Hasil untuk "Business ethics"

Yifan Ding, Yuhui Shi, Zhiyan Li et al.

Ethics review is a foundational mechanism of modern research governance, yet contemporary systems face increasing strain as ethical risks arise as structural consequences of large-scale, interdisciplinary scientific practice. The demand for consistent and defensible decisions under heterogeneous risk profiles exposes limitations in institutional review capacity rather than in the legitimacy of ethics oversight. Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) offer new opportunities to support ethics review, but their direct application remains limited by insufficient ethical reasoning capability, weak integration with regulatory structures, and strict privacy constraints on authentic review materials. In this work, we introduce Mirror, an agentic framework for AI-assisted ethical review that integrates ethical reasoning, structured rule interpretation, and multi-agent deliberation within a unified architecture. At its core is EthicsLLM, a foundational model fine-tuned on EthicsQA, a specialized dataset of 41K question-chain-of-thought-answer triples distilled from authoritative ethics and regulatory corpora. EthicsLLM provides detailed normative and regulatory understanding, enabling Mirror to operate in two complementary modes. Mirror-ER (expedited Review) automates expedited review through an executable rule base that supports efficient and transparent compliance checks for minimal-risk studies. Mirror-CR (Committee Review) simulates full-board deliberation through coordinated interactions among expert agents, an ethics secretary agent, and a principal investigator agent, producing structured, committee-level assessments across ten ethical dimensions. Empirical evaluations demonstrate that Mirror significantly improves the quality, consistency, and professionalism of ethics assessments compared with strong generalist LLMs.

Svetlana Sitnicka, Muslum Mursalov, Hamdulla Mammadov et al.

The growing deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) in banking raises critical questions about whether national-level readiness, defined by ethics, institutions, infrastructure, and governance (EIIG), translates into measurable financial performance gains. This article provides empirical evidence on the link between government AI readiness and banking sector profitability. Using an unbalanced panel dataset of 136 countries covering 2020–2024, the study integrates Return on Assets (ROA) from the IMF with the Government AI Readiness Index from Oxford Insights, which embeds EIIG dimensions of ethical frameworks, institutional quality, infrastructural robustness, and governance capacity. Data preprocessing involved applying Yeo–Johnson transformations to address non-normal distributions, and panel econometric models were estimated using both fixed and random effects, with the Hausman test guiding model selection. The results indicate that stronger national EIIG readiness has a significant positive impact on bank profitability. The fixed effects model indicates that a one-unit increase in the transformed AI readiness index is associated with a 0.524 increase in transformed ROA (p < 0.001). In contrast, the random effects specification produced a negative coefficient (β = –0.126, p < 0.01). The Hausman test (χ² = 42.98, p < 0.001) confirmed fixed effects as the consistent estimator. Robust covariance estimators (clustered by country, clustered by year, and Driscoll–Kraay) further confirmed the stability of the coefficients, which remained consistently positive and significant. Country-specific fixed effects highlight structural heterogeneity: advanced economies such as Germany (α = –4.14) and the United Kingdom (α = –4.15) exhibit structurally lower profitability, while emerging economies, including Malawi (α = +0.72), Ghana (α = –0.59), and Mozambique (α = –0.24) align more closely with or exceed global averages. These findings underscore that ethical safeguards, institutional capacities, digital infrastructures, and governance mechanisms are not peripheral but central in enabling AI readiness to deliver sustainable financial performance.

Alayt Issak, Uttkarsh Narayan, Ramya Srinivasan et al.

Ethical theories and Generative AI (GenAI) models are dynamic concepts subject to continuous evolution. This paper investigates the visualization of ethics through a subset of GenAI models. We expand on the emerging field of Visual Ethics, using art as a form of critical inquiry and the metaphor of a kaleidoscope to invoke moral imagination. Through formative interviews with 10 ethics experts, we first establish a foundation of ethical theories. Our analysis reveals five families of ethical theories, which we then transform into images using the text-to-image (T2I) GenAI model. The resulting imagery, curated as Kaleidoscope Gallery and evaluated by the same experts, revealed eight themes that highlight how morality, society, and learned associations are central to ethical theories. We discuss implications for critically examining T2I models and present cautions and considerations. This work contributes to examining ethical theories as foundational knowledge that interrogates GenAI models as socio-technical systems.

Priya T. V., Shrisha Rao

Ensuring ethical behavior in Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems amidst their increasing ubiquity and influence is a major concern the world over. The use of formal methods in AI ethics is a possible crucial approach for specifying and verifying the ethical behavior of AI systems. This paper proposes a formalization based on deontic logic to define and evaluate the ethical behavior of AI systems, focusing on system-level specifications, contributing to this important goal. It introduces axioms and theorems to capture ethical requirements related to fairness and explainability. The formalization incorporates temporal operators to reason about the ethical behavior of AI systems over time. The authors evaluate the effectiveness of this formalization by assessing the ethics of the real-world COMPAS and loan prediction AI systems. Various ethical properties of the COMPAS and loan prediction systems are encoded using deontic logical formulas, allowing the use of an automated theorem prover to verify whether these systems satisfy the defined properties. The formal verification reveals that both systems fail to fulfill certain key ethical properties related to fairness and non-discrimination, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed formalization in identifying potential ethical issues in real-world AI applications.

