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New moral codes needed
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LOCATIONS UK 110 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6EU Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 8559 Fax +61 2 9422 8552 USA 50 Hampshire St, Floor 5, Cambridge, MA 02139 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 Subscription Service For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Telephone +44 (0) 330 333 9470 Email [email protected] Web newscientist.com/subscribe Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH One year subscription (51 issues) UK £150
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© 2017 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. New Scientist (Online) ISSN 2059 5387 Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Williams Gibbons (Wolverhampton)
New moral codes needed Innovators should not reshape society just because they can SHOULD the wealthy live longer? recent years, most of the running Of course, they – or rather we – has been made by “can”. Creating already do. People born in rich the ability to do something has countries can look forward to become conflated with the right longer lives than those born in to do it. This is in many respects a poor ones. Now that gap is good thing: New Scientist has long widening within societies, advocated controlled innovation as well as between them. and experimentation as a route to If you need drugs to keep you a better world for everybody. alive, your access to medicine But unbridled innovation leads depends on which insurance you to social upheaval. Politicians and can afford, or perhaps on winning regulators, dazzled by the pace of the “postcode lottery”. That trend innovation and seduced by the is set to accelerate with the advent megabucks that follow it, have in of medicine explicitly designed to extend life (see page 22). If it is “The ability to do something has been conflated with costly, the rich will get to live longer than the poor; if it is cheap, the right to do it, even if it leads to social upheaval” the demographic challenges of greying populations will be many areas allowed innovators to exacerbated. Which option – “move fast and break things”, if either – should we aim for? trusting that common sense and This is by no means the only market forces will ensure nothing epic moral quandary we face as important gets too badly broken we enter 2017. In fact, they loom along the way. That trust would everywhere. Should a would-be appear to have been misplaced. autocrat be free to broadcast As this attitude has spread from falsehoods directly to millions digital technology to transport, over social media? Who should healthcare, the environment and design the logic underpinning beyond, consensus has begun to life-and-death decisions made break down about fundamental by self-driving cars (see page 36)? precepts of our societies: the Should a government be able to equality of human lives, the value eavesdrop on every electronic communication its citizens make? of work and wages, the nature of free speech, and so on. What’s notable about these Scientists are often accused of questions is a word that’s falling trying out things just because out of public debate: “should”. In
they can, but in fact experiments that raise moral concerns are first vetted by ethics committees. Medicine is governed by codes of conduct: first, do no harm. These systems aren’t perfect – they can be opaque and overly risk-averse – but they are far more robust and accountable than the ethical void that has opened up in innovation. There are signs this is changing. An open conversation is emerging about the new rules of the road in the age of self-driving cars. Google has an ethics board overseeing its AI activities – although it is far from clear what this actually does. And politicians have started to call for transparency about how our data is used to make algorithmic decisions about our lives. The morality of these and many other technologies is in need of urgent discussion: policymakers need to stop dozing at the wheel; and innovators need to listen to ethicists, rather than funders and founders. To be clear, what we need is renewed moral discussion, not “traditional” moral values, which are often not equal to the challenges and opportunities we face today. That will not be easy: millions prefer tradition to new thinking, and turning mores into code will not be easy either. But we can do it if we put our minds to it – and we really should. n 7 January 2017 | NewScientist | 5
LEADER
LOCATIONS UK 110 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6EU Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 8559 Fax +61 2 9422 8552 USA 50 Hampshire St, Floor 5, Cambridge, MA 02139 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 Subscription Service For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Telephone +44 (0) 330 333 9470 Email [email protected] Web newscientist.com/subscribe Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH One year subscription (51 issues) UK £150
cONTACTS Contact us newscientist.com/contact Who’s who newscientist.com/people General & media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] UK Newsstand Tel +44 (0) 20 3787 9001 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, 2nd Floor, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London E14 5HU Syndication Tribune Content Agency Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588 [email protected] New Scientist Live Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1273 [email protected]
© 2017 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. New Scientist (Online) ISSN 2059 5387 Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Williams Gibbons (Wolverhampton)
New moral codes needed Innovators should not reshape society just because they can SHOULD the wealthy live longer? recent years, most of the running Of course, they – or rather we – has been made by “can”. Creating already do. People born in rich the ability to do something has countries can look forward to become conflated with the right longer lives than those born in to do it. This is in many respects a poor ones. Now that gap is good thing: New Scientist has long widening within societies, advocated controlled innovation as well as between them. and experimentation as a route to If you need drugs to keep you a better world for everybody. alive, your access to medicine But unbridled innovation leads depends on which insurance you to social upheaval. Politicians and can afford, or perhaps on winning regulators, dazzled by the pace of the “postcode lottery”. That trend innovation and seduced by the is set to accelerate with the advent megabucks that follow it, have in of medicine explicitly designed to extend life (see page 22). If it is “The ability to do something has been conflated with costly, the rich will get to live longer than the poor; if it is cheap, the right to do it, even if it leads to social upheaval” the demographic challenges of greying populations will be many areas allowed innovators to exacerbated. Which option – “move fast and break things”, if either – should we aim for? trusting that common sense and This is by no means the only market forces will ensure nothing epic moral quandary we face as important gets too badly broken we enter 2017. In fact, they loom along the way. That trust would everywhere. Should a would-be appear to have been misplaced. autocrat be free to broadcast As this attitude has spread from falsehoods directly to millions digital technology to transport, over social media? Who should healthcare, the environment and design the logic underpinning beyond, consensus has begun to life-and-death decisions made break down about fundamental by self-driving cars (see page 36)? precepts of our societies: the Should a government be able to equality of human lives, the value eavesdrop on every electronic communication its citizens make? of work and wages, the nature of free speech, and so on. What’s notable about these Scientists are often accused of questions is a word that’s falling trying out things just because out of public debate: “should”. In
they can, but in fact experiments that raise moral concerns are first vetted by ethics committees. Medicine is governed by codes of conduct: first, do no harm. These systems aren’t perfect – they can be opaque and overly risk-averse – but they are far more robust and accountable than the ethical void that has opened up in innovation. There are signs this is changing. An open conversation is emerging about the new rules of the road in the age of self-driving cars. Google has an ethics board overseeing its AI activities – although it is far from clear what this actually does. And politicians have started to call for transparency about how our data is used to make algorithmic decisions about our lives. The morality of these and many other technologies is in need of urgent discussion: policymakers need to stop dozing at the wheel; and innovators need to listen to ethicists, rather than funders and founders. To be clear, what we need is renewed moral discussion, not “traditional” moral values, which are often not equal to the challenges and opportunities we face today. That will not be easy: millions prefer tradition to new thinking, and turning mores into code will not be easy either. But we can do it if we put our minds to it – and we really should. n 7 January 2017 | NewScientist | 5