Latest news with #morality
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Angelic Intelligence: Designing Machines To Learn What It Means To Be Human
Shekar Natarajan is the founder and CEO of Nearly 20 years ago, I held my father's hand as I made the decision to take him off life support. No algorithm could guide that moment. No dashboard could absorb its cost. The question wasn't 'Can we?' but 'Should we?' In that moment, I understood that intelligence without morality is just mechanical cruelty. Later, as a supply chain leader, I watched logistics systems optimize efficiency by dehumanizing the very people who kept them running: warehouse workers denied bathroom breaks, drivers penalized for helping elderly customers. I saw the same pattern repeating at scale. We have built systems obsessed with process but indifferent to people. My mother's moral code showed me early on why human will and morality matters. So, I began to ask: What if technology could be more than rational? What if it could aspire to the best of us? At we are building what I call Angelic Intelligence, a framework that embeds a moral cortex in AI so machines don't just imitate human knowledge but honor human values. Our goal is not to make machines more intelligent but to make them more humane. 1. The Moral Cortex Layer (MCL) A programmable ethics engine that works like an AI's prefrontal cortex. It introduces ethical speed bumps when decisions have moral consequences, forcing systems to pause, reflect and justify their choices instead of rushing to the most efficient outcome. Imagine a routing algorithm suggesting a driver skip the last delivery to avoid overtime penalties. That delivery could be vital to a customer and not getting it could have grave consequences. The MCL interrupts the process, surfaces the decision for review and allows a human to approve the exception if compassion outweighs cost. Most systems default to binary decisions. The MCL keeps judgment in the loop, making sure the gray areas of human intent are respected and visible. 2. CareNet: Empathy As A Service A real-time framework that captures, verifies and amplifies acts of compassion across the system. CareNet is like a Fitbit for empathy, collecting peer-nominated stories of courage, care and discretion. A technician stays after hours to help an elderly customer reconnect their device. Instead of reducing this to a productivity penalty, CareNet records it as an act of care. The system recognizes and logs the context, not just the time spent. Empathy isn't a performance metric; it is a human experience. CareNet ensures acts of kindness don't disappear into the margins. When compassion is made visible, it becomes part of the culture rather than an exception to it. 3. Human Signal Intelligence (HSI) A learning model that captures outlier decisions where human judgment overrides the algorithm and produces a better outcome. These signals are decentralized, context-rich and often ignored by traditional AI. A delivery driver defies an optimized route to check on an isolated customer. Later, the customer's health emergency is discovered in time. HSI captures this deviation and learns that sometimes efficiency must yield to care. Most AI systems treat exceptions as noise. HSI treats them as evidence. Learning from outliers helps machines understand the moral heuristics that make humans irreplaceable. 4. The Ethical Memory Vault A secure repository that collects and tags acts of moral courage. The Vault serves as a story engine, feeding these examples back into training, onboarding and leadership development. When a warehouse worker breaks protocol to protect a colleague from harm, the story is recorded, tagged and shared across the organization. It becomes part of the collective memory that shapes future decisions. Cultures aren't built from compliance manuals. They are built from stories. The Vault ensures lessons in courage and empathy are never lost or forgotten. 5. Pause Protocol Interface A real-time flagging tool that gives frontline workers the power to challenge AI outputs without fear of retaliation. The interface allows anyone to pause, escalate or question decisions as they happen. A customer service agent receives an automated prompt to end a call quickly. Believing the customer is in distress, the agent hits the Pause Protocol to halt the script and escalate the issue to human review. People often stay silent because they don't feel safe raising concerns. The Pause Protocol restores agency, protects dissent and keeps the system grounded in human judgment. 6. Compassion As A KPI A redefinition of success metrics to reward compassion, context and care alongside speed and scale to help balance operational goals with moral outcomes. Instead of measuring only call duration or deliveries per hour, the system includes a compassion score based on peer recognition and customer impact. Small acts of kindness are weighted in performance reviews. If your operation can't survive compassion, it doesn't deserve to scale. Balancing efficiency with empathy ensures your culture stays human even as it grows. 7. Human-Centered Governance (HCG) A framework that keeps people as the final moral authority over automated systems. It includes role-based access, dynamic guardrails and what I call a Red Button Layer—an explicit right to override. A regional manager reviews an AI decision that would eliminate a crucial delivery route to save costs. Using governance tools, they pause the action, gather input from stakeholders and redesign the process to protect vulnerable customers. Machines don't govern morality. People do. HCG ensures that no matter how sophisticated AI becomes, it remains subordinate to human conscience. A 'Should We?' Angelic Intelligence is not trying to be a utopian ideal. Instead, it is a practical response to a world where efficiency threatens to outpace empathy. We don't need smarter machines that can beat humans at pattern recognition. We need wiser systems that remember why the patterns matter in the first place. Because intelligence without conscience is just speed. And in the race to build the future, I would rather be slow for the right reasons than fast for the wrong ones. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Malay Mail
03-07-2025
- Health
- Malay Mail
‘Stop normalising vice': Minister calls out misuse of ‘personal freedom', blames ‘erosion of values' for rise in HIV among tertiary students
PUTRAJAYA, July 3 – Minister in the Prime Minister's Department (Religious Affairs) Datuk Mohd Na'im Mokhtar has today urged Malaysians to stop 'normalising vice', accusing those who do of hiding behind calls for 'personal freedom', Amid the revelation of data of tertiary students living with HIV, the minister described the figures as 'deeply concerning' and pointed to a rise in 'social ills and the erosion of moral values' among youth. 'As the minister responsible for religious affairs, I am deeply concerned by this development,' he said. 'It is time we put a stop to the normalisation of vice under the guise of personal freedom. It is time we rise to build a stronghold of morality and spirituality.' Na'im urged students and youths to uphold their dignity and view religion not just as a subject in school, but as a guiding principle for life. 'Live by principles, not simply by going with the flow,' he said. He also called for a combined approach involving education, awareness, and enforcement to address the issue of HIV among youths. Religious agencies, non-governmental organisations and educational institutions must join forces to safeguard the future generation, he added. Na'im stressed that the government remained committed to nurturing a society that is both intellectually and spiritually strong. On Wednesday, Deputy Health Minister Datuk Lukanisman Awang Sauni said a total of 222 HIV infections were detected among students of higher learning institutions last year, including those as young as 18 and 19. He said that overall, 1,091 HIV infections were detected among tertiary students between 2020 and 2024. Lukanisman had however acknowledged that underage teenagers face limitations in accessing HIV self-testing and follow-up treatment, as there is no legal provision that permits them to undergo screening without parental consent.