Teanna Barrett, Chinasa T. Okolo, B. Biira et al.

The shift towards pluralism in global data ethics acknowledges the importance of including perspectives from the Global Majority to develop responsible data science practices that mitigate systemic harms in the current data science ecosystem. Sub-Saharan African (SSA) practitioners, in particular, are disseminating progressive data ethics principles and best practices for identifying and navigating anti-blackness and data colonialism. To center SSA voices in the global data ethics discourse, we present a framework for African data ethics informed by the thematic analysis of an interdisciplinary corpus of 50 documents. Our framework features six major principles: 1) Challenge Power Asymmetries, 2) Assert Data Self-Determination, 3) Invest in Local Data Institutions & Infrastructures, 4) Utilize Communalist Practices, 5) Center Communities on the Margins, and 6) Uphold Common Good. We compare our framework to seven particularist data ethics frameworks to find similar conceptual coverage but diverging interpretations of shared values. Finally, we discuss how African data ethics demonstrates the operational value of data ethics frameworks. Our framework highlights Sub-Saharan Africa as a pivotal site of responsible data science by promoting the practice of communalism, self-determination, and cultural preservation.

Bianca Maria Lerma, Rafael Peñaloza

We introduce NAEL (Non-Anthropocentric Ethical Logic), a novel ethical framework for artificial agents grounded in active inference and symbolic reasoning. Departing from conventional, human-centred approaches to AI ethics, NAEL formalizes ethical behaviour as an emergent property of intelligent systems minimizing global expected free energy in dynamic, multi-agent environments. We propose a neuro-symbolic architecture to allow agents to evaluate the ethical consequences of their actions in uncertain settings. The proposed system addresses the limitations of existing ethical models by allowing agents to develop context-sensitive, adaptive, and relational ethical behaviour without presupposing anthropomorphic moral intuitions. A case study involving ethical resource distribution illustrates NAEL's dynamic balancing of self-preservation, epistemic learning, and collective welfare.

Haoan Jin, Jiacheng Shi, Hanhui Xu et al.

Large language models (LLMs) demonstrate significant potential in advancing medical applications, yet their capabilities in addressing medical ethics challenges remain underexplored. This paper introduces MedEthicEval, a novel benchmark designed to systematically evaluate LLMs in the domain of medical ethics. Our framework encompasses two key components: knowledge, assessing the models' grasp of medical ethics principles, and application, focusing on their ability to apply these principles across diverse scenarios. To support this benchmark, we consulted with medical ethics researchers and developed three datasets addressing distinct ethical challenges: blatant violations of medical ethics, priority dilemmas with clear inclinations, and equilibrium dilemmas without obvious resolutions. MedEthicEval serves as a critical tool for understanding LLMs' ethical reasoning in healthcare, paving the way for their responsible and effective use in medical contexts.

Anky Angga Alhudha, Winny Setyonugroho, Firman Pribadi

Background: Given the popularity of digital marketing in business today, every hospital can start utilizing it by establishing a social media account. Instagram is a social media platform that focuses on photographs. The AISAS (Attention, Interest, Search, Action, and Share) model can be used to assess the efficacy of marketing communications. Regardless, there are issues regarding legal and ethical issues. Therefore, a question emerges: How can health advertisements be effective while following ethical guidelines? Aims: The purpose of this research is to analyze the content of healthcare advertisements on Instagram Methods: This study uses the quantitative descriptive content analysis method. The samples are Instagram advertisements for health services. Search them using the hashtags (#) #dokterjogja, #klinikjogja, #klinikyogyakarta, and #rumahsakitjogja. Using convenience sampling, the researcher randomly scrolls and stops on Instagram. The data were assessed by two coders using a checklist to ensure objectivity. The checklist contains three indicators, in this case, the AIA (Attention, Interest, Action) indicator, and the other indicators were obtained from the Regulation of the Minister of Health of the Republic of Indonesia (PERMENKES) number 1787 of 2010 Results: The highest score of the AIA (Attention, Interest, Action) indicator is 12, and there are a total of 34 advertisements (coder 1), and 84 advertisements (coder 2) violate The Regulation of the Minister of Health (PERMENKES) No.1787/2010 Conclusion: This study finds that effective advertising is almost certain to violate the regulation. An educational health information advertisement that introduces the services provided is a good way to promote healthcare providers while remaining ethical. Keywords: advertising, AISAS, ethics, health, social media

Rahima Akther, Md. Mosharraf Hossain, Md. Kamrozzaman et al.

