Balancing Act: Precision Medicine and National Security

ABSTRACT Developments in genetics, pharmacology, biomarker identification, imaging, and interventional biotechnology are enabling medicine to become increasingly more precise in “personalized” approaches to assessing and treating individual patients. Here we describe current scientific and technological developments in precision medicine and elucidate the dual-use risks of employing these tools and capabilities to exert disruptive influence upon human health, economics, social structure, military capabilities, and global dimensions of power. We advocate continued enterprise toward more completely addressing nuances in the ethical systems and approaches that can—and should—be implemented (and communicated) to more effectively inform policy to guide and govern the biosecurity and use of current and emerging bioscience and technology on the rapidly shifting global stage.

AI audits for assessing design logics and building ethical systems: the case of predictive policing algorithms

Organisations, governments, institutions and others across several jurisdictions are using AI systems for a constellation of high-stakes decisions that pose implications for human rights and civil liberties. But a fast-growing multidisciplinary scholarship on AI bias is currently documenting problems such as the discriminatory labelling and surveillance of historically marginalised subgroups. One of the ways in which AI systems generate such downstream outcomes is through their inputs. This paper focuses on a specific input dynamic which is the theoretical foundation that informs the design, operation, and outputs of such systems. The paper uses the set of technologies known as predictive policing algorithms as a case example to illustrate how theoretical assumptions can pose adverse social consequences and should therefore be systematically evaluated during audits if the objective is to detect unknown risks, avoid AI harms, and build ethical systems. In its analysis of these issues, the paper adds a new dimension to the literature on AI ethics and audits by investigating algorithmic impact in the context of underpinning theory. In doing so, the paper provides insights that can usefully inform auditing policy and practice instituted by relevant stakeholders including the developers, vendors, and procurers of AI systems as well as independent auditors.

Evolutionary antagonisms and the progress of three categories of traits

Darwin in The Descent of Man deliberates over the question of progress in relation to three categories of traits – aesthetic, moral and intellectual – attending to their interplay. The later formulations of Thomas Henry Huxley and Alfred Russel Wallace shift and reframe the terms for weighing together progress and the relationship across these traits, downplaying the role of aesthetic assessments. Huxley and Wallace invoke ‘antagonisms’ countering, respectively, ‘ethical progress’ and ‘cosmic process’, ‘humanity – the essentially human emotion’ and ‘physical and even intellectual race-improvement’. Thereafter, evolutionary antagonisms reappear – whether to endorse, dismiss or overcome them – and they remain relevant in evolutionary arguments, whether made explicit or left implicit. Following a thread of ongoing appeals to this interplay of traits and corresponding antagonisms invoking Huxley's 1893 lecture ‘Evolution and ethics’, implicit differences appear in the treatment of aesthetic, moral and intellectual development. These treatments maintain the progress that their own ethical systems represented, even while granting moral variation and conceding independent/alternative notions of the beautiful. They generally took as granted the uniformity of intellectual judgements, where evolutionary progress was both ethical and intellectual/scientific, even when speculating on the development of different types of mind. As characteristic of future-oriented visions of progress by the first decades of the twentieth century, sexual selection was subsumed under natural selection.

S. Bobrov’s Poem «Ancient Night of the Universe, or the Wandering Blind» and the Concept of Russian Freemasonry of the XVIII–Early XIX Centuries

The purpose of the article is to study the poem «The Ancient Night of the Universe, or the Wandering Blind» by Semyon Bobrov from the viewpoint of the doctrine belonged to Russian Freemasonry of the 18th –early 19th centuries. It is based on a combinationof mystical, esoteric, Christian (Orthodox) and en-lightening ideas which allowed this movement to organically fit into the socio-cultural context of the pre-romantic epoch. The analysis of the poem as a philo-sophical, allegorical and esoteric text, in turn, has revealed Russian Freema-sonry’s specificity consisted in the close interaction of various religious, philo-sophical and ethical systems. The special eclecticism of S. Bobrov’s thinking is reflected in the onto-logical, epistemological and axiological problems of the poem and expressed at all levels of the poetic text such as ideological-thematic, figurative, composi-tional and poetological ones. «Dreamy mysticism», consonant with the pre-romantic worldview, creates a general atmosphere of mystery in thepoem and serves as the basis for the image formation of Nesham, the main character, as well as a system of symbols (an eye, a ray, a circle, a temple, a mirror, an oil lamp, etc.). Moreover, S. Bobrov builds the poem structure according to the cat-egories and principles of esoteric thinking like universal correspondences, liv-ing nature (the world as a «chain of being»), mediation and imagination, trans-mutation and concordance. At the same time, a special place in the poem is occupied by the ideas of inner freedom and morality, mercy and compassion, which testifies to the poet’s closeness to Orthodox culture. S. Bobrov’s human-istic orientation, special interest to the category of intellect and attention to epistemological problems testify an «enlightenment» trace in the poet’s worldview. Thereby, the combination of heterogeneous religious, philosophical and cultural concepts in S. Bobrov’s work can be explained by the poet’s close-ness to Russian masons of the 18th –early 19th centuries.

The Queer Glow up of Hero-Sword Legacies in She-Ra, Korra, and Sailor Moon

The narratives within Sailor Moon Crystal, The Legend of Korra, and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power enlist gender fluid and queer protagonists to spearhead rebellions against the heteronormative domains of colonizers, imperialists, zealots, and hypercapitalistic military–industrial complexes. Magic is commodified by each villain; used to crown their exaggerated conquistador reputations and power their nuclear weapons. To defeat them and the toxic sociopolitical narratives and power paradigms they have spawned, Sailor Moon, Korra, Adora, and others must confront how these ideologies have stunted their power, corrupted their ethical systems, and distorted their understanding of their identities. By achieving self-actualization/self-acceptance and collaborating with their allies to do the same, they co-create new endings for themselves and reclaim a broader spectrum of gender and sexuality. Within the liminal moments of these reflective identity battles, protagonists and their allies enter a magical communal space, a social network for a Jungian collective unconscious. Here, they exchange their evolving powers, ideologies, and emotionally charged memories (her stories) and collaborate to liberate their communities. These champions, ambassadors of their (our) collective unconscious, urge us to commune within the liminal spaces of our social networks to self-actualize and collectively unearth a neohuman identity and system of governance.