I’m delighted to have recently come on board at the Moritz Center as the Health and Technology lead. I have other feelings about it too: hope, eagerness, and enthusiasm are present, along with a counterbalancing and complex mixture of uncomfortable sensations that I know are just trying to keep me safe (for example, I’m feeling more secure each day that I am not actually an imposter!). I credit therapy, as well as being married to a clinical social worker, for helping me develop me the skills to distance myself from the immediate emotional tempest and recognize familiar patterns of thoughts and feelings that may show up – as they have in this case, when I find myself with a new job.
I try to stay oriented throughout these ups and downs by checking in regularly with my values. They include wanting to develop new skills and to grow as a person, to collaborate with passionate and brilliant people, and to make a positive difference in the lives of those in my community. Having a defined and authentic basis for the choices I make ultimately gives me confidence that, when times are crazy, I’m doing the right thing. This practice has also helped my preparedness for the formative tasks the Moritz Center happens to be taking on this summer.
One of the first big meetings I attended after joining the staff involved developing the mission statement for our Arts and Humanities program. I had never really thought about mission statements before and wasn’t sure how much I’d be able to contribute. It didn’t take long though for me to appreciate the parallels between the intentionality I was personally striving for and this very deliberative group process, and my attention and interest were piqued.
While the meeting’s goal was to produce a public-facing declaration of purpose, I came away feeling that we as the Moritz Center staff should be its primary audience, and that what we were doing was giving ourselves a mandate to truly make the statement’s values an integral part of our work. The statement we drafted for the program ended with its purpose being to “heal, inspire, and unite.” I think these are worthy goals, and if they are conscientiously integrated into our Arts and Humanities research and programming, I don’t believe any project we take on could be considered a failure, even if it doesn’t lead to the anticipated outcome.
We’ll soon be crafting the mission statement for the Health and Technology division, and I don’t anticipate that it will be difficult to come up with similarly lofty language that captures the promise innovation holds for our collective well-being. The AI revolution is now very much part of our everyday world, and although the extent of its impact remains to be seen, early advances in pharmaceutical discovery, diagnosis and treatment planning, and medical education point toward a future where neural networks begetting large-language models will certainly address and alleviate many chronic challenges faced by modern medicine.
As I remember to stay anchored in my own values though, I’m cautious to not forget myself and get carried away by the hype. I believe that innovation can lead to situations in which it might be tempting to shake off obligations to whatever underlying principles and intentions may have initially been present. As the public controversies at OpenAI involving the company’s profitability, growth, and safety of its product demonstrate, the considerations of how to govern technology that can and will shape our lives are very real. I’m merely a humble physician-researcher, but I have strong feelings that whatever our team produces should be for the public good, and as such I believe it’s crucial that we carefully consider and tightly integrate ethics into each of our projects from the very beginning.
In our Arts and Humanities staff meeting, I liked knowing that our efforts would spur the creation of more art – considered by many to be a “good” in and of itself. I would argue that technology is different, in that it is generally a tool that serves as a means to an end. A computer program may not have an inherent moral value, but the goal it’s meant to achieve and how it’s designed to get there sure can. I’ve had many experiences as both a physician and an IT professional using applications or devices that had been touted as a way to make my work easier and more efficient but in practice did just the opposite. I’d be surprised if the reader of this article has not had similar experiences in their own personal or professional life.
At the Moritz Center, we aim to facilitate societal impact by researching, supporting, or developing interventions. Within my role with Health and Technology, I know I want that impact to make it easier for those who seek help to find it, and for those who give help to deliver it. Beyond that though, there are many questions to be answered – what does it look like to incorporate ethics at the onset of the project lifecycle? How can we ensure that we’ve truly heard and understood the needs of stakeholders? How do we define success, and how do we determine and evaluate the ethical outcomes of our work? I’m looking forward to considering this process in detail with my very capable and thoughtful colleagues, including Dean Cole who originally got me thinking about this issue.
In closing, I’ll add gratitude to the list of feelings I have about my new position. Being empowered to make a difference can be an intimidating responsibility, as failing to meet expectations and, worse, unintentionally harming those you hoped to benefit, are real risks. I’ll keep these things in mind, but I know that being part of a skilled and talented group of people with similar values means I don’t need to unduly obsess over them. I’m thankful that instead I can put my focus on doing my best to make our vision of a better future a reality.