Integrating new teaching technologies in education has transformed the traditional classroom environment, offering innovative methods for teaching and learning. With the rapid advancement in digital tools and platforms, educational institutions are increasingly adopting these technologies to enhance instructional practices, engage students, and improve learning outcomes. Therefore, this research aimed to investigate the higher secondary teachers’ behavioral intention towards adopting new teaching technologies in the context of professional standards and educational leadership. The study adopted a descriptive research design and utilized a quantitative research approach. A standardized questionnaire and a web-based purposive sampling method were used to collect 350 data from higher secondary teachers in Bangladesh. The data was assessed, and the hypotheses were analyzed using a process called partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The PLS-SEM analysis identified a notable link among perceived ease of use, enjoyment, usefulness, and behavioral intention in the context of professional standards and educational leadership. This study is highly significant for educational institutions and policymakers that aim to enhance teacher job satisfaction and teachers’ quality. Educational technology should feature an interface that is easy to use, engage the user’s interest, and fulfill its intended function efficiently. Furthermore, it is imperative to tailor training programs to aid teachers’ assimilation of the technology. School administrators must enact professional development efforts, encourage the effective use of technology, establish support networks, and provide adaptable solutions to meet the unique needs of instructors. These variables can potentially increase the rate of acceptance and satisfaction with technology in educational institutions.

Benai Pham

The Special Issue defines ‘housing disruptors’ as the emerging ideologies, practices, and logics capable of changing the housing system. In this paper, I argue digital engagement technologies were a housing disruptor for combining an ethic of care and technological scale in order to reimagine planning democracy and ultimately the delivery of equitable housing. First, I outline the care ethics of digital engagement and connect it to a lineage of planning theory that values deliberative participation and agonistic urban politics. I then interrogate the meaning of scale in digital engagement and how it contributes to urban democracy and justice issues. However, the structural limitations that practitioners faced in practice put into question how possible it was to apply a scale logic from the technological and business world, which sought to streamline and grow, to a planning system (that is complex) and solutions to the housing crisis (even more complex). My concluding remarks suggest that digital engagement was symbolic for the changing value principles in planning, as one that was committed to a fairer and more equitable planning system; but how successful it was (or has been) able to provide an alternative planning structure remains uncertain.

