Technology & Ethics - Artificial Opinion

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The Robot Witness: Can Nonhumans Testify to Truth?

In a courtroom, testimony is not just information. It is a performance of credibility. A witness swears an oath, recounts events, faces cross-examination. The jury not only hears their words but weighs their character, gestures, tone. The law presumes that truth emerges from this human exchange. But what happens when the “witness” is a machine—an algorithm reconstructing a crime scene, a smart doorbell recording a suspect’s arrival, or an AI system generating transcripts from noisy audio? Can nonhumans testify?

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The Vanishing Password: What Happens When Identity Becomes Purely Biometric?

The password was always a flawed invention—forgotten, reused, stolen. Tech companies have long promised its replacement. That promise is now arriving, not with new strings of characters but with fingerprints, faces, and voices. Biometric authentication is moving from novelty to default. Airports scan irises, smartphones unlock with thumbprints, banks verify transactions with voice recognition. The password is vanishing. What remains is a more intimate question: what happens when our bodies become the only keys we hold?

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The Kill Switch Economy: What Happens When Devices Outlive Their Licenses?

You buy a car, but its software license expires. You own a phone, but the manufacturer disables it remotely when support ends. Increasingly, ownership no longer guarantees permanence. In a world of connected devices, companies retain the power to “switch off” products—even those you paid for—when they fall outside the official support window. Welcome to the kill switch economy, where the lifespan of your possessions is determined not by durability, but by code.

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Do Algorithms Deserve Transparency, or Do Citizens Deserve Obscurity?

In the debate over artificial intelligence, “transparency” has become the gold standard. Policymakers demand that algorithms reveal how they make decisions. Advocates insist that citizens have a right to know why a loan was denied or a parole application rejected. Yet beneath this demand lies a deeper, less examined question: should our priority be exposing the workings of machines—or protecting the opacity of human lives?

Do Algorithms Deserve Transparency, or Do Citizens Deserve Obscurity? Read More »

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Pandemic Patrimony: Who Owns the Cures After Global Crises?

By Dr. Amara VossWhen the first COVID-19 vaccines were authorized, syringes carried more than medicine—they carried the weight of ownership. A handful of pharmaceutical firms held patents, governments signed billion-dollar procurement deals, and global institutions scrambled to secure doses for the world’s poorest. The tension was stark: lifesaving knowledge, born in global emergency, was locked

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Prophets of the Algorithm: When Prediction Feels Like Divination

In the ancient world, kings consulted oracles before battle. Priests read entrails, astrologers charted the heavens, and prophets cast visions of futures to come. Today, executives and policymakers consult a different kind of oracle: predictive analytics. The data may come from credit histories, hospital records, or satellite feeds, but the promise is the same — foresight. In a world desperate for certainty, algorithms have become the new diviners, blurring the line between prophecy and probability.

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The Last Password: When Biometric Identity Can’t Be Changed

A forgotten password can be reset. A stolen credit card can be cancelled. But what happens when the key to your digital life is your fingerprint, your face, or the sound of your voice? In the rush to replace clunky logins with frictionless biometrics, societies are overlooking a troubling fact: biological identifiers cannot be revoked. Once compromised, they are compromised forever. The convenience of “you are the password” may also be its most enduring flaw.

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Rights for Robots, Duties for Designers?

If a machine acts, who bears the blame? The programmer who wrote its code? The company that deployed it? Or, in some conceivable future, the machine itself? As artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, the moral terrain grows murkier. The law has long assigned responsibility to human agents, but as AI systems generate outcomes that even their designers struggle to predict, the boundaries of accountability strain. Should rights be extended to robots? Or are we better served by sharpening the duties of their creators?

Rights for Robots, Duties for Designers? Read More »

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Genomic Firewalls: Who Decides Which DNA Gets Protected?

The double helix was once imagined as humanity’s shared blueprint — a universal language that transcended borders. Today, however, the world’s genetic material is increasingly treated like a strategic resource, fenced off by nations and corporations that claim ownership. As governments rush to secure genomic data, a pressing ethical question emerges: who decides which DNA deserves protection, and at what cost to global health equity?

Genomic Firewalls: Who Decides Which DNA Gets Protected? Read More »

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Amnesty for Algorithms: Should Code Be Forgiven Like Humans?

When a human being commits a crime, societies debate whether rehabilitation is possible. Can the wrongdoer change? Should they be forgiven? Now consider a flawed algorithm: a bail recommendation system that unfairly penalizes minorities, or a hiring tool that weeds out women’s résumés. If the code is patched, if its “bias” corrected, do we grant it amnesty? Or does the stain of its past errors linger, shaping how we judge its future use?

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