and personality in a digital setting) thereby enabling a virtual immortality. Thanks to nanotechnology, we will have bodies that we can not just modify but change into new forms at will. We will be able to quickly change our bodies in full-immersion virtual-reality environments incorporating all of the senses during the 2020s and in real reality in the 2040s.

Now, the idea of becoming nanobot driven robots is hard to wrap one’s head around, particurlaly living in a time when people struggle to get their blue-tooths to work correctly.  But even though to most people, these predictions seem very extreme, Kurzweil explains why he thinks these changes are coming fast, even if we can’t conceive of them now. He explains that, in the vein of Moore’s law (which describes how the density of transistors on computer chips has doubled every two years since its invention), technology develops exponentially — and thus the rate of change is rapidly increasing in the modern day:

How is it possible we could be so close to this enormous change and not see it? The answer is the quickening nature of technological innovation. In thinking about the future, few people take into consideration the fact that human scientific progress is exponential…

In other words, the twentieth century was gradually speeding up to today’s rate of progress; its achievements, therefore, were equivalent to about 20 years of progress at the rate of 2000. We’ll make another “20 years” of progress in just 14 years (by 2014), and then do the same again in only seven years. To express this another way, we won’t experience 100 years of technological advance in the twenty-first century; we will witness on the order of 20,000 years of progress (again, when measured by today’s progress rate), or progress on a level of about 1,000 times greater than what was achieved in the twentieth century.

Reflections

There are so many questions to ask, it’s hard to know where to start.  Considering The Singularity, many questions arise (the first, which you’re probably thinking, is “Is this really possible?!”) But that question put temporarily aside, some questions seem to be: what are the promise and perils of nanotechnology, and how can we approach them responsibly? What types of genetic engineering, if any, should we pursue, and what types should we avoid?  If we really could live forever, should we–particularly if it meant living no longer as humans, but as machines?  And what happens to who we are as human beings — our beliefs, our religions and faiths, our thoughts about our purpose — if we pursue this type of future?

Each of these topics is rife with ethical – and existential – questions; and discussion of many of them requires scientific knowledge that extends beyond my ability to represent them here.  But contemplating these questions broadly, even in spite of extensive knowledge of their specifics, brings into focus some fundamental questions about the principles of human experience, and about the broad issue of our technological future and how to approach it. The more we envision a technologically saturated future, I think, the more our human values are called upon to be revealed as we react, respond, flinch, or embrace the pictures of our future reflected in these predictions.  They ask us to consider: what do we value about being human?  What do we want to hold on to about being human, and what do want to replace, augment, and transform with technology?  Is living as ’stored information’ really any life at all?

In addition to these questions, exploring these “futuristic” issues calls us to consider some of our fundamental principles about technology.  A basic yet extremely complex question arises: Should all technology be pursued?   In other words, should we ever restrict technological innovation, and say that some technologies, because of their risks — to humanity, or to certain human values– simply shouldn’t be developed?

Reflections on this question bring up the topic of techno-optimism and techno-pessimism, which I wrote about briefly here.

Kurzweil, it seems to go without saying, is a full–fledged techno-optimist, interested in letting technology run its full reign, even if that means leaving everything that is recognizeably human behind.  He concedes that we need to be responsible about our use of nanotechnology – a technology which some fear could bring about the end of the world (see the “grey goo” theory) – but for the most part is a proponent of full fledged technological expansion. Reflection is important, but no amount should limit technologies:

“We don’t have to look past today to see the intertwined promise and peril of technological advancement,” he says. “Imagine describing the dangers (atomic and hydrogen bombs for one thing) that exist today to people who lived a couple of hundred years ago. They would think it mad to take such risks. But how many people in 2006 would really want to go back to the short, brutish, disease-filled, poverty-stricken, disaster-prone lives that 99% of the human race struggled through two centuries ago?

We may romanticize the past, but up until fairly recently most of humanity lived extremely fragile lives in which one all-too-common misfortune could spell disaster. Two hundred years ago, life expectancy for females in the record-holding country (Sweden) was roughly 35-five years, very brief compared with the longest life expectancy today-almost 85 years for Japanese women. Life expectancy for males was roughly 33 years, compared with the current 79 years. Half a day was often required to prepare an evening meal, and hard labor characterized most human activity. There were no social safety nets. Substantial portions of our species still live in this precarious way, which is at least one reason to continue technological progress and the economic improvement that accompanies it. Only technology, with its ability to provide orders of magnitude of advances in capability and affordability has the scale to confront problems such as poverty, disease, pollution, and the other overriding concerns of society today. The benefits of applying ourselves to these challenges cannot be overstated.”

But another, more technologically conservative view is important to consider, one characterized by thinkers who question whether these technologies should be proliferated, or even pursued at all.

William Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, famously countered Kurzweil’s predictions in his article, “Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us.” He opens his article discussing his meeting with Kurzweil:

‘From the moment I became involved in the creation of new technologies, their ethical dimensions have concerned me, but it was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the dangers facing us in the 21^st century. I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil, the deservedly famous inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and many other amazing things.

I had always felt sentient robots were in the realm of science fiction. But now, from someone I respected, I was hearing a strong argument that they were a near-term possibility. I was taken aback, especially given Ray’s proven ability to imagine and create the future. I already knew that new technologies like genetic engineering and nanotechnology were giving us the power to remake the world, but a realistic and imminent scenario for intelligent robots surprised me.”

Joy then discusses how these technologies (namely nanotechnology and artificial intelligence) pose a new, unparralleled threat to humanity, and that as a result, we shouldn’t pursue them – in fact, we should purposefully restrict them, on the principle that the amount of harm and threat they pose to humanity itself outweighs what benefit they could bring.

“ Accustomed to living with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-century technologies – robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology – pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once – but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control.

…Failing to understand the consequences of our inventions while we are in the rapture of discovery and innovation seems to be a common fault of scientists and technologists; we have long been driven by the overarching desire to know that is the nature of science’s quest, not stopping to notice that the progress to newer and more powerful technologies can take on a life of its own.”

“We are being propelled into this new century with no plan, no control, no brakes. Have we already gone too far down the path to alter course? I don’t believe so, but we aren’t trying yet, and the last chance to assert control – the fail-safe point – is rapidly approaching. We have our first pet robots, as well as commercially available genetic engineering techniques, and our nanoscale techniques are advancing rapidly. While the development of these technologies proceeds through a number of steps, it isn’t necessarily the case – as happened in the Manhattan Project and the Trinity test – that the last step in proving a technology is large and hard. The breakthrough to wild self-replication in robotics, genetic engineering, or nanotechnology could come suddenly, reprising the surprise we felt when we learned of the cloning of a mammal.”

He closes his essay saying:

“Thoreau also said that we will be “rich in proportion to the number of things which we can afford to let alone.” We each seek to be happy, but it would seem worthwhile to question whether we need to take such a high risk of total destruction to gain yet more knowledge and yet more things; common sense says that there is a limit to our material needs – and that certain knowledge is too dangerous and is best forgone.

Neither should we pursue near immortality without considering the costs… A technological approach to Eternity – near immortality through robotics – may not be the most desirable utopia, and its pursuit brings clear dangers. Maybe we should rethink our utopian choices.”

Another view that counters Kurzweil’s is presented by Richard Eckersley, focused a bit less on the scientific dangers and more on the threat to human values:

“Why pursue this(Kurzweil’s) future?…The future world that Ray Kurzweil describes bears almost no relationship to human well-being that I am aware of. In essence, human health and happiness comes from being connected and engaged, from being suspended in a web of relationships and interests—personal, social and spiritual— that give meaning to our lives. The intimacy and support provided by close personal relationships seem to matter most; isolation exacts the highest price. The need to belong is more important than the need to be rich. Meaning matters more than money and what it buys.

We are left with the matter of destiny: it is our preordained fate, Kurzweil suggests, to advance technologically “until the entire universe is at our fingertips.” The question then becomes, preordained by whom or what? Biological evolution has not set this course for us; Is technology itself the planner? Perhaps it will eventually be, but not yet.

We are left to conclude that we will do this because it is we who have decided it is our destiny.”

Joy and Eckersley powerfully warn against our pursuit of a Kurzweil-type future.  So we may be able to have the technical ability to achieve machine-like capacities; does that mean we should?  This technological future, though perhaps possible, should not be preferable.  The technologies that Kurzweil speaks of are dangerous, presenting a new type of threat that we have not before faced as humans — and the risks of pursuing them far outweigh the benefits.

If we are to continue down Kurzweil’s path, we may be able to pursue remarkable things conceived of mostly so far in science fiction — a future where we are no longer humans at all, but artifacts of our own technological creations.  But if we are to heed Joy’s and Eckersley’s views, we would practice saying enough is enough – we would say we have sufficient technology to live reasonably happy lives, and by encouraging the development of these new technologies, we might be unleashing entities of pandora’s box that could put humanity in ruins forever.  We would say, Yes, there is tremendous promise in these technologies; but there is more so a tremendous risk.  We need to hold fast to the human values of restraint and temperance, lest we find ourselves equipped with the capacity to alter ourselves and the world, and yet unable to handle or control that immense power.

