Month: February 2017

After reading the Bicentennial Man, I was taken back at the racism presented in the story towards Andrew. While he doesn’t have the same biological make-up that humans do, he still possesses intellect, creative skill, and emotion. He even was a well respected inventor and honored scientist for his work in robobiology. Yet, besides the support from George, Paul and Little Miss, Andrew struggles to reach his goal of becoming a human in the eyes of the law, a process that takes 200 years to complete. It’s only when Andrew receives surgery to his positronic brain that forces him to die on his 200th birthday does the court and society agree to grant him citizenship and being deemed a human. Simply because he wasn’t made of cells like we humans are, Andrew was considered a lesser members of society by the government and the people. This novelette resonates currently with the social issues of today, particularly with the election of Donald Trump to the presidential office. After banning citizens from 7 countries and constantly bringing up the idea of building a wall, he has created a distinction in our social hierarchy, deeming some individuals and groups of individual unfit to enter our country simply because of differences in skin tones and culture. Just as Andrew was thought of us lesser than humans, minority groups in the US and around the world are being shunned and discriminated against for cultural practices and the destructive work of a few bad apples. The protest this morning, February 17, as well as the walk out a few weeks ago, makes me very proud of our campus and community. It’s inspiring to see students, professors, and faculty alike coming together to protest the events that have taken place in the past months as well try to think of solutions to make our school and nation a more welcoming place. It’s frightening to think that many international students from the 7 banned countries fear going home and not being allowed to return and receive an education. Students from this school probably are in a similar position, and I couldn’t imagine the stress and fear I’d being feeling in these times.

These events and the Bicentennial Man remind me of a short story I read in an English literature class last semester titled “The Appropriation of Cultures.” In the story set in the late1900s, an African American man named Daniel buys a truck with a confederate flag on the rear window. Initially, his town and community members—white and black alike—were shocked at his display of the flag, often questioning his intentions. However, Daniel sees the flag as a symbol of African American pride, and soon, the entire African American community adopts his use of the flag, displaying it on cars, at universities, and at their homes. And eventually, the symbol loses its hate, racist connotation and becomes a symbol for African Americans to rally behind, a transition that promotes the South Carolina government to finally lower the Confederate flag from their capital building. In the Bicentennial Man, Andrew embraces his role as a robot, reading literature and inventing in order to become a member of society. His desire to be human was driven by a goal of being included in society, just as the confederate flag dissipated some racial tensions and caused a more equal balance in society in “The Appropriation of Cultures.” In today’s hectic world, we need to rally together and symbolize our disgust and anger at the actions that have occurred in our country. The protest have brought us together to find solutions to make society equal for all and to have the interest of each and every human at mind when making decisions.

Tesla and other leading car companies have made strides in self-driving car technology that will greatly improve our quality of life, but will also lead to ethical dilemmas. Men and women will be able to get ready for work on their commute, and high school kids will be able to do homework on the way to school. However, new technology has always created new problems. In this case, it brings up problems with human life. In a split second, how will a computer choose between the life of the driver, and a passenger on the street?   Their needs to be a certain universal code set into law by the government, states, or the UN. This also leads to problems about jurisdiction on the restraints on self-driving cars that will need to be addressed.

There are many situations that will be seen as grey areas. One example is that the car will probably be programmed in the self-interest of the driver, meaning that if there is one person in the car, and one person in the street, it will crash itself in the interest of the driver. But, it will need a optional self-harm program if there are two people in the street, and only one driver in the car, because this would make the most sense. However, I would think that this would make the driver uncomfortable, since they are shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars for this new technology. If they are paying a high premium for this luxury, they are not going to want the car to choose to kill the driver (or get in a very expensive accident) instead of killing two people that they do not know. It will decrease sales if the consumers know that it could be potentially very dangerous, which will influence the car makers to program the cars with minimal self harm tendencies. Many people will think of this as a moral dilemma, and will not trust the technology, which is why government needs to take a role in regulating this new technology.

The amount of people harmed also needs to be taken into account, and the “quality” of each individual, before this technology is released.  By quality I mean whether the woman is pregnant, or if the individual is a thief. Once computers are advanced enough to be able to detect the quality of each individual, and somehow quantity the opportunity cost of each situation, I would feel much more comfortable with having them on the streets. Maybe there is a point system, and if the individual is pregnant they would have more points because they are carrying another life in them, while humans with felonies on their record have a lower amount of points. Quantifying human life itself feels unethical, which is why there might not be a good answer to this dilemma. There are many questions to think about with rapid growth in technology.

