Notre Dame's Reilly Center serves up fourth annual list of science/tech headaches
You think you have problems? Sure you do, but pity those in science and technology tasked with advancing artificial intelligence, drones and healthcare methods that are fraught with peril despite potentially huge benefits.
The University of Notre Dame’s John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values has issued its fourth annual list of emerging ethical dilemmas and policy issues in science and technology, and it contains some doozies. It might have seemed tough to top some of 2016’s issues, from lethal cyberweapons to bone conduction for marketing, but no sweat. Of course the Notre Dame center’s researchers hope to be able help address some of these new concerns.
MORE: 2017 tech outlook — and saving predictions from the digital dustbin
Here’s a quick look at the 2017 list:
Brain hacking – Watch out for your privacy if certain wearable devices — those that read brain waves — are infiltrated.
Reanimating cryonics – About that brain: Some foresee freezing brains to download the good stuff from them into computers down the road.
The self-healing body – More bot threats and promise here — we’re talking tiny bots that flow through your blood or attach to your nerve endings to regulate your body before bad things happen.
NeuV’s “emotion engine” – While it might be obvious to other drivers how you’re feeling when you drive, this AI/robotics/big data combo makes your car sensitive to your feelings, too.
Swarm warfare – DARPA would love to get hundreds or thousands of drones working together on the battlefield.
Edublocks – In about a decade, the sharing economy could extend to those willing to share their knowledge to those who need to learn.
Medical ghost management – As if the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t already work in mysterious ways, outfits are emerging that orchestrate “a comprehensive program for controlling the dissemination of medical research.”
Predicting criminality – Taking profiling to another level? Researchers have published findings in which they claim computers could be used to detect a criminal based on facial features.
Automated politics – This will hit close to home for many in the United States in the wake of the recent presidential election. We’re talking about sprawling Twitter bots aimed at disseminating information and “news” to mess with voters’ minds and alter public opinion.
The robot cloud – Robots are expected to swipe jobs from many, and that could even include programmers once robots start to use the cloud to share information with each other.
You can vote on which issues you think the public needs to discuss most, and perhaps not surprisingly, the smallish crowd that has voted so far wants to talk about automated politics.