Paul A. Lombardo

Photo ID 193201183 © Orathai Mayoeh| Dreamstime.com ABSTRACT A US Public Health Service study conducted after World War II led to a research scandal involving the intentional infection of 1300 Guatemalans with syphilis and other STIs. That news initially prompted an apology by President Obama to the President of Guatemala and an investigative report from the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Despite promises from the US Department of Health and Human Services to invest $1.8 million to “improve the treatment and prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases,” there is no record that such funding nor any money to compensate the families of people victimized in the research debacle has reached Guatemala. Litigation followed public disclosures. This article analyzes the litigation and explores the likelihood that this lawsuit may represent another episode in the re-victimization of people in Guatemala who still await redress for the wrongs done to their families more than 70 years ago. INTRODUCTION Nine years after its initial filing, In re Estate of Alvarez v. Rockefeller Foundation, the case to recover damages for the infamous World War II-era syphilis experiments that the US Public Health Service (PHS) conducted in Guatemala has been dismissed by Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.[1] The plaintiffs sought compensation as victims and descendants of victims of studies in which approximately 1300 Guatemalans were intentionally infected with sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and more than 5000 individuals had biological samples taken without proper consent. After the court rejected claims in 2022 that Johns Hopkins University and Bristol-Meyers Squibb should be held liable for the Guatemala scandal, the Rockefeller Foundation was the only remaining defendant. The Foundation had a longstanding interest in research to find a cure for syphilis. Lawyers representing alleged victims in the Guatemala research claimed that responsibility should accrue to Rockefeller because Thomas Parran was on its board and Frederick Soper was its Associate Director and a board member. Both were intimately involved in the experiments. In this US case, plaintiffs claimed the court should assign responsibility and allow them to recover damages. Its conclusion makes it extremely unlikely that legal action will lead to compensation for those victims now or anytime in the future. The lawsuit described in this article raises the question of whether litigation is an effective avenue for addressing discoveries of historic injustices stemming from breaches of research ethics. Litigation may revictimize the very populations who endured harms during the original experiments. In this case, more than six decades after the studies themselves, and ten years after the details of those studies were publicly revealed, many of the people who became entangled in this litigation are arguably worse off as a result because they endured additional hardships during the litigation, their avenue to justice through the US courts is now foreclosed, and their credibility was called into question throughout the case. BACKGROUND The PHS/Guatemala experiments occurred between 1946-1948, and related studies continued into the 1950s. However, the entire research plan did not become publicly known until the 2010 publication of an historian’s analysis of an archival collection, and a subsequent bioethics commission report in 2011.[2] The PHS researchers who designed the Guatemala studies were attempting to hone methods of prophylaxis against STIs for members of the US military and hoped to take advantage of the then newly discovered power of penicillin as a cure for STIs. Led by John Cutler,[3] a team of PHS doctors collaborated with health professionals in Guatemala City to design a series of experiments that monitored sexual intimacy between prisoners and commercial sex workers who had been confirmed to be carrying an STI. The experiment then moved on to manually infecting prison inmates, psychiatric patients, and soldiers, with syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid. Between 1946 and 1953, PHS researchers also conducted serology studies on samples of blood and cerebrospinal fluid they had obtained via cervical and lumbar punctures on prisoners, orphans, school children, patients in a psychiatric hospital, and leprosy patients in Guatemala.[4]   The research was conducted without consent, without appropriate disclosures, and, in many cases, using the most vulnerable institutionalized populations. While formal standards of ethics for biomedical research later emerged in documents like the Belmont report and were adopted as part of US law, the consensus of scholars studying the Guatemala experiments is that they violated ethical standards at the time they were carried out, and the scientists and physicians who participated, well aware of their ethical toxicity, intentionally kept them hidden.[5] A few experts in the STI field knew the details of these experiments, but the US government deliberately concealed them from public view for more than sixty years. The public exposure of John Cutler’s papers clarified the scope of the studies, sometimes likened more to torture than medical experimentation, and placed the episode in Guatemala alongside the most infamous of research scandals.[6]  News of the scandal initially prompted an apology by President Obama to the President of Guatemala. Lawsuits followed. I.     Litigation Public exposé of the experiment’s details led to condemnation of the studies, which in turn prompted calls for legal action. The first lawsuit related to the PHS/Guatemala research, Garcia v. Sebelius, was a class action suit filed on behalf of victims against the US Government in 2011. A federal trial court called the Guatemala STI experiments a “deeply troubling chapter in our Nation’s history” but determined that the law shielded the government against such claims under the principle of sovereign immunity. The court declared itself “powerless to provide any redress…” and dismissed the suit in 2012.[7] In response, the US Department of Health and Human Services promised $1.8 million to “improve the treatment and prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases … in Guatemala and to further strengthen ethical training on human research protections.”[8] No commitments were made to the victims, and no compensation was delivered to them in Guatemala. Because the Garcia case ruled out a suit against the US government, in 2015, plaintiffs filed another class action lawsuit against Johns Hopkins University, the Rockefeller Foundation, and pharmaceutical manufacturer Bristol Myers Squibb, demanding $1 billion in damages. The suit claimed that Johns Hopkins had been the faculty home for many members of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) syphilis study section that recommended that a grant of financial support be approved to fund the Guatemala project.[9] Most prominent in this group of Hopkins faculty members was Joseph Earle Moore. He chaired the study section and almost every review committee for the NIH that reviewed the study. The Rockefeller Foundation’s board eventually included Thomas Parran, Surgeon General at the time of the experiments and Rockefeller employee Frederick Soper, both of whom held roles critical to the study.[10] The three companies that previously made up Bristol Meyers Squibb manufactured the penicillin used in the experiments to test levels of efficacious dose to cure syphilis.