This week we discussed about our thoughts on ethics and consciousness. On the surface these two things don’t seem related but after reading The Bicentennial Man, I realized the two are tightly intertwined. I first came to this conclusion when in class someone said something along the lines of “If I were to kill a robot but no one could tell it was a robot, I would be charged with murder but if from the start people knew it was a robot, I would be fine”. This made me realize that what we deem ethical and non-ethical all depends on what we deem conscious and non-conscious.  This means that if the victim of your actions is conscious enough to realize you’ve wronged them then your actions are unethical, but if the victim of your actions does not have enough consciousness to realize what you’ve done to them is wrong than what you’ve done is ethical. In the past this hasn’t mattered much because the line between being conscious and not being conscious has been clear, but with the robot revolution beginning  this is a concept that will have to be looked at deeper.

The Bicentennial man also was a good example of how consciousness can someone make some non-optimal decisions. In my paper for last week I wrote about how consciousness made the human race inefficient.  It makes us want pleasure and gives us the choice to risk our lives for it. This is the same for Andrew Martin once he becomes conscious. He willingly gives up the chance to live forever just so he can be labeled as human. Ironically this was a very human decision of him.

One of the things that struck me so much during our discussions this week is the degree to which the ethical theories we discussed narrow our views of the world and how we react to current events. After this realisation and the discussion in class surrounding the example of the police providing the FBI with access to part of their systems in an attempt to decrease acts of terrorism, I found that some of my classmates were more able to solve the dilemma using certain theories which I myself had not considered, and have since taken it upon myself to attempt to look at dilemmas and conflicts around the Bucknell campus and the world today. While I found that I was able to reorient my personal set of morals and way of thinking in order to think and solve problems using a particular theory, there were several which I found particularly difficult to wrap my head around and get in the mind set of. The most challenging one for me was the divine command theory. I believe that this particular theory proved to be so challenging for me due to the fact that while the moral values laid out in most religions are core beliefs which are consistent throughout most societies, I was unable to justify these morals on the basis of religion. Having studies so many religions throughout my academic career, I found it difficult to think of a religion which was able to resolve the ethical dilemmas I came across without having violated the core moral values for personal gain throughout history. This then lead me to the realisation that, like the laws which govern robots in Asimov’s The Bicentennial Man, there is a hierarchy within moral values, which, more often than not throughout history, has shown to value individual gain above all else. Thus, if people are able to justify their actions in response to the ethical dilemmas they might face by relying on the justification of some ethical theory, and possess a hierarchy of moral values geared towards self-advancement, it stands to reason that we be unable to solve even the smallest problem, let alone an ethical dilemma.

In addition to our discussion of ethics, I found our discussion of the Bicentennial Man to be quite thought provoking. In particular, I thought it interesting how Asimov chose robots and a futuristic society as a medium through which he might comment on the social issues of the time. For example, during the 1950’s, when Asimov’s short story came out, the civil rights movement was beginning to gain momentum, and just as colour of skin was becoming a hot topic in the United States, so was it a topic of focus in the story. Time and again Asimov mentioned Andrew’s “skin”, that being his bronze complexion. And while the story was written sixty years ago, the topics raised are still applicable, not only in the United States, but around the world. One such item is the extent to which Andrew is willing to shed his previous identity and all of who he was, except his brain, in exchange for an organic android body which more closely represented a human form. This changing of appearance is happening all around the world where white is still seen as the superior being to the extent that, particularly women, are willing to change their natural hair and bleach their skin in an attempt to get a leg up in society by seeming more white. As upsetting as this notion is, it is not occurring in isolate cases, and while the United States may claim to be discrimination free with regards to race, that is simply not the case.

In class Tuesday, we discussed the meaning of morality and the values associated with the meaning. Professor Perrone began the class by asking what society was. From my own perspective, I though of a society as a group of people interacting for a common good. As a class, we were able to agree on the fact that society differs with each nation. For example, the social norms in Brazil are totally different from the social norms in the United States. What citizens of each nation wear to the beach is a prime example of this. Although social norms are distinct in each country, people share a list of common core of values. Some of these values include; not killing others, not depriving freedom, and being honest. Many of the common core values people believe in constitute as laws. However, something may be lawful but immoral. An example of this would be the Jim Crow laws passed in the 1880s. Although blacks and whites are equal as humans, this law legalized the segregation between the two ethnicities because of skin color. The Jim Crow laws are what we refer to as a moral dilemma. Later on in class, we established the difference between morals and ethics. Morals are defined as rules that allow us to get along. Ethics are simply a means to which we solve a moral dilemma. In the case of the Jim Crow laws, the case which ended the moral dilemma was Brown vs. Board of Education. The case involved a young black woman being enrolled into a predominantly white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. From this case, the Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. This hearing proved to be the ethical solution to the problem. A theory which we discussed as a class towards the end of the period was Rawl’s Theory of Justice. This theory is composed of two points. The first one states that one’s claims for “adequate” rights and benefits must be consistent with the claims of others. The second point explains that inequalities are only fair if everyone has equal opportunities for growth and if the inequalities benefit the least advantaged. During the Jim Crow laws, it is clear that this theory wasn’t in effect within United States. However, with the aid of individuals leading the civil rights movement, Rawl’s Theory of Justice quickly came into play in the United States.