Technologists & Ethicists

Stephen L. Anderson laments inadequate moral insight among tech leaders.

- Stephen L. Anderson

For many of us the world's first global pandemic for a century was a watershed moment. The Covid-19 crisis was plausibly claimed to have been caused by risky 'gain-of-function research': that is, through the deliberate enhancing of viruses. That would be a tremendous technological achievement, but also an ominous one. It would also be a global example of what can happen when human technical ability is untethered from adequate moral reflection: global disaster. Nor is this the first time we've glimpsed how terrifying human invention can be. As Robert Oppenheimer famously exclaimed when the first nuclear bomb was detonated, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." He wasn't kidding. Due partly to his assistance, we are now indeed capable of destroying all life on this planet. None of us can doubt anymore that the entire world has a stake in seeing technology managed well.

I was reminded of this again when reading two books about AI: Michael Kanaan's T-Minus AI (2020) and John Lennox's 2084 (2024). The central concern of both is the disconnect between the impact of our global computer technologies and the ethics required to manage them. Kanaan is more guardedly positive about the possibilities of AI, whereas Lennox is less enthused; but both express similar serious hesitancies about where AI is about to take us all.