[11] The plaintiffs contended that the web of connections among these entities and the researchers who “helped design, support, develop, encourage, and finance, and participated in and benefitted from the Guatemala Experiments,” made all three entities liable for the damages to compensate Guatemalan research subjects and their descendants. From the initial filing of the suit in 2015 until eighteen months later, defense lawyers attempted to have the case dismissed, arguing that delays in filing a claim violated the statute of limitations and the speculative nature of plaintiff damages rendered them legally inadequate to provide a causal link to the original experiments. In late 2016, the plaintiffs amended their claims a third time to address these issues. At that point, the plaintiff class included more than 800 people made up of spouses, children, and other descendants of deceased individuals alleged to have been part of the intentional infection experiments. But the largest numbers of listed plaintiffs were school children whose blood had been drawn for serology experiments. While the Presidential Commission had found no evidence supporting this assertion, some of the plaintiffs also claimed to be direct victims of intentional infection experiments conducted at their schools. The court found no evidence that the Rockefeller Foundation controlled or directed either Parran’s involvement in approving the Guatemala project or Soper’s more thorough engagement with the research as a staff member at the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (PASB). The Court stated, “The connection between TRF’s [Rockefeller] interest in finding a cure for syphilis and the work that Dr. Soper did while at PASB is simply far too attenuated to establish an agency relationship...there is no indication that TRF had the ability to exercise control over Soper.”[12] In 2024, with Rockefeller as the only remaining defendant, the motion to dismiss the suit wasgranted. While the litigation was still active, lawyers deposed people in Guatemala who had been responsible for identifying the plaintiffs named in the lawsuit. By March 2019, it became clear that serious irregularities had occurred in recruiting those participants.  Fraudulent testimony and unethical behavior in recruiting sparked the defendants to move for sanctions against the plaintiffs’ attorneys.[13] II.     Fraudulent Testimony                a.     Serology Experiments in Port of San José One kind of experiment conducted in Guatemala included serology testing on blood samples taken from school children. Norma Alicia Lorenzo Lopez was a plaintiff in the lawsuit and former director of the school at the remote Pacific coast town of Puerto San Jose, an initial location for blood draws in school studies during the late 1940s. She signed a copy of a letter certifying that historical records and the testimony of former students verified that plaintiffs were enrolled in school at the time of the experiments. But Lopez eventually admitted under questioning that relevant records for the school were destroyed years ago in several floods and earthquakes. She had no documents to confirm that claimant’s testimony was correct, nor did she have any personal knowledge of what happened. She then testified that she had no legal authority to issue certifications on behalf of the school and had violated the rules of the Ministry of Education in so doing. Additionally, she admitted that at least one person was dead at the time he was supposed to have given his sworn statement to her.[14] Fraudulent testimony unfortunately was not limited to Lopez. Under questioning, many named plaintiffs testified that they did not know why their or their family members’ names had been included among the victims. Another witness, Dr. Orozco Aguirre, reported that he tested hundreds of people who had given blood as children in Puerto San Jose. Some of them were supposed to have also claimed to be infected with syphilis by researchers. But in a hearing before the presiding judge, lead plaintiffs’ counsel confirmed that Aguirre had given false testimony.[15] Aguirre eventually admitted that the effective date of the certificate presented to the court to show his qualifications to run a laboratory in Guatemala had been altered to conceal that it had expired. He also conceded under questioning that his expert report had been plagiarized, then altered to include data that would correspond with his planned testimony in support of the plaintiffs. As a result, plaintiffs’ counsel withdrew Dr. Orozco as an expert witness after his first day of testimony.                b.     STI Testing in Guatemala City Dr. Pablo Werner Ramirez Rivas, a physician consultant and medical expert for the plaintiffs, former Guatemalan Health Minister Roberto Paiz, and his wife Clara de Paiz had arranged “information sessions” to recruit plaintiffs. Werner’s testimony was intended to provide the factual foundation upon which several of the plaintiff’s claims were based. However, the day after Dr. Aguirre was withdrawn and only a few days before Dr. Werner was scheduled to testify, plaintiffs’ counsel also withdrew him as an expert. Additional reports emerged showing that Clara de Paiz was taken into custody in Guatemala in 2018, following charges by the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala with “active bribery” in connection with a scheme to influence the selection of Guatemalan judges in an unrelated case.[16] On March 11, 2019, the plaintiffs’ counsel disclosed that they were “going forward” with a more limited list of plaintiffs and claims. The number of Guatemalan plaintiffs was reduced dramatically; fewer than one hundred remained in the lawsuit. Thirteen of the most important eighteen plaintiffs—those who claimed direct infection in the original experiments or a family relationship to someone who was involved in those experiments — were dropped from the case. III.     Sanctions Against Plaintiffs’ Lawyers After extensive discovery, the defendants’ lawyers made a motion for sanctions against the plaintiffs’ lawyers. According to the defendants, depositions and other material “revealed that plaintiffs' claims are based on manufactured evidence, false sworn statements, and unsupportable allegations.”[17] The defendants accused the plaintiffs’ lawyers of doing just what the initial alleged wrongdoers did – withholding positive test results from plaintiffs. It was a major contention of the lawsuit that those who directed the PHS/Guatemala experiments actively deceived the victims. They did not inform victims in the 1940s that they were part of an experiment, that they had been infected with syphilis, or that their condition might expose other family members to infection. Nor did they provide medical care to infected victims or counsel them to seek it. In preparing for the lawsuit, plaintiffs were sent on bus trips lasting up to five hours to reach Guatemala City for syphilis testing. Although Dr. Aguirre claimed in sworn court documents that many of the plaintiffs tested positive for syphilis, their testimony indicated they were not informed of their infection status, nor was treatment offered to those who did test positive. Defendant’s arguments for sanctions declared that by withholding infection status from plaintiffs, their lawyers “did precisely what they had accused others of doing or, more precisely, of not doing.”[18] IV.     Unsatisfactory Outcome The original complaint in this case alleged that defendants, Johns Hopkins University, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Bristol Meyers Squibb, had “designed, developed, approved, encouraged, directed, oversaw, and aided and abetted nonconsensual, nontherapeutic, human subject experiments in Guatemala.”[19] But the trial court found that there was “insufficient evidence to support” that conclusion against any of the three defendant organizations. The defendants did not downplay the horrific nature of the PHS/Guatemala syphilis studies, nor the culpability of those who conducted them. They merely rejected the idea that they, as institutions, shared blame for the activities that the government planned, conducted, and subsequently hid from the public eye. In issuing its ruling, the court endorsed that conclusion, stating that any evidence of the defendant’s complicity in these actions “has been lost to the sands of time.”