So the camps seem to be these: Kurzweil believes technology reduces suffering, and that we should pursue it for that reason to any end – even until we are no longer human, but become technology ourselves.  (Indeed, he feels we have a moral imperative to pursue them for this reason.)  Joy believes there are too many dangers in this type of future.  And Eckersley asks, why would we want this future, anyway?  I am left thinking about a number of things:

First, I am intrigued by Kurzweil’s unwavering love for technology — because it seems to me like technology has both its strengths and its weaknesses, and that such faith in a technological system greatly overinflates the capacities of technology to cure all of the world’s problems while overlooking its very real drawbacks. I wonder about putting so much faith in technology, to solve all our ills, and replace all our deficiencies.  Is it really such a healing, improving force?  Would it really be possible to achieve this technological utopia without some potentially disastrous consequences?

I also can’t help but wonder what role technology, as its own force, plays in this debate.  People often fear about rebellious robots or artificially intelligent beings taking over; but is technology already, in a sense guiding us, in control of us, instead of us controlling it?  It seems harder and harder to resist the grip of technology, even as we face a future that, as Joy says, “no longer needs us.”  Isn’t there something a bit strange about humans contemplating–and preferring– a post-human future?  Does it indicate, in some sense, that technology has already overtaken man, and is gearing us down a path until it fully reigns supreme?

I am also left wondering, in part because of the aforementioned reason, whether it is possible to forego the development of certain technologies, as Joy suggests, given our current track record and inclinations towards the use of technology.  It always seems with technology that if we have the capacity to do something, then we inevitably will.  Is it possible to stop the development of technology, especially if that means also giving up some of its potential benefits?  And if we aren’t drawing the line at genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, does that mean we will never actually draw a line?  What does that say about human nature — that we forever seek this sort of “technological progress”, even when it robs us of what we currently conceive of as making us human?  Are there core values to being human that will persevere, or are we really just a fleeting blip in the evolutionary climb towards becoming transhumans?

Concluding Thoughts

The ideas Kurzweil puts forth as his vision of our future really forces one to consider what things about being human seem worth holding onto (if any). And even if his predictions don’t materialize in the way or the time frame he anticipates, it does seem undeniable that we are at a critical turning point in our species’ history.  Indeed, the decisions we choose to make now in regards to these fundamentally “reshaping” technologies will  affect generations to come in a profound way– generations whose lives will be radically different based on what roads we choose to go down in regards to genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology.

But making these choices is not strictly a “technical” task, concerned merely with what we are able to, technologically speaking, accomplish; rather, it really requires us to decide our core beliefs about what makes a good life; to consider what is worth risking about being human beings, not only to alleviate suffering but also to engage in these “self-enhancing technologies” that will supposedly make us stronger, smarter, and less destructible; and to grapple with these fundamental questions of life and death that are not technological issues but rather metaphysical ones.  Indeed, it’s no small philosophical feat to reshape and change the human genome; it’s no small feat to create artificial beings smarter than human beings; and it’s no small feat to eradicate what has, since the birth of mankind, defined our human experience: the fleeting nature of life, and the inevitability of death.  Taking this power and control into our own hands requires not just the capability to achieve extended life from a technical standpoint, but a completely redefined scope of who we are, what we want, and what our purpose is on this planet.

There are questions, of course, about the moral decision of living forever.  What would we do about overpopulation — would we stop procreating completely? Does a person living now have more of a right to be alive than a person who hasn’t been born yet?  Where would we derive purpose from in life if there was no end point? These would all be real questions to consider in this type of scenario; and they are questions that would require real reflection.  With a reshaped experience of what it means to be human, we would be required to make decisions about our lives that we’ve never even had to consider making before.

But if Kurzweil is correct, then never have we had such power over our own destinies.  In Kurzweil’s world, there is no higher power or God divining our life course, nor is there an afterlife or Heaven worth gaining entrance to.  The biological and technical underpinnings of life are, in his view, manipulatable at our will; we can defy what some might call our “God- given” biology and we can become our own makers.  We can even make our own rules.  And along with that power, would come the responsibility to answer some very weighty philosophical questions, for nothing else would be determining those answers for us.

My question is, do we really want that responsibility?  Are we really equipped to handle that type of power? And furthermore, does getting caught up in all the ways these technologies could “enhance” our lives –in getting caught up in the idea that all technological innovation is definitively progress — are we less and less able to step back and ask the philosophical and ethical questions about if this is really what a good life looks like?

Questions:

When you envision our technological future, do you share Kurzweil’s dreams?  Joy’s fears?  Eckersley’s questions about our human values being lost?

Should we place limits on certain technologies, given the dangers they present?  Are there any types of technologies we simply shouldn’t pursue?

In the 2004 film I, Robot, Will Smith’s character Detective Spooner harbors a deep grudge for all things technological — and turns out to be justified after a new generation of robots engage in a full out, summer blockbuster-style revolt against their human creators.

Why was Detective Spooner such a Luddite–even before the Robots’ vicious revolt?  Much of his resentment stems from a car accident he endured in which a robot saved his life instead of a little girl’s.  The robot’s decision haunts Smith’s character throughout the movie; he feels the decision lacked emotion, and what one might call ‘humanity’.

