AI: SEPARATING MAN FROM MACHINESandy Starr

Sandy Starr confronts the worries about developing generative AI technology, and asks whether the problem might be with us rather than the machines. If we are afraid of the threat generative AI could pose to our freedom, he argues, perhaps our belief in and defence of liberty need to be revitalised. If we lose the capacity to distinguish ourselves and one another from machines, he writes, then in some sense it is we who have failed a test, rather than our machines that have passed one.

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Sandy Starr is deputy director of the Progress Educational Trust (PET), a charity that improves choices for people affected by infertility and genetic conditions. He serves on the oversight group of the project Governance of Stem-Cell-Based Embryo Models, coordinated by Cambridge Reproduction. Previously, he served on the working groups that produced the clinical practice guidance Ethical Issues in Prenatal Genetic Diagnosis (2022) and Prenatal Diagnosis and Preimplantation Genetic Testing for Germline Cancer Susceptibility Gene Variants (2023). He has written about genome editing in the British Medical Bulletin, the European Journal and Microbiology Today.

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