Category: Ethics
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AI and Fitness to Practice in Nursing
AI tools are already embedded in nursing education, but their use in fitness to practice processes raises profound questions about professional judgement, equity, and authenticity that blanket policies cannot adequately address. Instead of avoiding this messiness, we need to work out how to use these tools in ways that actually serve students, even when that…
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Large Language Models as Moral Experts?
The general consensus among most people has been that human values will forever be the domain of human beings, and not AI. This paper seems to suggest that moral judgement may not be off-limits to machines after all.
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My phone was made by slaves and I need to decide what I’m going to do about that
I’m going to need a new phone soon and I’ve been thinking about what the replacement will be. I typically buy the cheapest, decent phone I can find and replace the standard version of Android with an open source operating system. Over the last 5+ years that’s meant two consecutive Xiaomi handsets running LineageOS, and I’ve…
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Podcast – Being Good and Doing Good (Making Sense #44)
https://samharris.org/podcasts/being-good-and-doing-good/ In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Oxford philosopher William MacAskill about effective altruism, moral illusions, existential risk, and other topics. William MacAskill is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Lincoln College, Oxford. He was educated at Cambridge, Princeton, and Oxford. He is one of the primary voices in…
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PSA: Peter Singer’s “The life you can save” is available for free
In 2009, Peter Singer wrote the first edition of The Life You Can Save to demonstrate why we should care about and help those living in global extreme poverty, and how easy it is to improve and even save lives by giving effectively. This morning I listened to an 80 000 hours podcast with Peter…
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10 recommendations for the ethical use of AI
In February the New York Times hosted the New Work Summit, a conference that explored the opportunities and risks associated with the emergence of artificial intelligence across all aspects of society. Attendees worked in groups to compile a list of recommendations for building and deploying ethical artificial intelligence, the results of which are listed below.…
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First compute no harm
Is it acceptable for algorithms today, or an AGI in a decade’s time, to suggest withdrawal of aggressive care and so hasten death? Or alternatively, should it recommend persistence with futile care? The notion of “doing no harm” is stretched further when an AI must choose between patient and societal benefit. We thus need to…
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My presentation for the Reimagine Education conference
Here is a summarised version of the presentation I’m giving later this morning at the Reimagine Education conference. You can download the slides here.
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How to ensure safety for medical artificial intelligence
When we think of AI, we are naturally drawn to its power to transform diagnosis and treatment planning and weigh up its potential by comparing AI capabilities to those of humans. We have yet, however, to look at AI seriously through the lens of patient safety. What new risks do these technologies bring to patients,…
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Another Terrible Idea from Turnitin | Just Visiting
Allowing the proliferation of algorithmic surveillance as a substitution for human engagement and judgment helps pave the road to an ugly future where students spend more time interacting algorithms than instructors or each other. This is not a sound way to help writers develop robust and flexible writing practices. Source: Another Terrible Idea from Turnitin…
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Critical digital pedagogy in the classroom: Practical implementation
Update (12-02-18): You can now download the full chapter here (A critical pedagogy for online learning in physiotherapy education) and the edited collection here. This post is inspired by the work I’ve recently done for a book chapter, as well as several articles on Hybrid Pedagogy but in particular, Adam Heidebrink-Bruno’s Syllabus as Manifesto. I’ve been wanting…
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IPE course project update
This post is cross-posted from the International Ethics Project site. My 4th year students have recently completed the first writing task in the IEP course pilot project. I thought I’d post a quick update on the process using screenshots to illustrate how the course is being run. We’re using a free version of WordPress which…
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Introducing the Humanities into physiotherapy education
This post has been modified and published on The Conversation: Africa as Physiotherapy students have much to learn from the humanities. I’m increasingly drawn to the idea of integrating some aspect of the Humanities into undergraduate physiotherapy education. We focus (almost) all of the curriculum on the basic sciences and then the clinical sciences, which has a certain…
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First draft of article on Informed Consent for the Clinical Teacher
Featured image “Diverging paths” by SDJ on Deviant Art. I’ve just finished the first draft of my 13th article in the Clinical Teacher mobile app. It’s been a LONG time since I’ve managed to put some effort into this project, mainly for personal reasons (my second daughter was born in March last year and we…
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Digital literacy survey: Outcome of reliability testing
Earlier this year we started the International Ethics Project, a collaboration between physiotherapy departments from several countries who intend offering an online course in professional ethics to their undergraduate students. You can read more about the project here. In June we started the process of developing a questionnaire that we can use to establish some…
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An international project in professional ethics
Earlier this year I began working with several colleagues on an international module in professional ethics. We’re going to spend 2015 collaboratively designing a module that students from a variety of undergraduate physiotherapy programmes can complete, in both online and face-to-face contexts. The project builds on the work I’ve done previously as part of my PhD research (these notes…
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“Eleven hundred hours” – Poem by a student
For the past few years I’ve been asking my final year students to develop a learning portfolio as part of the ethics module I teach. Even though I encourage them to use different forms of knowledge representation, few of them take up the offer. However, every now and again someone submits something very different to…
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Presentation on an open, online course
Last year I ran an open online course in Professional Ethics, in collaboration with Physiopedia. Earlier today, I presented the process of designing and implementing that course at a conference on Transforming Education through Technological Innovation, hosted by Stellenbosch University. I really enjoyed the morning and thank the event coordinators for inviting me to present.…
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Between Cape Town and Khartoum
Earlier this month I spent a week in Khartoum as part of an international exchange programme between the following organisations: University of the Western Cape (my institution in Cape Town) Ahfad University for Women (Khartoum) Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation in Tanzania Bergen University (Norway) FK Norway The project is an attempt to facilitate the exchange…
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Developing empathy in clinical education
This post was originally written for the Clinical Teacher iPad app, and can be downloaded there as well. Introduction Empathy is the ability to understand the emotional context of other people and respond to them appropriately. It has been identified as the cornerstone of the clinician-patient relationship and is recognised as one of the most…