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Part of UMass Boston’s Philosophy Department, the Applied Ethics Center promotes research, teaching, and awareness of ethics in public life. In this podcast, Applied Ethics Center Director Nir Eisikovits hosts conversations on the intersection of ethics, politics, and technology.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ applied ethics debates • brain-computer interfaces, neurorights, brain data privacy • AI and consciousness • transhumanism/cyborgs • technology and disability • automation, meaningful work, UBI • war, diplomacy • public memory, racism, polarization • health ethicsThis podcast from UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center features conversations at the intersection of ethics, politics, and technology. Across the episodes, the host speaks with philosophers, social scientists, engineers, and policy-adjacent experts about how emerging technologies and public institutions shape— and are shaped by—moral values, rights, and democratic life.
A major thread centers on neurotechnology and brain-computer interfaces, including ethical questions raised by brain data, neural decoding and “mind-reading” claims, neuroimaging, deep brain stimulation, and brain-to-brain communication. Discussions frequently return to autonomy, agency, personal identity, disability and user-centered design, informed consent (including implantation and explantation), privacy and surveillance, commercialization (such as neuromarketing), and proposals like neurorights and cognitive liberty. Related episodes broaden the lens to artificial intelligence and consciousness, examining topics such as AI governance, opacity and hallucinations in large language models, regulation, arms-race dynamics, and speculative possibilities like digital twins, mind uploading, and collective or “global brain” scenarios.
Another cluster explores political economy and the future of work: alienation and dignity at work, reduced working time, meaningful work, idleness and burnout, technological unemployment and labor resistance, and redistributive policies such as universal basic income. The show also addresses applied political ethics more directly through conversations on polarization and civic dialogue, public memory and contested monuments, school integration and equal education, corruption in psychiatric drug research, triage and priority-setting in a pandemic, international order and war (including analysis of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), secession and state legitimacy, and ethical questions around regulating virtual reality and the “metaverse.”
