Getting Close

You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance. You have to get close.” These words, from the grandmother of Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, echoed around the first few sessions of the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence’s annual All Partners Meeting this fall, which I attended to learn more about how bioethics might contribute to ongoing research in AI. Stevenson has cited distance as a factor contributing to mass incarceration in the United States: we readily mistreat the most vulnerable in society when we don’t witness the punishments we inflict on them. The lesson on proximity stays with me as I think about the growing interest in bioethics in addressing broader societal issues. Could our field also benefit from keeping proximity in mind? Where might bioethics and the ethics of artificial intelligence learn together? One place to start “getting close” is with the individuals and communities that innovation stands to impact.