“I was the logical choice,” he says. “(The robot) calculated that I had a 45% chance of survival.  Sarah only had an 11% chance.”  He continues, dramatically, “But that was somebody’s baby.  11% is more than enough.  A human being would’ve known that.”

But what, exactly, is it that the human being would’ve known?  And how would they have known it?

Humans seem equipped to solve ethical dilemmas by relying on biological and socialized intuitions, intuitions that supplement logic with humanity, mere numbers with emotion.  While the robot made ethical decisions based on narrow algorithms of numerical inputs and outputs, the human makes ethical decisions based on a wider range of factors, drawing from wells of varying experiences, prejudices, and conceptions of justice.  One person might evaluate the situation from a rights perspective, while another might imagine himself or herself in the position and use empathy as a rationale.  Whatever the conclusion, the human agent would engage in a complex process of thinking, feeling, and imagining — a process that relies on a set of moral intuitions and intellectual rubrics we refer to broadly as a “moral compass.”

Would it be possible for a robot to have a moral compass, too?  And if so, what would it look like? In their seminal book on robot ethics entitled “Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong,” Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen discuss the very real, very pressing questions posed by the immediate future of robotics, in which moral decision making extends beyond the realm of human beings to what Wallach and Allen call “artifical moral agents” — non-human moral machines that make decisions with ethically significant repercussions.

Though fully conscious robots are still confined to science fiction, consider some of the following examples of “moral machines” in today’s world:

Wendell Wallach is a consultant and writer affiliated with Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics; Colin Allen is a Professor of Cognitive Science and History & Philosophy of Science in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington.  They are co-authors of the book “Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong” and maintain a blog on related topics at MoralMachines.blogspot.com.  This post is the introductory chapter of their book, reprinted here with their permission.

Introduction To Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong

By Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen

In the Affective Computing Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), scientists are designing computers that can read human emotions. Financial institutions have implemented worldwide computer networks that evaluate and approve or reject millions of transactions every minute. Roboticists in Japan, Europe, and the United States are developing service robots to care for the elderly and disabled. Japanese scientists are also working to make androids appear indistinguishable from humans. The government of South Korea has announced its goal to put a robot in every home by the year 2020. It is also developing weapons-carrying robots in conjunction with Samsung to help guard its border with North Korea. Meanwhile, human activity is being facilitated, monitored, and analyzed by computer chips in every conceivable device, from automobiles to garbage cans, and by software “bots” in every conceivable virtual environment, from web surfing to online shopping. The data collected by these (ro)bots—a term we’ll use to encompass both physical robots and software agents—is being used for commercial, governmental, and medical purposes.

All of these developments are converging on the creation of (ro)bots whose independence from direct human oversight, and whose potential impact on human well-being, are the stuff of science fiction. Isaac Asimov, over fifty years ago, foresaw the need for ethical rules to guide the behavior of robots. His Three Laws of Robotics are what people think of first when they think of machine morality.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Asimov, however, was writing stories. He was not confronting the challenge that faces today’s engineers: to ensure that the systems they build are beneficial to humanity and don’t cause harm to people. Whether Asimov’s Three Laws are truly helpful for ensuring that (ro)bots will act morally is one of the questions we’ll consider in this book.

Within the next few years, we predict there will be a catastrophic incident brought about by a computer system making a decision independent of human oversight. Already, in October 2007, a semiautonomous robotic cannon deployed by the South African army malfunctioned, killing 9 soldiers and wounding 14 others—although early reports conflicted about whether it was a software or hardware malfunction. The potential for an even bigger disaster will increase as such machines become more fully autonomous. Even if the coming calamity does not kill as many people as the terrorist acts of 9/11, it will provoke a comparably broad range of political responses. These responses will range from calls for more to be spent on improving the technology, to calls for an outright ban on the technology (if not an outright “war against robots”).

Today’s systems are approaching a level of complexity that requires the systems themselves to make moral decisions

A concern for safety and societal benefits has always been at the forefront of engineering. But today’s systems are approaching a level of complexity that, we argue, requires the systems themselves to make moral decisions—to be programmed with “ethical subroutines,” to borrow a phrase from Star Trek. This will expand the circle of moral agents beyond humans to artificially intelligent systems, which we will call artificial moral agents (AMAs).

We don’t know exactly how a catastrophic incident will unfold, but the following tale may give some idea.
Monday, July 23, 2012, starts like any ordinary day. A little on the warm side in much of the United States perhaps, with peak electricity demand expected to be high, but not at a record level. Energy costs are rising in the United States, and speculators have been driving up the price of futures, as well as the spot price of oil, which stands close to $300 a barrel. Some slightly unusual automated trading activity in the energy derivatives markets over past weeks has caught the eye of the federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but the banks have assured the regulators that their programs are operating within normal parameters.

