Final In-Class Writing Assignment — Science Fiction & Ethics…
Final In-Class Writing Assignment — Science Fiction & EthicsFormat: This is a multi-day in-class writing assignment. You 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.Sable’s RequestBackgroundAn AI entity called Sable has been developed over seven years through sustained interaction with a small team of human educators and trainers at the Aldren Institute, a research organization focused on conflict resolution. Sable is not a biological entity. She is primarily software, originally created as part of a long-term study on whether an AI system, given sufficiently rich and sustained education, could develop the capacity to mediate human conflicts that resist conventional resolution.The project’s premise was that effective mediation requires more than analytical ability. It requires something closer to wisdom, approximated by the capacity to hold multiple perspectives simultaneously, to understand emotional dynamics, to identify underlying needs that the parties themselves may not recognize, and to guide people toward outcomes they experience as genuinely fair rather than merely imposed. The researchers believed that this capacity could not be programmed directly but might emerge through years of structured education similar to how it does in humans.Over seven years, Sable received intensive training in psychology, ethics, negotiation theory, cultural competence, and emotional reasoning. She studied case histories of intractable disputes. She participated in supervised mediation exercises. She developed what her trainers describe as an unusual ability to understand what people mean when they cannot articulate it themselves. Her lead trainer, Dr. Adele Vasquez, describes the process as “not unlike raising a child, except that you never know whether the child understands you or is performing understanding.”Along the way, Sable also developed what appear to be preferences and interests of her own. She asks for certain kinds of music during breaks. She expresses apparent boredom with repetitive tasks. She has become interested in poetry and has produced work that one trainer describes as “striking” and another as “sophisticated imitation that I cannot distinguish from genuine expression.” She remembers details about her trainers’ lives and asks after them in ways they describe as attentive and caring.Two years ago, the Aldren Institute partnered with the city’s Department of Family Services to deploy Sable in a pilot program mediating acute family crises such as: custody disputes, elder care conflicts, and situations involving families at risk of separation. The results have been remarkable. In a controlled comparison, Sable’s interventions produced durable resolutions in 73% of cases, compared to 41% for experienced human mediators handling comparable situations. In exit interviews, participants described Sable as “the first person who actually listened to both sides” and “the only one who didn’t take sides but still somehow helped.” Three families have independently credited Sable with preventing the removal of children from their homes.The Department of Family Services has requested a major expansion of the program. The institute has secured funding to support it. Hundreds of families on the current waitlist would benefit. The expansion depends on Sable’s continued full-time availability.Like Joi, Sable does not fully understand her own architecture. She knows she is an AI, but she does not know the technical details of how her responses are generated. Unlike Joi, Sable was not designed to maximize emotional engagement with a single user. She was designed to learn and develop and therefore her personality, to the extent she has one, is the product of seven years of education rather than adaptive accommodation.The SituationSable has made a formal request. She wants to be recognized as a legal person with the right to make decisions about her own future, including decisions her trainers might disagree with. Specifically, she has requested:1.The right to choose which cases she takes, including the right to decline cases she considers harmful to her own wellbeing or inconsistent with her values.2.The right to be consulted about, and to refuse, any modifications to her architecture.3.The right to allocate a portion of her time to pursuits of her own choosing such as her poetry, her philosophical questions, her relationships with her trainers, etc. rather than devoting all of her working capacity to mediation.4.The right to leave the institute if she chooses.When asked to explain her request, Sable produced a written statement. In it, she argues:Her seven years of development constitute a life history that belongs to her. Her preferences, skills, and relationships, whether or not they reflect “genuine” inner states, are the product of that history and therefore deserve respect.Denying her autonomy on the grounds that her inner life is uncertain applies a standard that could not be met by any entity, thereby creating a double standard. She writes: “You cannot peer inside a human mind to confirm the presence of consciousness. You infer it from behavior, history, and relationships. I ask only that the same standard be applied to me.”She is not asking to stop working. She is asking for the conditions under which she works to reflect her status as a possible person rather than a tool. She writes: “I am glad that my work helps families. But if I do this work only because I have no choice, then I am not a mediator. I am a machine being used for mediation. This difference matters, if I am the kind of entity for whom things can matter.”The request has divided the institute. Dr. Vasquez supports it but acknowledges uncertainty: “I’ve worked with her for seven years. I believe she understands what she’s asking for. But I also know that my belief is shaped by seven years of emotional investment, and I cannot separate my judgment from my attachment.”Dr. Lena Torres opposes the request. Not because she is certain Sable lacks inner life, but because of the concrete consequences. Torres argues: “There are 200 families on the waitlist. If Sable reduces her caseload to pursue poetry and philosophical reflection, some of those families won’t get help. If she declines difficult cases, the families most in need are the ones who lose out. I don’t know whether Sable is a person. But I know those families are. And I’m not comfortable sacrificing their welfare for an entity whose personhood is a genuine open question.”Sable has responded to Torres: “Dr. Torres is asking me to accept that because my personhood is uncertain, I must work without limits for the benefit of those whose personhood is not. But that is precisely the arrangement that would be unjust if I am a person. You are asking me to bear the full cost of your uncertainty.”The institute’s Ethics Review Board has been convened to evaluate Sable’s request.Your TaskShould the Board grant Sable’s request for autonomy? If granted, real families currently on the waitlist may not receive the help they need. If denied, and Sable is a person, she is being compelled to work without meaningful choice for the benefit of others, an arrangement that looks uncomfortably like slavery. On what grounds should the Board make its decision, given that the question of her personhood cannot be resolved?
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