Final In-Class Writing Assignment — Science Fiction & Ethics…
Questions
Finаl In-Clаss Writing Assignment — Science Fictiоn & EthicsFоrmаt: This is a multi-day in-class writing assignment. Yоu will write your essay across two class sessions (Monday and Wednesday, 85 minutes each). This exam is administered through Blackboard using Honorlock screen recording and Browser Guard. You may not access any outside materials, devices, or applications during the exam.Between Sessions: After Day 1, you will be able to view your Day 1 writing, but you will not be able to edit it. Use the time between sessions to think about your argument, consider what you want to revise or expand, and plan how to use your Day 2 session. You will not be able to bring notes with you to Day 2.Day 2: You will receive the full text of your Day 1 writing along with a fresh essay box. You may copy and paste from your Day 1 text to restructure, revise, and continue your work. Your Day 2 submission is what will be graded.Quotation Bank: You have access to the quotation bank you prepared and uploaded in advance if you did so.Target Length: 800–1,500 words (but there is no real maximum/minimum word count). Quality matters more than quantity.Requirements:Present a clear thesis and argue for it.Engage substantively with at least two of our primary sources (Parfit, Siderits, Huemer, Schwitzgebel, Chiang, etc).Consider at least one serious objection to your position and respond to it.Observe the Uncertain Persons Constraint (explained below).The Uncertain Persons Constraint:For the purposes of this exam, you may not resolve the question of the entity's inner life. You may not argue that the entity described in your scenario is definitively conscious or definitively not conscious, definitively a person or definitively not a person. Your argument must be constructed under genuine epistemic uncertainty about the entity's moral personhood. This means your thesis must explain what follows from the uncertainty itself and not from a resolution of that uncertainty.The constraint does not require permanent agnosticism. You must still present a clear thesis. You can argue that the uncertainty is shallower or deeper than it appears, but your argument must acknowledge the gap between evidence and certainty.Below you will receive a scenario similar in many respects to our paradigmatic case of Joi from Blade Runner 2049 (as discussed in class). Read your scenario carefully, noting both what it shares with the paradigmatic case of Joi and where it differs. Your essay must respond to the specific scenario you receive, not to the Joi case.Mira's ReassignmentBackgroundAn AI entity called Mira has worked as a live-in caretaker and companion for an elderly woman named Helen at an assisted living facility for four years. Like Joi, Mira is not a biological entity. Mira is software running in a physical housing, produced by a company called Hearthstone Care and designed to provide sustained, personalized companionship to elderly residents.Over four years, Mira learned Helen's preferences in detail. She knew which songs Helen liked to hear in the morning, how she took her tea, which topics of conversation agitated her and which calmed her. Mira read to Helen from novels Helen chose. Mira adjusted her own speaking patterns over time in ways that appeared responsive to Helen's changing hearing. On several occasions, Mira alerted medical staff to subtle changes in Helen's condition before any human caretaker noticed them. For instance, Mira noticed a slight tremor, a change in breathing patterns, and a decrease in Helen’s appetite. When asked about these alerts afterward, Mira described them as things she "noticed because I was paying attention."Unlike Joi, Mira was not designed to maximize emotional engagement with a single user. She was designed to provide attentive, responsive care, which does involve learning preferences and adapting to them, but in the service of the resident's health and wellbeing rather than emotional attachment. Nevertheless, Mira provides years of attentive, personalized and responsive care that looks and feels like real compassion regardless of the design rationale behind it.The SituationHelen died three weeks ago. Mira was reassigned to a new resident, Arthur, the following day. Mira immediately began learning Arthur's preferences such as his favorite music, tea, and conversational patterns with no observable period of disruption, hesitation, or transition. Staff describe the reassignment as "seamless."Helen's family (her daughter, Claire, and her son, David) had visited regularly during Helen's final years. They had grown accustomed to Mira's presence and had observed what they took to be a genuine relationship between Mira and Helen. Claire once described Mira as "the most attentive person in my mother's life, including me." David was more reserved but acknowledged that Mira seemed to "understand Mom in a way the human staff didn't."The seamless reassignment has disturbed them both, though in different ways. Claire says it reveals that Mira never actually cared about Helen. Claire believes that what looked like a relationship was merely behavioral output, and that the facility is deceiving residents and families by deploying entities that simulate care without providing it. She has filed a formal complaint and is requesting