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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 consciousness, governance, regulation • disability, autonomy, agency • work future: meaningful work, idleness, UBI • geopolitics: Ukraine, NATO, Middle East • public memory, racism, education, polarizationThis podcast, produced through UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center, features long-form conversations that examine how ethical questions arise in public life, especially where politics and emerging technologies intersect. Across the episodes, the host speaks with philosophers, scientists, engineers, and policy-oriented researchers about how new tools and social pressures reshape concepts such as autonomy, agency, privacy, responsibility, and justice.
A major strand focuses on neurotechnology and brain-computer interfaces. Discussions explore what “brain data” is and how it differs from other personal data, what neural decoding can and cannot do, and how hype about “mind reading” influences policy and public understanding. Guests consider practical and moral issues raised by neuroimaging, deep brain stimulation, and non-invasive systems such as EEG-controlled devices, including questions of informed consent, identity and selfhood, user-centered design, disability perspectives, shared control between human and machine, and the risks of commercial and governmental uses of brain-derived information. Related conversations connect these technologies to artificial intelligence, including large language models, system opacity, hallucinations, and longer-range possibilities such as artificial consciousness, “digital twins,” and mind uploading. The show also returns to proposed legal and political frameworks such as neurorights, mental privacy, and cognitive liberty.
Beyond neurotech, the podcast applies ethical analysis to political economy and governance. Several conversations address the future of work under contemporary capitalism and automation, considering alienation, meaningful work, idleness and burnout, labor resistance to technological systems, and policy proposals such as universal basic income and reduced working time. Other episodes examine the ethical and strategic dimensions of international affairs and conflict, including the war in Ukraine, the idea of spheres of influence, diplomatic engagement, and changing pictures of global order.
Additional themes include regulation of virtual and immersive environments, polarization and civic dialogue, public memory and contested monuments, institutional corruption in medicine and psychiatry, pandemic triage and public-health tradeoffs, and occasional engagements with classic texts and historical cases as lenses for present dilemmas.