[20]  The court emphasized that this result “illustrates the limits of the court system to provide justice for every injustice,” concluding that other remedies were “beyond the power of this Court to grant.”[21] The final decision in this controversy yielded similar language. In a separate opinion, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson said that people working with the Rockefeller Foundation had a relationship that “is too attenuated” to consider them agents of Rockefeller in carrying out the Guatemala experiments. “I thus concur . . . with some sadness” he said, “that the rule of law is not advanced as an instrument of justice by affixing liability where it does not belong.”[22] CONCLUSION We are left with an unsatisfactory ending to a scandal that festered over more than seventy-five years and legal drama unfolding over more than a decade. An appellate court decision now echoes what scholars and a presidential commission concluded as legal challenges began: “It was our own government . . . that was the driving force behind these monstrous wrongs.”[23] Fashioning remedies for the horrors of this and other scandals that may yet be uncovered in the archives of scientific and biomedical research remains a job that our own government should still be required to undertake.   When hidden scandals perpetrated by deceased individuals in government service are finally revealed, how should accountability be satisfied?  We know that suits against the government are exceedingly unlikely to be allowed. As this case has demonstrated, assessing damages against other institutions whose culpability cannot be proven is also likely to fail.  First steps taken by government commissions of inquiry that are free to investigate past wrongs and expose them to public scrutiny are a beginning, but never the end of the accounting. They allow some measure of recognition for victims, but those who are long dead can never be made whole.  As the 4th Circuit Court concluded, the judiciary is limited in its powers “to provide justice for every injustice.” What is needed beyond all else is a motive for a majority in Congress squarely to face scandals like those that occurred in Guatemala and craft a remedy that more fully addresses their causes and their consequences.  At this point, we have few, if any, models of what such remedies would look like, and almost no reason to believe that there is the political will to take on that task.  - [1] In re Estate of Alvarez v. Rockefeller Foundation, No. 22-1678, (4th Cir. 2024) March 20, 2024. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-4th-circuit/115960805.html [2] Reverby, S. “‘Normal exposure” and inoculation syphilis: a PHS ‘Tuskegee’ doctor in Guatemala, 1946–1948.” J Policy Hist 23, no. 1 (2011):6-28 [DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898030610000291]; Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (PCSBI), “Ethically Impossible”: STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office; 2011). https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcsbi/sites/default/files/Ethically%20Impossible%20(with%20linked%20historical%20documents)%202.7.13.pdf  The author was a senior advisor to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues that issued Ethically Impossible, and he contributed to the research and drafting of the Report as a staff member. He testified by deposition under subpoena and without compensation in the lawsuit described in this article. [3] Cutler [1915-2003] also conducted the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, which included Black American research subjects who were intentionally not informed about the nature of the experiment or the availability of treatment. [4] Spector-Bagdady K, Lombardo P.A. “US Public Health Service STD Experiments in Guatemala (1946-1948) and Their Aftermath,” Ethics Hum Res. 2019;41(2):29-34. [DOI: 10.1002/eahr.500010] [5] See “The Guatemala Experiments—Looking Back, Looking Ahead, and Apportioning Blame,” Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, “Ethically Impossible:” STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948, 2011, GPO (Washington DC)107-108. [6] Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, “Ethically Impossible:” STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948, 2011, GPO (Washington DC)., https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcsbi/sites/default/files/Ethically%20Impossible%20(with%20linked%20historical%20documents)%202.7.13.pdf H. Brevy Cannon, “Arras, Bioethics Commission Condemn 1940s Guatemalan Syphilis Research as Unethical,” UVA Today, August 31, 2011, https://news.virginia.edu/content/arras-bioethics-commission-condemn-1940s-guatemalan-syphilis-research-unethical. [7] Garcia v. Sebelius, 867 F. Supp. 2d 125 (D.D.C. 2012). https://casetext.com/case/garcia-v-sebelius-2 [8] “HHS Commits Nearly $1.8 million to Health Initiatives in Guatemala and to Improving Global Human Research Protections,” Business Wire, January 10, 2012, [9] Alvarez v. Hopkins, complaint, Case 1:15-cv-00950-JKB Circuit Court Baltimore City (April 1, 2015). Spector-Bagdady K, Lombardo P.A. “’Something of an adventure’: postwar NIH research ethos and the Guatemala STD experiments,” J Law Med Ethics. 2013;41(3):697-710. [DOI: 10.1111/jlme.12080] [10] Thomas Parran [1892-1968] was Surgeon General of the US Public Health Service and approved the funding proposal that resulted in the experiments. He was also a member of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Board of Trustees and the Board of Scientific Directors of the foundation’s International Heath Division.  At times his government service and his work at Rockefeller overlapped the work that occurred in Guatemala. Frederick Soper [1893-1977] was an Associate Director at Rockefeller and in 1947 was assigned to work on the Guatemala experiments at the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (PASB). [11] Alvarez v. Hopkins, complaint, Case 1:15-cv-00950-JKB Circuit Court Baltimore City (April 1, 2015). The original complaint filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, was moved to the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. [12]  In re Estate of Alvarez v. Rockefeller Foundation, No. 22-1678, (4th Cir. 2024) March 20, 2024. p. 15. [13] Defendant’s Opening Brief in Support of Request for Discovery and Motion for Sanctions, Case No. 1:15-cv-950 TDC, Document 262-1 Filed 04/09/19. [14]  Transcript of Norma Alicia Lorenzo Conducted on February 7, 2019, Case 1:15-cv-00950-TDC Document 263-5. [15] Preliminary Transcript of Hearing, Case 1:15-cv-00950-TDC Document 231-1 March 6, 2019., p. 3. [16]Defendant’s Opening Brief in Support of Request for Discovery and Motion for Sanctions, Case No. 1:15-cv-950 TDC, Document 262-1 Filed 04/09/19. Exhibit 8, at J.R.0778 (December 4, 2018, Exhibit 8 at J.R.0775 (record from Guatemala Central Registry of Detainees indicating when Clara de Paiz was taken into custody). She  was later acquitted of the bribery charges. [17] Estate of Arturo Giron Alvarez, et al., v. The Johns Hopkins University, et al., Defendant’s.Motion for Discovery and Sanctions, April 9, 2019; Memorandum Opinion https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/maryland/mddce/1:2015cv00950/312057/350/ [18] Defendant’s Opening Brief in Support of Request for Discovery and Motion for Sanctions, Case No. 1:15-cv-950 TDC, Document 262-1 Filed 04/09/19. Case 1:15-cv-00950-TDC   Document 262-1. April 9, 2019, page 24 of 42. The motion for sanctions was not renewed after the case was dismissed. [19] Memorandum Opinion on Motion for Summary Judgment, Case 1:15-cv-00950-TDC Document 480, page 13 of 77. [20] Id., page 75 of 77 [21] Id., Page 76 of 77 [22] In re Estate of Alvarez v. Rockefeller Foundation, No. 22-1678, (4th Cir. 2024) March 20, 2024, Wilkinson, J., concurring at 20. [23] Id.

