Prosthetic Gods

Tech Policy Under Trump 2

Episode 8 - Tech Policy Under Trump 2
Nir and J. talk about the prospects for tech policy under Trump's second term. They discuss the new administration's attitudes toward content moderation, what the next four years mean for Artificial Intelligence, and Elon Musk's potential influence on tech policy moving forward. 
Credits:Hosted by James Hughes and Nir EisikovitsProduced by Jake BurleyMusic by Jake Burley

Supersoldiers

Episode 7 - Supersoldiers 
Nir and J. discuss ethical issues surrounding so-called super soldiers and human augmentation in warfare.
Additional Resources:
Human Augmentation - The Dawn of a New Paradigm
Can A.I. Be Blamed for a Teen’s Suicide?
 
 
Credits:
Hosted by James Hughes and Nir EisikovitsProduced by Jake BurleyMusic by Jake Burley

Moral Machines

Episode 6 - Moral Machines
In this episode, Nir and J. discuss whether machines can be moral. What does it take for something to be a moral patient or moral subject? Can morality be distilled down to a set of rules? Is the red-teaming and safety testing of large language models a way to teach machines morality? 
Additional Resources:
Moral Machines by Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach
 
Credits:
Hosted by James Hughes and Nir EisikovitsProduced by Jake BurleyMusic by Jake Burley

Artificial General Intelligence

Prosthetic Gods: Artificial General Intelligence
In this episode of Prosthetic Gods, J. Hughes and Nir Eisikovits dive into artificial general intelligence (AGI), AI that has reached a human level of consciousness and common sense. Is AI currently a "philosophical zombie," mimicking human behavior without true awareness? Will AGIs be the perfect 24/7 slaves, replacing expensive humans in workplace? Would AGI be the beginning of AI evolving beyond human control? 
Also, check out this week’s Ethics in Action podcast conversation with philosopher Susan Schneider: https://ethics.podbean.com/e/ai-consciousness-and-the-future-mind-a-conversation-with-susan-schneider/
Hosted by: James Hughes and Nir EisikovitsProduced by: Jake BurleyMusic by: Jake Burley

AI Clones

AI Clones 
This week Drs. Nir and J. discuss the concept of AI clones with postdoctoral fellow Cody Turner, and in particular the short podcast series Shell Game from journalist Evan Ratliff. Will AI clones augment or disorient us? Our bonus round discusses J’s recent piece of “free IVF.”
Links: 
Shell Game podcast  https://www.shellgame.co/podcast
Vapi voice clone: https://vapi.ai/
“Digital Duplicates and the Scarcity Problem: Might AI Make Us Less Scarce and Therefore Less Valuable?” by John Danaher & Sven Nyholm   https://philpapers.org/rec/DANDDA-3
“Free IVF? Technoprogressive policy and reproductive rights” by J. Hughes https://ieet.substack.com/p/fertility-assistance-reproductive
 

Bad Knowledge

Can There Be Bad Knowledge?
In medical ethics there are debates about when people should be encouraged to get tested for diseases or conditions for which there is no therapy, such as Alzheimer’s disease. In the case of knowing you have a risk or diagnosis of incurable disease, is ignorance really bliss, or does “true happiness” require knowledge? What are the ethics of these "bad knowledge" situations?
How early is too early to find out you've got an incurable disease?https://www.wired.com/story/alzheimers-disease-dementia-medicine-prediction-ethics/
 
The Woman Who Could Smell Parkinson’shttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/magazine/parkinsons-smell-disease-detection.html
 
Lightning Round
Google hires Character.AI foundershttps://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/02/google-character-ai-noam-shazeer/
https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-appoints-former-characterai-founder-co-lead-its-ai-models-2024-08-23/
 

Digital Democracy

Taiwan’s Experiments with E-democracy:
Can AI be good for democracy? Taiwan has been experimenting with digital democracy for a decade. In this week’s Prosthetic Gods Nir and J review the advantages and disadvantages of using electronic tools for citizen participation in politics. And we also talk about the Harris Zoom rallies and the Google anti-trust case.
Tools for Citizen Participation:
Taiwan has experimented with two platforms for engaging citizens in collaborative policymaking, vTaiwan and Join. 
vTaiwan uses the online deliberation system Pol.is to map opinions and promote consensus views, and it has been used on issues such as drafting Uber regulations. 
https://info.vtaiwan.tw/
https://pol.is/home
https://congress.crowd.law/case-vtaiwan.html
On join.gov.tw, Taiwan’s citizens can file petitions, and when they gather 5,000 signatures, ministries hold face-to-face discussions about them. 
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9530852
Former digital minister, Audrey Tang  
https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2024/05/22/audrey-tang-learning-from-taiwans-digital-civic-experimentation/
Citizen Tech NGOs: g0v (gov-zero): The civic tech community in Taiwan that collaborates with the government to create open-source tools for transparency and citizen participation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G0v

Would You Want a Chatbot Therapist?

ieet.org/white-papers
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/experimentations/202407/what-if-artificial-intelligence-replaces-human-therapists
www.npr.org/transcripts/1247296788