People are falling in love with their chatbots. There are now dozens of apps that offer intimate companionship with an AI-powered bot, and they have millions of users. A recent survey of users found that 19 per cent of Americans have interacted with an AI meant to simulate a romantic partner.

The response has been polarizing. In a New Yorker article titled “Your A.I. Lover Will Change You,” futurist Jaron Lanier argued that “when it comes to what will happen when people routinely fall in love with an A.I., I suggest we adopt a pessimistic estimate about the likelihood of human degradation.”

Podcaster Joe Rogan put it more succinctly — in a recent interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders, the two discussed the “dystopian” prospect of people marrying their AIs. Noting a case where this has already happened, Rogan said: “I’m like, oh, we’re done. We’re cooked.”

Read the full story at The Conversation Canada. 

College panels review a great deal of evidence to determine disciplinary action, some of which is not publicly released, so it can be difficult to know how they came to a decision, said Schafer.

In this case, he thinks the college did take steps to safeguard the public, referencing both interim conditions Ziesmann was under before the college’s March decision — including that he be monitored during surgeries while the college investigated — and the final decision to temporarily suspend him.

“That’s pretty rigorous,” Schafer said. “He will be more carefully monitored than maybe any other physician in the province.”

To read the entire article, please follow the link to CBC Manitoba.

“Good ethics requires good facts, and since he’s invited the courts to adjudicate it, the courts will look at the evidence. On the face of it, I find his claim quite implausible,” Schafer said.

The province must balance economic activity and environmental awareness with the protection of a delicate ecosystem, added the founder of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba.

To read the entire story, please follow the link to the Free Press.

“Patients often have to give intimate access to their bodies to the health-care professional. That makes privacy and confidentiality pretty close to ultimate values in health-care ethics,” he said.

“Any violation of that is extremely serious.”

To read the entire article, please follow the link to The Winnipeg Free Press. 

Neil McArthur, a philosophy professor and director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, joined BC Today’s Michelle Eliot to discuss whether politicians should ever accept these types of corporate gifts.

To listen to the conversation, please follow the link with CBC News

“I just go back to the idea that we should have more information about places that are taking care of our kids than places that are making our pizza,” said Dr. Neil McArthur, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba. He was referring to public health violations being readily available to Manitobans.

“There’s clearly a breakdown in transparency in a field where there needs to be transparency.”

McArthur said while the additional trackers could demonstrate the province is doing a good job of monitoring potentially problematic facilities, failing to provide the information means the public is unable to assess their value.

To read the entire article, please follow the link here with the Winnipeg Free Press.

For the last two and a half years, these executives (the former general manager, coach and senior hockey administrator) have been ineligible to work for any NHL club following what was described as their “inadequate response upon being informed in 2010 of allegations that Blackhawks’ Player [“John Doe 1”] had been assaulted by the Club’s video coach”.

Ethics professor, Arthur Schafer spoke with CJOB about what message this sends, discusses cancel culture and if the NHL made the right decision with their decision.

To listen to the full conversation with Jim Toth, please visit link here with CJOB.

“You’re (a parent) looking at 10 different child-care centres and you want to know which one will not electrocute my kid because it has open wiring or whatever,” McArthur said.

While parents can seek out inspection reports by requesting them from centres, they shouldn’t have to, he said. The child-care search process is already onerous enough, with wait lists of parents hoping to get into Manitoba centres stretching into the hundreds — per facility.

To read the full article, please visit the Winnipeg Free Press. 

Meanwhile, the scope and severity of inspection infractions are hidden behind a wall of regulatory ambiguity, leaving Manitoba parents in the dark about potential risks at their child’s care facility. The issue is buried in bureauracy to the point the province said it would take more than 8,000 hours — or the equivalent of four employees working an entire year — to compile three years’ worth of child-care centre inspection reports.

“Eight-thousand hours? That’s because they have neglected their obligation to parents for so long,” said Arthur Schafer, founding director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba. “Transparency and openness about this data is really important.”

To read the full article, please visit the Winnipeg Free Press. 

As a leading bioethicist, he has written and lectured extensively on medically assisted death in Canada, also known as MAID, and has helped shape national policy on it.

Earlier this year, the federal government wavered on implementing ground-breaking, but controversial new rules allowing for the possibility of MAID for patients suffering solely from severe mental illness — the second delay that has now pushed its implementation until 2027. It is only the latest chapter in what remains an evolving policy. 

To read the full article and listen to the entire interview, please visit CBC Ideas.