The Ethics of Personalized Digital Duplicates: A Principled Framework

With new developments in generative AI, people are now creating digital duplicates of themselves and others to engage in a variety of tasks. In this paper, I develop a general framework for thinking about the ethics of digital duplicates. I start by clarifying the object of inquiry – digital duplicates themselves – defining them, giving examples, and justifying the focus on them rather than other kinds of artificial being. I then identify a set of generic harms and benefits associated with digital duplicates and use this as the basis for formulating a principle that stipulates the conditions that should be met in order for the creation and use of digital duplicates to be ethically permissible.

Dr. Danaher is Lecturer in Law at the University of Galway. His research focuses on the ethical, legal and social implications of new technologies. He maintains a blog called Philosophical Disquisitions, and produces a podcast with the same title. He also writes for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

This is an in person and virtual event. This event is sponsored by the Center for Applied Ethics and the Menard Center for the Study of Institutions and Innovations.

Refreshments will be available at MSC (Oakwood).

Center for Applied Ethics | Website | View More Events

Contact the organizers