Can We Develop and Test Machine Minds and Uploads Ethically?

Can We Develop and Test Machine Minds and Uploads Ethically?

A fundamental principle of bioethics requires the consent of a patient to any medical procedure performed upon them. A new patient will exist the moment a conscious mindclone arises in some academic’s laboratory or hacker’s garage. At that moment, ethical rules will be challenged, for the mindclone has not consented to the work being done on eir mind. Does this situation create a catch-22 ethical embargo against developing cyber-consciousness?

There are at least three ways to answer this challenge.  First, it can be approached with a medical ethics focus on the mindclone itself.   Second, it can be approached philosophically – focusing on the mindclone as just part and parcel of the biological original.  Third, it can be approached pragmatically – what will the government likely require?

Creating Ethical Beings Ethically

How can it be ethical to test mindclone-creating mindware when any resulting mindclone has not first consented to being the subject of such an experiment?  How will we know we have mindware that creates an ethically-reasoning mindclone if it is not ethical to even do the tests and trials?

As to the first question, ethicists agree that someone else can consent to a treatment for a person who is unable to consent.  For example, the parents of a newborn child can consent to experimental medical treatment for them.  The crucial criterion is that the consenter must have the best interests of the patient in mind, and not be primarily concerned with the success of a medical experiment.  One of the purposes of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or medical review committee is to exercise this kind of consent on behalf of persons who cannot give their consent.  Hence, having a responsible committee act on their behalf solves the problem of ethical consent for the birth of a mindclone or beman.

Sometimes people complain that they “did not ask to be born.”  Yet, nobody has an ethical right to decide whether or not to be born, as that would be temporally illogical.  The solution to this conundrum is for someone else to consent on behalf of the newborn, whether this is done implicitly via biological parenting, or explicitly via an ethics committee.  In each case there is a moral obligation (which can be enforced legally today for biological parents) to avoid intentionally causing harm to the newborn.   We are now ready to turn to the second question:  how can an ethics committee, acting on behalf of the best interests of future mindclones or bemans, avoid causing harm to them?

One possible solution to ethically developing mindclones is to take the project in stages.  The first stage must not rely upon self-awareness or consciousness.  This would be based upon first developing the autonomous, moral reasoning ability that is a necessary, but not sufficient, basis for consciousness.  Recall from Question 5 that consciousness is a continuum of maturing abilities, when healthy, to be autonomous and empathetic, with autonomous defined as:  “the independent capacity to make reasoned decisions, with moral ones at the apex, and to act on them.”  Independent means, in this context, “capable of idiosyncratic thinking and acting.