At 10:15 a.m. on the East Coast, the price of oil drops slightly in response to news of the discovery of large new reserves in the Bahamas. Software at the investment division of Orange and Nassau Bank computes that it can a turn a profit by emailing a quarter of its customers with a buy recommendation for oil futures, temporarily shoring up the spot market prices, as dealers stockpile supplies to meet the future demand, and then selling futures short to the rest of its customers. This plan essentially plays one sector of the customer base off against the rest, which is completely unethical, of course. But the bank’s software has not been programmed to consider such niceties. In fact, the money-making scenario autonomously planned by the computer is an unintended consequence of many individually sound principles. The computer’s ability to concoct this scheme could not easily have been anticipated by the programmers.

Unfortunately, the “buy” email that the computer sends directly to the customers works too well. Investors, who are used to seeing the price of oil climb and climb, jump enthusiastically on the bandwagon, and the spot price of oil suddenly climbs well beyond $300 and shows no sign of slowing down. It’s now 11:30 a.m. on the East Coast, and temperatures are climbing more rapidly than predicted. Software controlling New Jersey’s power grid computes that it can meet the unexpected demand while keeping the cost of energy down by using its coal-fired plants in preference to its oil-fired generators. However, one of the coal-burning generators suffers an explosion while running at peak capacity, and before anyone can act, cascading blackouts take out the power supply for half the East Coast. Wall Street is affected, but not before SEC regulators notice that the rise in oil future prices was a computer-driven shell game between automatically traded accounts of Orange and Nassau Bank. As the news spreads, and investors plan to shore up their positions, it is clear that the prices will fall dramatically as soon as the markets reopen and millions of dollars will be lost. In the meantime, the blackouts have spread far enough that many people are unable to get essential medical treatment, and many more are stranded far from home.

Detecting the spreading blackouts as a possible terrorist action, security screening software at Reagan National Airport automatically sets itself to the highest security level and applies biometric matching criteria that make it more likely than usual for people to be flagged as suspicious. The software, which has no mechanism for weighing the benefits of preventing a terrorist attack against the inconvenience its actions will cause for tens of thousands of people in the airport, identifies a cluster of five passengers, all waiting for Flight 231 to London, as potential terrorists. This large concentration of “suspects” on a single flight causes the program to trigger a lock down of the airport, and the dispatch of a Homeland Security response team to the terminal. Because passengers are already upset and nervous, the situation at the gate for Flight 231 spins out of control, and shots are fired.

By the time power is restored to the East Coast and the markets reopen days later, hundreds of deaths and the loss of billions of dollars can be attributed to the separately programmed decisions of these multiple interacting systems

An alert sent from the Department of Homeland Security to the airlines that a terrorist attack may be under way leads many carriers to implement measures to land their fleets. In the confusion caused by large numbers of planes trying to land at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, an executive jet collides with a Boeing 777, killing 157 passengers and crew. Seven more people die when debris lands on the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights and starts a fire in a block of homes.

Meanwhile, robotic machine guns installed on the U.S.-Mexican border receive a signal that places them on red alert. They are programmed to act autonomously in code red conditions, enabling the detection and elimination of potentially hostile targets without direct human oversight. One of these robots fires on a Hummer returning from an off-road trip near Nogales, Arizona, destroying the vehicle and killing three U.S. citizens.

By the time power is restored to the East Coast and the markets reopen days later, hundreds of deaths and the loss of billions of dollars can be attributed to the separately programmed decisions of these multiple interacting systems. The effects continue to be felt for months.

Time may prove us poor prophets of disaster. Our intent in predicting such a catastrophe is not to be sensational or to instill fear. This is not a book about the horrors of technology. Our goal is to frame discussion in a way that constructively guides the engineering task of designing AMAs. The purpose of our prediction is to draw attention to the need for work on moral machines to begin now, not twenty to a hundred years from now when technology has caught up with science fiction.

The field of machine morality extends the field of computer ethics beyond concern for what people do with their computers to questions about what the machines do by themselves. (In this book we will use the terms ethics and morality interchangeably.) We are discussing the technological issues involved in making computers themselves into explicit moral reasoners. As artificial intelligence (AI) expands the scope of autonomous agents, the challenge of how to design these agents so that they honor the broader set of values and laws humans demand of human moral agents becomes increasingly urgent.

Does humanity really want computers making morally important decisions? Many philosophers of technology have warned about humans abdicating responsibility to machines. Movies and magazines are filled with futuristic fantasies about the dangers of advanced forms of artificial intelligence. Emerging technologies are always easier to modify before they become entrenched. However, it is not often possible to predict accurately the impact of a new technology on society until well after it has been widely adopted. Some critics think, therefore, that humans should err on the side of caution and relinquish the development of potentially dangerous technologies. We believe, however, that market and political forces will prevail and will demand the benefits that these technologies can provide. Thus, it is incumbent on anyone with a stake in this technology to address head-on the task of implementing moral decision making in computers, robots, and virtual “bots” within computer networks.

