Why a Virtual Assistant for Moral Enhancement When We Could have a Socrates?

This article was written as a part of the research project Digital Ethics. Moral Enhancement through an Interactive Use of Artificial Intelligence (PID2019-104943RB-I00), funded by the State Research Agency of the Spanish Government. The author is very grateful for the helpful suggestions and comments given on earlier versions of this paper by Jon Rueda, Juan Ignacio del Valle, Blanca Rodriguez, Miguel Moreno and Jan Deckers.Can Artificial Intelligence (AI) be more effective than human instruction for the moral enhancement of people? The author argues that it only would be if the use of this technology were aimed at increasing the individual’s capacity to reflectively decide for themselves, rather than at directly influencing behaviour. To support this, it is shown how a disregard for personal autonomy, in particular, invalidates the main proposals for applying new technologies, both biomedical and AI-based, to moral enhancement. As an alternative to these proposals, this article proposes a virtual assistant that, through dialogue, neutrality and virtual reality technologies, can teach users to make better moral decisions on their own. The author concludes that, as long as certain precautions are taken in its design, such an assistant could do this better than a human instructor adopting the same educational methodology.State Research Agency of the Spanish Government PID2019-104943RB-I0

Artificial Intelligence as a Socratic Assistant for Moral Enhancement

The moral enhancement of human beings is a constant theme in the history of humanity. Today, faced with the threats of a new, globalised world, concern over this matter is more pressing. For this reason, the use of biotechnology to make human beings more moral has been considered. However, this approach is dangerous and very controversial. The purpose of this article is to argue that the use of another new technology, AI, would be preferable to achieve this goal. Whilst several proposals have been made on how to use AI for moral enhancement, we present an alternative that we argue to be superior to other proposals that have been developed

Neurorehabilitation of Offenders, Consent and Consequentialist Ethics

The new biotechnology raises expectations for modifying human behaviour through its use. This article focuses on the ethical analysis of the not so remote possibility of rehabilitating criminals by means of neurotechnological techniques. The analysis is carried out from a synthetic position of, on the one hand, the consequentialist conception of what is right and, on the other hand, the emphasis on individual liberties. As a result, firstly, the ethical appropriateness of adopting a general predisposition for allowing the neurorehabilitation of prisoners only if it is safe and if they give their consent will be defended. But, at the same time, reasons will be given for requiring, in certain circumstances, the exceptional use of neurotechnology to rehabilitate severely psychopathic prisoners, even against their will, from the same ethical perspective.This article was written as a part of the research project Digital Ethics.Moral Enhancement through an Interactive Use of Artificial Intelligence (PID2019-104943RB-I00), funded by the State Research Agency of the Spanish Government. Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Granada / CBU

Moral Bioenhancement of Psychopathic Offenders. Technological and Ethical Aspects

Los avances científicos auguran la posibilidad de mejorar capacidades de relevancia moral por medio de tratamientos neurológicos. Los objetivos de este artículo serán dos. Primero, el de determinar hasta qué punto estas nuevas tecnologías podrían modificar ciertas disfunciones neurales de los psicópatas, que son las responsables de su tendencia a la criminalidad. Se considerarán, en particular, como la farmacología y las técnicas de estimulación transcraneal pueden paliar la falta de prudencia, el exceso de agresividad y la ausencia de empatía. El segundo objetivo será el de evaluar éticamente el uso de tales tecnologías biomédicas para la rehabilitación de estos individuos. Para ello, se derivarán dos requisitos a partir de un criterio de “tratamiento abierto” y se comprobará si los cumplen las expuestas biomejoras de personas psicopáticas. Se concluirá que solo en ciertos casos tales requisitos se cumplirán y que, cuando así sea, será justo conceder a estas personas los mecanismos biológicos que a los demás nos permiten ser básicamente autónomos.Scientific progress leads to expect the possibility of enhancing moral abilities through neurological treatments. This article explores the extent to which such progress could be applied in the rehabilitation of psychopathic offenders. The goal is to answer the question of whether that biotechnological application is ethical.Proyectos de investigación BioEthAI+ (FFI2016-79000-P) y EthAI+ (PID2019-104943RB-I00) Agencia Estatal de Investigación (10.13039/501100011033) del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Gobierno de España

AI‑powered recommender systems and the preservation of personal autonomy

Recommender Systems (RecSys) have been around since the early days of the Internet, helping users navigate the vast ocean of information and the increasingly available options that have been available for us ever since. The range of tasks for which one could use a RecSys is expanding as the technical capabilities grow, with the disruption of Machine Learning representing a tipping point in this domain, as in many others. However, the increase of the technical capabilities of AI-powered RecSys did not come with a thorough consideration of their ethical implications and, despite being a well-established technical domain, the potential impacts of RecSys on their users are still under-assessed. This paper aims at filling this gap in regards to one of the main impacts of RecSys: personal autonomy. We first describe how technology can affect human values and a suitable methodology to identify these effects and mitigate potential harms: Value Sensitive Design (VSD). We use VSD to carry out a conceptual investigation of personal autonomy in the context of a generic RecSys and draw on a nuanced account of procedural autonomy to focus on two components: competence and authenticity. We provide the results of our inquiry as a value hierarchy and apply it to the design of a speculative RecSys as an exampleUniversidad de Granada/ CBUAAgencia Estatal de Investigación (PID2019-104943RB-I00) FEDER/ Junta de Andalucía (B-HUM-64- UGR20

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements