I, you, AI — ethics for biomedical technologies
By : Michael Gibb
The trolley problem is a well-known dilemma in ethics. According to the situation presented, you have the power to flick a switch to stop a trolley hitting, let’s say, five adults on a railway track. But if redirected, the trolley will hit a small child on a side track. What do you do? Save five adults and sacrifice a child, or vice versa?
Updated to today’s world of artificial intelligence (AI), the trolley problem raises a debate about ethics, suggests Dr Lin Fen, Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communication: How do you programme an automated vehicle to respond to comparable problems on the road?
“Driverless cars will need to make decisions that involve ethics when avoiding crashes. This is not just an engineering problem for the makers of driverless cars but an ethical question that we need to respond to,” says Dr Lin, who participated in an international workshop on ethics and artificial intelligence held by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) at CityU over the summer.
Technology and ethics
The CLASS workshop focused on a very specific problem in AI: the ethics of biomedical technology. Professor Fan Ruipeng, Chair Professor in the Department of Public Policy (POL), coordinated the workshop, stating that it set out to examine “perplexing ethical challenges posed by the recent development of biomedical technologies and artificial intelligence”.
Some 18 scholars from Australia, Italy, Japan, US as well as mainland China and Hong Kong, discussed topics ranging from biotechnology, genetics, and the family; the determination of death by AI; interreligious perspectives on emerging technologies; how AI would enhance trends altering the clinician—patient relation; whether parents should design their children’s genome; and several other daunting ethical questions thrown up by AI technology.
An illustration of how ethical issues are inherent in so many areas of biomedical concern is seen in Professor Fan’s current General Research Fund project on incentives for organ donation. Decisions about organ donation often depend on how we understand death since an organ such as a heart should come from someone who is not alive. But advances in neuroscience through AI are changing our definitions of death. Finely tuned AI technology is scrutinising what we mean by brain death and death from cardiac arrest, and questions are now raised as to what exactly it means to be “dead”. AI has shown that even after a person is “dead” there can be signals from the body to suggest life.
Another ethical issue raised by Professor Fan is one of identity following transplants. “I’m the co-principal investigator for a US-funded interdisciplinary project on the bioethics of wholebody transplants and head transplants,” says Professor Fan, a topic that, while apparently remote in terms of viability, and controversial in terms of ethics, raises issues about identity, self and consciousness.
“Who is the ‘person’ if a head is transplanted to another body? Different cultures can have different ideas about what and who is the person after a head transplant,” Professor Fan suggests.
Meanwhile, in his talk at the workshop, Professor Zhang Yuanting, Chair Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, emphasised the challenges in bioethics. In his examination of the ethics of using AI in combating heart disease, he argued that there was a lack of agreement on ethical guidelines in emerging technologies, which might lead to conflict over issues such as data privacy and the acquisition of data.
Ethics across the disciplines
What’s striking about CityU’s involvement in helping to unpack these bioethical topics at the workshop is the interdisciplinary background of the CityU participants.
Professor Fan researches Confucian bioethics, Chinese and comparative philosophy, and ethics and public policy. Professor Zhang works in biomedical fields, and Dr Chan Ho-mun, Associate Professor in POL, writes about, among other areas, healthcare policy and ethics; Dr Lawrence Yung Yeuk-yu, teaches applied ethics, public policy, social and political philosophy in POL; and Dr Franz Mang Fan-lun, Assistant Professor in POL, looks at social and political philosophy, and comparative philosophy. Meanwhile, Dr Lin comes from an economics, statistics, sociology and media background.
So whereas Dr Lin might use AI and big data to explore social and culture change, Professor Zhang is researching areas such as the ethics of cerebro-cardiovascular health technology and artificial intelligence, while POL scholars tend towards the philosophical approach.
The CLASS workshop showed how CityU could bring together a richly varied set of researchers to debate relevant topics from a multitude of perspectives.
Ethics and cultural background
In keeping with CityU’s emphasis on bringing together diverse voices, opinions and approaches, some of the discussion around the summer workshop suggested how cultural background was an important factor when looking at ethics and biotechnology. In particular, there was an interesting debate about views from the East and West.
“Those looking at Confucian value systems might focus on how AI can improve family life and happiness as well as cross-generational justice,” says Dr Mang of POL. “So people influenced by Confucian thought look at AI in terms of whether it will be used to abuse family values in any way.”
A person’s background would also shape her or his attitude towards another topic concerning technology and ethics that was discussed at a second international workshop held by CLASS over the summer. This time the focus was on the social impacts of sex robots and the future of human relations.
Coordinated once more by Professor Fan, the conference concerned how sex robots could influence human intimacy and how contemporary societies should formulate appropriate policy on the development of sex robots.
“Critics argue that sex robots should be banned because they desensitise human intimacy and empathy, are demeaning to women and children, and damage human relations, while proponents contend that sex robots can provide helpful companion and emotional services to elderly individuals with dementia or depression, for instance,” says Professor Fan.
CityU researchers plan an interdisciplinary, international research project on how sex robots influence human intimacy; how sex robots might affect relationships inside the family; and whether sex robots demean women.
So, going back to the driverless cars and trolley problem, how will we programme AI to make ethical decisions about safety and health? The onus might be placed on the consumer one day.
“There are suggestions for engineers to design both versions, thus transforming the responsibility of ethical choices to consumers,” says Dr Lin.
“But will that be the ultimate solution? We can’t help wondering.”