Treatments Approved, Boosts Eschewed: Moral Limits of Neurotechnological Enhancement

Abstract

<p>Through five experimental studies we measured moral reactions to brain implants. We used three different measurements: 1) moral approval, or the general acceptance of brain-enhancing implants and people getting such implants, 2) perceived unfairness of the enhancement and 3) dehumanization of persons using brain implants. In our vignettes, the enhancement was on one of three levels: a) it alleviated an ailment, b) it gave optimal human level performance or c) it gave superhuman performance. Studies 1 to 4 were about memory enhancement, Study 5A about en-hancing general intelligence and Study 5B about enhancing emotional stability.We successfully showed that moral approval, sense of fairness and dehumanization are rele-vant in contexts where moral implications of new technologies are being evaluated and that while people generally approve of curing ailments, they are more cautious of unfamiliar levels of en-hancement. Furthermore, we linked the tendency to condemn transhumanist technologies to fac-tors associated with disgust sensitivity (the binding orientation of the Moral Foundations Theory and sexual disgust) and found that science fiction hobbyism is linked to approval of brain im-plants. We also successfully ruled out possible idiosyncrasies associated with our stimulus materi-als and eliminated multiple alternative explanations common in the study of moral cognition</p>

The shallow of your smile: the ethics of expressive vocal deep-fakes

“…The marginal positive association with MFQ PU differed from other studies of similar technologies where purity was found negatively correlated with acceptability (e.g. mind upload [ 28 ]; sex robots [ 30 ]).

Figure 3 Moral judgements of overt and covert use of voice transformations.

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“…A recently emerging methodology for doing so is that of experimental ethics, in which moral judgements about various situational vignettes are collected from relatively large samples of online participants. In recent years, this methodology has been applied to quantify societal attitudes towards new technologies such as autonomous vehicles [ 16 ] or brain stimulation [ 26 ], potential public policies such as legalizing payments to kidney donors [ 27 ], but also downright futuristic scenarios such as mind upload [ 28 ], sex robots [ 29 ] or cognitive enhancement with brain implants [ 30 ] ( figure 1 d ). The experimental ethics approach allows comparing different situation variants that may make or break dilemmas (e.g.…”

“…), participants are widely reported to be more comfortable with technologies that enhance capacities towards the norm (i.e. that are used therapeutically) than above the norm [ 30 , 33 ]. Finally, to the best of our knowledge, there is no straightforward equivalent in the literature of whether, e.g.…”

How Pills Undermine Skills: Moralization of Cognitive Enhancement and Causal Selection

“…Purity-minded individuals were more likely to condemn enhancement users, regardless of whether cognitive enhancement was normal or rare. This categorical opposition may elucidate the origin of conservative bioethicists' (e.g., Kass, 2003) attitudes toward human enhancement: i.e., in self-directed norms regulating the proper care of one's own body (see also Koverola et al, 2021). Finally, whereas explicit reasoning about interpersonal concerns and the unjust treatment of others accompanied fairness-based opposition, our qualitative analyses data did not reveal a cogent, purity-based rationale-which could be interpreted as evidence that purity-based opposition is not guided by moral reasoning to the same degree (Mihailov, 2016).…”

Socio-cognitive biases in folk AI ethics and risk discourse

“…It is plausible that some people are cautious towards many or most AI applications, but due to being highly optimistic about a particular application which appears more salient to them personally (e.g., from the perspective of safety), are perhaps overoptimistic and insufficiently cautious about AI development in general. Science fiction hobbyism predicts more positive attitudes towards robots regardless of whether the sci-fi portrays robots in a positive (Star Trek) or negative light (Terminator) [95,96,100,102]. The mere presence of extreme wish fulfillment scenarios may bias us to approach a scenario less cautiously.…”