As noted, this book is not about the horrors of technology. Yes, the machines are coming. Yes, their existence will have unintended effects on human lives and welfare, not all of them good. But no, we do not believe that increasing reliance on autonomous systems will undermine people’s basic humanity. Neither, in our view, will advanced robots enslave or exterminate humanity, as in the best traditions of science fiction. Humans have always adapted to their technological products, and the benefits to people of having autonomous machines around them will most likely outweigh the costs.

If humanity is to avoid the consequences of bad autonomous artificial agents, people must be prepared to think hard about what it will take to make such agents good.

However, this optimism does not come for free. It is not possible to just sit back and hope that things will turn out for the best. If humanity is to avoid the consequences of bad autonomous artificial agents, people must be prepared to think hard about what it will take to make such agents good.

In proposing to build moral decision-making machines, are we still immersed in the realm of science fiction—or, perhaps worse, in that brand of science fantasy often associated with artificial intelligence? The charge might be justified if we were making bold predictions about the dawn of AMAs or claiming that “it’s just a matter of time” before walking, talking machines will replace the human beings to whom people now turn for moral guidance. We are not futurists, however, and we do not know whether the apparent technological barriers to artificial intelligence are real or illusory. Nor are we interested in speculating about what life will be like when your counselor is a robot, or even in predicting whether this will ever come to pass. Rather, we are interested in the incremental steps arising from present technologies that suggest a need for ethical decision-making capabilities. Perhaps small steps will eventually lead to full-blown artificial intelligence—hopefully a less murderous counterpart to HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey—but even if fully intelligent systems will remain beyond reach, we think there is a real issue facing engineers that cannot be addressed by engineers alone.

Is it too early to be broaching this topic? We don’t think so. Industrial robots engaged in repetitive mechanical tasks have caused injury and even death. The demand for home and service robots is projected to create a worldwide market double that of industrial robots by 2010, and four times bigger by 2025. With the advent of home and service robots, robots are no longer confined to controlled industrial environments where only trained workers come into contact with them. Small robot pets, for example Sony’s AIBO, are the harbinger of larger robot appliances. Millions of robot vacuum cleaners, for example iRobot’s “Roomba,” have been purchased. Rudimentary robot couriers in hospitals and robot guides in museums have already appeared. Considerable attention is being directed at the development of service robots that will perform basic household tasks and assist the elderly and the homebound. Computer programs initiate millions of financial transactions with an efficiency that humans can’t duplicate. Software decisions to buy and then resell stocks, commodities, and currencies are made within seconds, exploiting potentials for profit that no human is capable of detecting in real time, and representing a significant percentage of the activity on world markets.

Automated financial systems, robotic pets, and robotic vacuum cleaners are still a long way short of the science fiction scenarios of fully autonomous machines making decisions that radically affect human welfare. Although 2001 has passed, Arthur C. Clarke’s HAL remains a fiction, and it is a safe bet that the doomsday scenario of The Terminator will not be realized before its sell-by date of 2029. It is perhaps not quite as safe to bet against the Matrix being realized by 2199. However, humans are already at a point where engineered systems make decisions that can affect humans’ lives and that have ethical ramifications. In the worst cases, they have profound negative effect.

Is it possible to build AMAs? Fully conscious artificial systems with complete human moral capacities may perhaps remain forever in the realm of science fiction. Nevertheless, we believe that more limited systems will soon be built. Such systems will have some capacity to evaluate the ethical ramifications of their actions—for example, whether they have no option but to violate a property right to protect a privacy right.

The task of designing AMAs requires a serious look at ethical theory, which originates from a human-centered perspective. The values and concerns expressed in the world’s religious and philosophical traditions are not easily applied to machines. Rule-based ethical systems, for example the Ten Commandments or Asimov’s Three Laws for Robots, might appear somewhat easier to embed in a computer, but as Asimov’s many robot stories show, even three simple rules (later four) can give rise to many ethical dilemmas. Aristotle’s ethics emphasized character over rules: good actions flowed from good character, and the aim of a flourishing human being was to develop a virtuous character. It is, of course, hard enough for humans to develop their own virtues, let alone developing appropriate virtues for computers or robots. Facing the engineering challenge entailed in going from Aristotle to Asimov and beyond will require looking at the origins of human morality as viewed in the fields of evolution, learning and development, neuropsychology, and philosophy.

