This
week’s Nature has a section on ethical
aspects of robotics and artificial intelligence. Reading this article, the
associated comments, and the accompanying special section on Machine
Intelligence in this week’s issue, has left me deeply concerned. The
accelerating capabilities of both individual intelligent machines and the
Internet itself raise all sorts of questions about whether human beings will be
better off or not if artificial intelligence continues to evolve in its current
uncontrolled fashion. It seems we need a
measured assessment of both the potentials and hazards of this thrust before we
proceed much further. Clearly it is always difficult to accurately anticipate
the path of an emerging technology and to create guidelines concerning its
development and implementation. Nonetheless society has done this previously in
the context of other transformative technologies such as nuclear weapons and
genetic engineering. Although there is plenty of hype in the media, it surprises
me how little the issue of Artificial Intelligence has been addressed by
ethicists or by governmental bodies.
This blog will deal with the social, economic and public policy implications of contemporary science and technology with an emphasis on biomedical aspects.
Friday, May 29, 2015
Friday, May 22, 2015
Antibiotic Resistance: Big Pharma Fails to Address the Challenge
A recent report in SCIENCE
is another example of ‘Big Pharma’ failing to address important public health
issues. The problem of resistance to
conventional antibiotics is reaching crisis proportions, accelerated by the
widespread use of antibiotics in mass agriculture. The technology to develop
powerful new drugs is there, but the profit motivation is not. In many respects this situation is similar to
the problem of developing medications for diseases such as malaria that
primarily affect poorer countries and thus provide little opportunity for large
profits. It is encouraging to learn that some governments are seeking ways to
break the roadblock on antibiotic development. However, is this enough? One might argue that this key area of drug
research be pursued through innovative public funding rather than be left to
the dictates of Wall Street.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6237/850.full
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6237/850.full
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