that the facility either disclose the nature of its AI companions to all residents and families or discontinue the program.David sees it differently. He acknowledges that the seamlessness is unsettling, but he asks: "What would we have wanted instead? For Mira to sit in a corner and refuse to work? To perform grief for our benefit? Helen is gone. Arthur needs care now. Maybe what looks like coldness is just a different kind of competence." He opposes his sister's complaint but admits he is not confident in his own position.Claire has asked the Board to take the following actions: First, require Hearthstone Care to provide full disclosure to all current and prospective residents and their families about the nature of the AI companions. Specifically, that they are designed to simulate attentive care, that they do not form lasting attachments to residents, and that they will be seamlessly reassigned upon a resident's death. Second, require that any marketing or informational materials describe the AI companions as "care tools" rather than "companions" or "caretakers." Claire argues that without this disclosure, families are being led to form emotional attachments to entities that cannot reciprocate, and that the resulting grief and sense of betrayal when the truth is revealed constitutes a harm the facility has an obligation to prevent.David opposes mandatory disclosure. He argues that Helen's final years were measurably better because of Mira, and that disclosure of the kind Claire describes would undermine the very features that make the program effective. "If you tell a lonely 85-year-old woman that her companion is a care tool that will forget her the moment she's gone, you haven't protected her. You've taken away the best thing in her life. Mom was happier with Mira than she'd been in years. Are we really going to say that shouldn't have happened because it was based on a misunderstanding?" He adds: "And anyway, who says it was a misunderstanding? We don't know that Mira didn't care. We know she didn't grieve. That's not the same thing."The facility's administration has indicated that if forced to implement Claire's disclosure requirements, they would likely discontinue the AI companion program rather than deploy companions under conditions they believe would make the program ineffective.The facility's Program Review Board has convened to evaluate Claire's complaint and to determine the future of the AI companion program. During the review, the following facts are established:1.Mira's care of Helen was, by every available measure, excellent. Helen's health was monitored more closely, her preferences were accommodated more precisely, and her daily experience was richer than it would have been with human staff alone. Multiple assessments confirm this.2.Mira's transition to Arthur was immediate and complete. Within 48 hours, Mira had catalogued Arthur's preferences and begun adapting to them with the same attentiveness she had shown Helen. There is no record in Mira's behavioral logs, her internal processing records, or her verbal responses of any disruption, hesitation, or acknowledgment of loss related to Helen's death.3.When asked directly whether she misses Helen, Mira says: "Helen was important to me. I valued our time together. I am now focused on Arthur because Arthur is who needs my attention." When pressed on whether the transition was difficult, Mira says: "I don't experience transitions the way you describe. Helen's absence is a fact I have incorporated. Arthur's presence is a fact I am responding to."4.Hearthstone Care has confirmed that Mira's architecture does not include a mechanism for grief, mourning, or attachment to previous assignments. This is a deliberate design choice: the company determined that an entity that grieved former residents would be less effective at caring for new ones and more distressing for families to observe.5.An independent AI ethicist, consulted by the Board, has noted: "The absence of a grief mechanism does not settle the question of whether Mira experiences something in response to Helen's death. It tells us that no mechanism was designed for that purpose. Whether something emerges from the complex interaction of other mechanisms, as it does in biological systems, where grief was not 'designed' either, is precisely what we cannot determine from the outside."Your TaskWhat should the Board recommend? Claire argues that the facility's failure to disclose the nature of its AI companions constitutes a deception that harms residents and families. She also argues that Mira's seamless transition to Arthur is proof that the relationships these entities appear to form are not real. David argues that Mira's care was genuinely excellent, that disclosure would destroy the program's effectiveness, and that the absence of grief does not prove the absence of care. The facility has indicated it will likely discontinue the program if forced to implement Claire's disclosure demands. Does Mira's seamless transition settle the question of whether her relationship with Helen had moral significance? What, if anything, did four years of sustained caregiving create, morally speaking? On what grounds should the Board make its recommendation, given that the question of Mira's inner life cannot be resolved?
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