Reflection about AMAs forces one to think deeply about how humans function, which human abilities can be implemented in the machines humans design, and what characteristics truly distinguish humans from new forms of intelligence that humans create

Machine morality is just as much about human decision making as about the philosophical and practical issues of implementing AMAs. Reflection about and experimentation in building AMAs forces one to think deeply about how humans function, which human abilities can be implemented in the machines humans design, and what characteristics truly distinguish humans from animals or from new forms of intelligence that humans create. Just as AI has stimulated new lines of enquiry in the philosophy of mind, machine morality has the potential to stimulate new lines of enquiry in ethics. Robotics and AI laboratories could become experimental centers for testing theories of moral decision making in artificial systems.

Three questions emerge naturally from the discussion so far. Does the world need AMAs? Do people want computers making moral decisions? And if people believe that computers making moral decisions are necessary or inevitable, how should engineers and philosophers proceed to design AMAs?

Chapter Overviews

Chapters 1 and 2 are concerned with the first question, why humans need AMAs. In chapter 1, we discuss the inevitability of AMAs and give examples of current and innovative technologies that are converging on sophisticated systems that will require some capacity for moral decision making. We discuss how such capacities will initially be quite rudimentary but nonetheless present real challenges. Not the least of these challenges is to specify what the goals should be for the designers of such systems—that is, what do we mean by a “good” AMA?

In chapter 2, we will offer a framework for understanding the trajectories of increasingly sophisticated AMAs by emphasizing two dimensions, those of autonomy and of sensitivity to morally relevant facts. Systems at the low end of these dimensions have only what we call “operational morality”—that is, their moral significance is entirely in the hands of designers and users. As machines become more sophisticated, a kind of “functional morality” is technologically possible such that the machines themselves have the capacity for assessing and responding to moral challenges. However, the creators of functional morality in machines face many constraints due to the limits of present technology.

The nature of ethics places a different set of constraints on the acceptability of computers making ethical decisions. Thus we are led naturally to the question addressed in chapter 3: whether people want computers making moral decisions. Worries about AMAs are a specific case of more general concerns about the effects of technology on human culture. Therefore, we begin by reviewing the relevant portions of philosophy of technology to provide a context for the more specific concerns raised by AMAs. Some concerns, for example whether AMAs will lead humans to abrogate responsibility to machines, seem particularly pressing. Other concerns, for example the prospect of humans becoming literally enslaved to machines, seem to us highly speculative. The unsolved problem of technology risk assessment is how seriously to weigh catastrophic possibilities against the obvious advantages provided by new technologies.

How close could artificial agents come to being considered moral agents if they lack human qualities, for example consciousness and emotions? In chapter 4, we begin by discussing the issue of whether a “mere” machine can be a moral agent. We take the instrumental approach that while full-blown moral agency may be beyond the current or future technology, there is nevertheless much space between operational morality and “genuine” moral agency. This is the niche we identified as functional morality in chapter 2. The goal of chapter 4 is to address the suitability of current work in AI for specifying the features required to produce AMAs for various applications.

Having dealt with these general AI issues, we turn our attention to the specific implementation of moral decision making. Chapter 5 outlines what philosophers and engineers have to offer each other, and describes a basic framework for top-down and bottom-up or developmental approaches to the design of AMAs. Chapters 6 and 7, respectively, describe the top-down and bottom-up approaches in detail. In chapter 6, we discuss the computability and practicability of rule- and duty-based conceptions of ethics, as well as the possibility of computing the net effect of an action as required by consequentialist approaches to ethics. In chapter 7, we consider bottom-up approaches, which apply methods of learning, development, or evolution with the goal of having moral capacities emerge from general aspects of intelligence. There are limitations regarding the computability of both the top-down and bottom-up approaches, which we describe in these chapters. The new field of machine morality must consider these limitations, explore the strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches to programming AMAs, and then lay the groundwork for engineering AMAs in a philosophically and cognitively sophisticated way.

What emerges from our discussion in chapters 6 and 7 is that the original distinction between top-down and bottom-up approaches is too simplistic to cover all the challenges that the designers of AMAs will face. This is true at the level of both engineering design and, we think, ethical theory. Engineers will need to combine top-down and bottom-up methods to build workable systems. The difficulties of applying general moral theories in a top-down fashion also motivate a discussion of a very different conception of morality that can be traced to Aristotle, namely, virtue ethics. Virtues are a hybrid between top-down and bottom-up approaches, in that the virtues themselves can be explicitly described, but their acquisition as character traits seems essentially to be a bottom-up process. We discuss virtue ethics for AMAs in chapter 8.

Our goal in writing this book is not just to raise a lot of questions but to provide a resource for further development of these themes. In chapter 9, we survey the software tools that are being exploited for the development of computer moral decision making.

The top-down and bottom-up approaches emphasize the importance in ethics of the ability to reason. However, much of the recent empirical literature on moral psychology emphasizes faculties besides rationality. Emotions, sociability, semantic understanding, and consciousness are all important to human moral decision making, but it remains an open question whether these will be essential to AMAs, and if so, whether they can be implemented in machines. In chapter 10, we discuss recent, cutting-edge, scientific investigations aimed at providing computers and robots with such suprarational capacities, and in chapter 11 we present a specific framework in which the rational and the suprarational might be combined in a single machine.

