Ethics and drugs

We felt that Bolshevism had invaded our sanctuary.” So wrote the author AG Gardiner on visiting the Oval cricket ground in 1924. What had brought the world crashing down in south London? The Gentlemen and Players had come out together. Gentlemen in cricket were the amateurs, Players the professionals. They normally entered the field of play through different gates. Not this time.

The demarcation between amateur and professional was, for decades, one of the great ethical lines of sport. The American Jim Thorpe was stripped of two gold medals at the 1912 Olympic Games because he had once been paid $25 playing baseball. In rugby union, as late as 1981, two England internationals, Bill Beaumont and Fran Cotton, were banned for 10 years for receiving royalties from their autobiographies.

Today’s great ethical debate is not about payment but drugs. Last week, the digital, culture, media and sport select committee accused Bradley Wiggins of “crossing the ethical line” for allegedly misusing drugs allowed for medical purposes to enhance performance.

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PR strategy?

Technology companies seem to have a bad reputation at the moment. Whether through honest mistakes or more intentional oversights, the likes of Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter have created distrust among consumers.

But as technology develops, and as we hand over more control to artificial intelligence and machines, it becomes difficult for developers to foresee the negative consequences or side-effects that might arise.

In October 2017, the AI company DeepMind, a subsidiary of Google, created an ethics group made up of employees and external experts called DeepMind Ethics & Society.

But are these groups any more than a PR strategy?

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Deep Mind

Three years ago, artificial intelligence research firm DeepMind was acquired by Google for a reported £400m. As part of the acquisition, Google agreed to set up an ethics and safety board to ensure that its AI technology is not abused.

The existence of the ethics board wasn’t confirmed at the time of the acquisition announcement, and the public only became aware of it through a leak to industry news site The Information. But in the years since, senior members of DeepMind have publicly confirmed the board’s existence, arguing that it is one of the ways that the company is trying to “lead the way” on ethical issues in AI.

But in all that time DeepMind has consistently refused to say who is on the board, what it discusses, or publicly confirm whether or not it has even officially met. The Guardian has asked DeepMind and Google multiple times since the acquisition on 26 January 2014 for transparency around the board, and received just one answer on the record.

In January 2016, during a press conference in which DeepMind announced that its AlphaGo system had successfully defeated a high-level human player at the ancient board game Go, the Guardian asked DeepMind co-founder and chief executive Demis Hassabis whether it would make any information about the ethics board public.

“We have convened our ethics board, that’s progressing very well,” Hassabis replied. “It’s an internal board, so confidential matters are discussed on that. And so far, we feel that a lot of it, the purpose of the board currently is to educate the people on that board as to the issues and bring everyone up to speed.

“So there hasn’t really been anything major yet that would warrant announcing in any way. But in the future we may well talk about those things more publicly,” he added.

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Divestment

Divestment has become a trillion-dollar topic in recent years – boycotting companies considered harmful has never been more popular: Israeli exporters, arms makers, and fossil fuel producers, among others.

Across the world more than 800 institutions, with total investments valued at $6tn, have committed to divest from fossil fuels.

But where do investors put their money instead? Are companies that benefit thriving? In short, is ethical investing making a difference?

Definitions of this sector vary, as do monikers – ethical, environmental, sustainable. But they can be broadly categorised as “socially responsible investment”, or SRI.

Among the many estimates of the power of private investment, the most plausible is that this kind of investment jumped to 10% of private funds under management in recent years, after slumming along at long-term levels of below 4%.

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A desirable goal?

The aims of the transhumanist movement are summed up by Mark O’Connell in his book To Be a Machine, which last week won the Wellcome Book prize. “It is their belief that we can and should eradicate ageing as a cause of death; that we can and should use technology to augment our bodies and our minds; that we can and should merge with machines, remaking ourselves, finally, in the image of our own higher ideals.”

The idea of technologically enhancing our bodies is not new. But the extent to which transhumanists take the concept is. In the past, we made devices such as wooden legs, hearing aids, spectacles and false teeth. In future, we might useimplants to augment our senses so we can detect infrared or ultraviolet radiation directly or boost our cognitive processes by connecting ourselves to memory chips. Ultimately, by merging man and machine, science will produce humans who have vastly increased intelligence, strength, and lifespans; a near embodiment of gods.

Is that a desirable goal?

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