Ivone Laurentino dos Santos

O Século XXI chegou e com ele o anúncio de uma “próxima onda”: a Inteligência Artificial (IA). Urge que ampliemos o debate sobre os limites da ciência, com ênfase na criação de mecanismos bioéticos de controle das práticas tecnológicas que se avizinham. Afinal, quais os possíveis impactos da IA nas gerações futuras? Como evitar que as pessoas socialmente desassistidas sejam ainda mais vulnerabilizadas pelo uso da IA? Este estudo, em forma de revisão crítica de literatura, tem como escopo refletir as potencialidades da IA na construção de um mundo com mais justiça e paz social. Conclui-se pela insuficiência de estudos bioéticos da IA, à luz de princípios como dignidade humana, direitos humanos e liberdades fundamentais. Enquanto isso, a contemporaneidade forja subjetividades líquidas, que, de modo similar às máquinas — cada vez mais “humanizadas” —, existem em função de realidades virtuais, em detrimento das demandas e dos problemas concretos das coletividades.

Maurice Chiodo, Dennis Müller

Mathematics has become inescapable in modern, digitized societies: there is hardly any area of life left that isn't affected by it, and we as mathematicians play a central role in this. Our actions affect what others, in particular our students, decide to do with mathematics, and how mathematics affects the world, for better or worse. In return, the study of ethics in mathematics (EiM) has become increasingly important, even though it is still unknown to many. This exposition tries to change that, by motivating ethics in mathematics as an interesting, tractable, non-trivial, well-defined and good research area for mathematicians to consider.

Kevin Wei, Carson Ezell, Nick Gabrieli et al.

Industry actors in the United States have gained extensive influence in conversations about the regulation of general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Although industry participation is an important part of the policy process, it can also cause regulatory capture, whereby industry co-opts regulatory regimes to prioritize private over public welfare. Capture of AI policy by AI developers and deployers could hinder such regulatory goals as ensuring the safety, fairness, beneficence, transparency, or innovation of general-purpose AI systems. In this paper, we first introduce different models of regulatory capture from the social science literature. We then present results from interviews with 17 AI policy experts on what policy outcomes could compose regulatory capture in US AI policy, which AI industry actors are influencing the policy process, and whether and how AI industry actors attempt to achieve outcomes of regulatory capture. Experts were primarily concerned with capture leading to a lack of AI regulation, weak regulation, or regulation that over-emphasizes certain policy goals over others. Experts most commonly identified agenda-setting (15 of 17 interviews), advocacy (13), academic capture (10), information management (9), cultural capture through status (7), and media capture (7) as channels for industry influence. To mitigate these particular forms of industry influence, we recommend systemic changes in developing technical expertise in government and civil society, independent funding streams for the AI ecosystem, increased transparency and ethics requirements, greater civil society access to policy, and various procedural safeguards.

Avigail Ferdman, Emanuele Ratti

In the past few years, calls for integrating ethics modules in engineering curricula have multiplied. Despite this positive trend, a number of issues with these embedded programs remains. First, learning goals are underspecified. A second limitation is the conflation of different dimensions under the same banner, in particular confusion between ethics curricula geared towards addressing the ethics of individual conduct and curricula geared towards addressing ethics at the societal level. In this article, we propose a tripartite framework to overcome these difficulties. Our framework analytically decomposes an ethics module into three dimensions. First, there is the ethical dimension, which pertains to the learning goals. Second, there is the moral dimension, which addresses the moral relevance of engineers conduct. Finally, there is the political dimension, which scales up issues of moral relevance at the civic level. All in all, our framework has two advantages. First, it provides analytic clarity, i.e. it enables course instructors to locate ethical dilemmas in either the moral or political realm and to make use of the tools and resources from moral and political philosophy. Second, it depicts a comprehensive ethical training, which enables students to both reason about moral issues in the abstract, and to socially contextualize potential solutions.