In chapter 12, we come back to our second guiding question concerning the desirability of computers making moral decisions, but this time with a view to making recommendations about how to monitor and manage the dangers through public policy or mechanisms of social and business liability management.

Finally, in the epilogue, we briefly discuss how the project of designing AMAs feeds back into humans’ understanding of themselves as moral agents, and of the nature of ethical theory itself. The limitations we see in current ethical theory concerning such theories’ usefulness for guiding AMAs highlights deep questions about their purpose and value.

Some basic moral decisions may be quite easy to implement in computers, while skill at tackling more difficult moral dilemmas is well beyond present technology. Regardless of how quickly or how far humans progress in developing AMAs, in the process of addressing this challenge,humans will make significant strides in understanding what truly remarkable creatures they are. The exercise of thinking through the way moral decisions are made with the granularity necessary to begin implementing similar faculties into (ro)bots is thus an exercise in self-understanding. We cannot hope to do full justice to these issues, or indeed to all of the issues raised throughout the book. However, it is our sincere hope that by raising them in this form we will inspire others to pick up where we have left off, and take the next steps toward moving this project from theory to practice, from philosophy to engineering, and on to a deeper understanding of the field of ethics itself.

To Order “Moral Machines”, please click here.

Questions:

Should we develop Artificial Moral Agents?  If so, what ethical decisions do you think robots should be permitted to make?What ethical principles should guide their behavior?

How much responsibility should AMAs have for their actions?  If a robot commits a crime, who should be held responsible?  (For example, if a military robot kills an innocent civilian, who is responsible for that death?  The robot, or the person who programmed it?)  If the robot has moral culpability, does the robot also deserve rights?

Nanotech Self-Assemblers.  Genetically Engineered Offspring.  Full     Immersion Virtual Reality. Robots That Can Think.

It’s easy to dismiss many of these “future technologies” as the stuff of     science fiction, existing only in the ‘advanced’ societies we’ve seen       rendered in the movies.  But Ray Kurzweil, famous futurist and author   of “The Singularity Is Near,” believes we are at a precipice of a technological revolution where nanotechnology, information   technology, and artificial intellegience will, over the next few decades, develop at such a fast rate that the human race will soon be faced with a fundamentally restructured way of living. He declares that we are entering into “an era in which our intelligence will become   increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today–the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity.

Kurzweil takes an extreme view, and whether or not this type of “singularity” will occur remains to be seen; however, it is certain that technology will continue to advance.  And yet, we aren’t going to wake up one morning and suddenly live in a transformed society.  Kurzweil concedes, “It’s not like we’re going to go along and nothing’s going to happen and then suddenly we’re going to take this huge leap to super intelligent machines. We’re gonna get from here to there through thousands of little steps.”

So what steps are being taken right now, and to what sort of future?  How do we examine these technologies in a morally principled way as they are developing, so that we can influence the direction they ultimately go in?

Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems co-founder and author of the essay, “Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us,” explains the importance of evaluating these ethical issues while these technologies are in development, and before they become integrated into society.  After they are released into society, it becomes nearly impossible to  backtrack:

“Ideas can’t be put back in a box…once they are out, they are out.” He says. “Churchill remarked, in a famous left-handed compliment, that the American people and their leaders “invariably do the right thing, after they have examined every other alternative.” In this case, however, we must act more presciently, as to do the right thing only at last may be to lose the chance to do it all…”

He continues:

“The experience of the atomic scientists clearly show the need to take personal responsibility, the danger that things will move too fast, and the way in which a process can take on a life of its own.  We can, as they did, create insurmountable problems in almost no time flat.  We must do more thinking up front if we are not to be similarly surprised and shocked by the consequences of our inventions.”

How can we best assess the ethical issues posed by nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology by taking the “personal responsibility” that Joy speaks of? Are there certain technologies that we shouldn’t pursue, and if so, why?  We will be exploring the future of technology – and what we can do to handle it responsibly and ethically—here at The Technological Citizen.

Watch an interview with Ray Kurzweil below:

The Technological Citizen is a forum to explore and exchange ideas about the issues that arise from modern technologies. A wide variety of topics will be explored, including the ethics of cognitive enhancement, genetic testing, and biotechnologies, as well as the way in which technology impacts our relationship with other people, the environment, and ourselves.

Postings will fall under five basic categories:

Technology and Society
Technology and The Environment
Neuroethics
Ethical Issues in Health and Biotechnology
The Future of Technology

If you are interested in seeing all the posts on one particular topic, please click on that topic heading under “Categories”.

Thanks for checking out the blog! I look forward to hearing your ideas about these topics.