Nsovo Nyeleti Mayimele, Patrick Hulisani Demana, Mothobi Godfrey Keele

The manufacturing sector of the pharmaceutical industry has faced criticism for disparities in access to pharmaceuticals, especially within the context of past incidents and the COVID-19 pandemic. Balancing profitability with the public responsibility to produce affordable, safe and effective medicines is challenging. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recognises the significant role pharmacists play in discovering, manufacturing and dispensing medicines. Pharmacists are responsible for safeguarding pharmaceuticals at all levels of care and where medicines are used. The research aimed to assess the involvement of pharmacists in the strategic leadership of Multinational Pharmaceutical Companies (MPCs) operating in South Africa. The study assessed the presence of pharmacists, recognised as custodians of medicines, in the strategic leadership of pharmaceutical companies operating in South Africa but headquartered globally. A desktop review was done to assess the company profiles, including revenue, size, number of employees and professional backgrounds of the persons in strategic leadership, including board and executive levels. The pharmaceutical companies were headquartered in eleven countries across Asia (3), Africa (1), North America (1), and Europe (6). On average, these companies operated in 86.6 countries (SD ±46.2). The strategic leadership roles within MPCs were comprised of individuals with backgrounds in commerce, sciences, and engineering. Predominantly, professionals with backgrounds in commerce held significant representation in both board membership and executive leadership within these companies. Notably, only 3.2% (33 out of 1023) of leaders possessed a pharmacy qualification, with a mere 27% (9 out of 33) being female. This was the least represented professional background among the strategic leaders, and the likelihood was affected by gender. The pharmacists more likely to hold strategic positions were predominantly male, had additional qualifications, and were situated in specific countries like India and South Africa. Pharmaceutical companies are essential in producing medicines to address global healthcare needs, functioning as healthcare service providers. Strategic leaders in these companies guide the manufacturing sites' strategic goals of the companies. The study's outcomes revealed a restricted presence of pharmacists in leadership roles despite their typical responsibility for manufacturing sites. These pharmacists were often found to have limited authority and were excluded from pivotal decision-making processes, resulting in significant implications for patient welfare.

Marialena Bevilacqua, Nicholas Berente, Heather Domin et al.

We propose a Holistic Return on Ethics (HROE) framework for understanding the return on organizational investments in artificial intelligence (AI) ethics efforts. This framework is useful for organizations that wish to quantify the return for their investment decisions. The framework identifies the direct economic returns of such investments, the indirect paths to return through intangibles associated with organizational reputation, and real options associated with capabilities. The holistic framework ultimately provides organizations with the competency to employ and justify AI ethics investments.

Ronald Duska

Elena V. Pomazkova

Justification. This article discusses the processes and factors of influence that determine the direction of improving the entrepreneurial culture in Russia. The purpose of the article. To study the composition of factors influencing the process of improving entrepreneurial culture. Materials and methods. The article provides a comparative analysis of external and internal factors influencing the components of the institution of entrepreneurial culture. The article uses methods for studying, generalizing and comparative analysis of the information received. The results of the study. The author considered and analyzed the culture of doing business and the objective and subjective factors influencing its improvement. Conclusions. The success of a business is determined by the image of the organization, the trust of consumers and the degree of influence within the business community. The traditional image of a leader as an authoritarian manager is not viable in the modern world. The interaction between the employer and the employee affects the culture of entrepreneurship within the organization, and the processes of globalization have a worldwide impact. Today, a large number of parameters that determine the success of an entrepreneur. These are not only financial criteria, but also organizational, technical, social, which together create a culture of entrepreneurship. Business entities, when interacting with partners from different countries, develop a new unified business culture.

Lavanya Singh

As we grant artificial intelligence increasing power and independence in contexts like healthcare, policing, and driving, AI faces moral dilemmas but lacks the tools to solve them. Warnings from regulators, philosophers, and computer scientists about the dangers of unethical artificial intelligence have spurred interest in automated ethics-i.e., the development of machines that can perform ethical reasoning. However, prior work in automated ethics rarely engages with philosophical literature. Philosophers have spent centuries debating moral dilemmas so automated ethics will be most nuanced, consistent, and reliable when it draws on philosophical literature. In this paper, I present an implementation of automated Kantian ethics that is faithful to the Kantian philosophical tradition. I formalize Kant's categorical imperative in Dyadic Deontic Logic, implement this formalization in the Isabelle theorem prover, and develop a testing framework to evaluate how well my implementation coheres with expected properties of Kantian ethic. My system is an early step towards philosophically mature ethical AI agents and it can make nuanced judgements in complex ethical dilemmas because it is grounded in philosophical literature. Because I use an interactive theorem prover, my system's judgements are explainable.