Telegraph
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
We've been living under Hitler's spell – time to wake up
The age of Hitler was not the Thirties and Forties: it has been our own lifetimes. It began in the Forties, was in full swing by the Sixties and is only now, it seems, coming to an end. In the post-war era, Adolf Hitler has been our most potent, unifying figure. He remains our touchstone and our backstop. In a world where we seem increasingly unable to agree on anything, we can still almost entirely agree on condemning him. Anyone who defends Hitler thereby reveals themselves to be a monster. Whenever we want to condemn someone, we almost instinctively compare them to him. His indisputable evil makes him a unique fixed reference-point in our moral landscape. For example, as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, memes of Vladimir Putin as Hitler began to appear – even as Putin himself stridently (and absurdly) claimed that his war aim was to 'denazify' Ukraine. Hillary Clinton is one of many people to have called Donald Trump a new Hitler, and compared Trump's 2024 rally at Madison Square Garden, in New York, to the notorious pro-Nazi rally that took place there in 1939. Boris Johnson compared the EU to Hitler; conversely, during the height of Brexit rancour, he himself was regularly depicted with a toothbrush moustache. Even now, it seems, we still define our values with reference to the Nazis. We cannot shake our fascination. I first remember hearing Hitler's name in the late Seventies. I think I was about six years old. I asked my mother something like: who is the worst person ever? Well, who else could she possibly have chosen? Who else would you choose? My next flash of memory – though it might, in reality, have been months later – is of asking her: has anyone ever written a book about Hitler? I remember feeling at the time that my second question was slightly shameful. My instinct was that it was wrong to write a book about a bad man; it was probably wrong even to want to know more about him. But my mother surprised me by pointing to our bookshelves, and a fat hardback with that dreaded name on the spine in barefaced capitals: my father's copy of Alan Bullock's 1952 biography Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. 'Oh, yes,' she said, 'there are lots.' There are indeed, and more every year: not just because Hitler was an enormously consequential figure, but because I'm not the only person to have found his evil fascinating. We cannot stop retelling and reinventing his story, and the endlessly rich story of the war against him. A lifetime later, the films, the books, the ever more tenuous documentaries keep coming; to judge by the schedule of the History Channel, and the lists of many publishers, the Second World War is almost the only event in human history. And historians are forced to share Hitler with storytellers and myth-makers – anyone who wants to stiffen whatever they're drinking with a shot of cheap moral spirits. Sauron, the Daleks, Darth Vader, Lord Voldemort: they're all, unmistakably and unashamedly, Nazi tribute acts. The age of Hitler is the age in which the Western victors of the Second World War have set the terms of global conversation. Many of us have lived the majority of our lives in an era of broad and stable consensus about our most basic shared values. Human lives are fundamentally of equal worth; all human beings have fundamental and inalienable rights; our lives, bodies and consciences belong to us and to no-one else. These truths seem self-evident to the point of banality. Nonetheless, most people in most periods of human history have not believed any such things. And consider what happens when anyone refuses to conform to those supposedly universal anti-Nazi values. For example, in Zimbabwe in the late Nineties, Chenjerai Hunzvi, a particularly brutal enforcer acting on behalf of Robert Mugabe, adopted and gloried in the nickname 'Hitler'. It signalled his ruthlessness to the regime's opponents, to terrify them and to defy any criticism they might level at him. On that level, it worked. For the rest of the world, though, it only cemented the view that Zimbabwe's rulers had become mere predators, and contributed to Mugabe's ostracism on the international stage. Deliberately aligning yourself with Hitler is rare. More commonly, people or movements discredit themselves with unintended or ill-concealed echoes of Nazism. The most obvious examples of this are found in the persistent tendency of many anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist movements around the world to stray, or lapse, into open anti-Semitism. For most of my lifetime, people in Western societies who broke that taboo have automatically ostracised themselves. It's a mark of the end of the age of Hitler that that taboo is clearly decaying. Belligerence, too, can activate our anti-Nazi antibodies. Vladimir Putin may have been surprised that his invasion of Ukraine in 2022 met with such a startlingly different Western response from the one received by his war in Chechnya, or his annexation of Crimea. But those earlier acts hadn't involved a full-scale, unconcealed armed invasion of a neighbouring sovereign state. When Putin tried such an act, it triggered Europe's collective memories of 1938-40. I'm not the first person to notice that the modern world is preoccupied by Nazism, nor that the Nazis have an outsized role in our ethics. But the people who make this point often come from one end of the political spectrum. Take the French writer Renaud Camus, notorious as the originator of the far-Right conspiracy theory the 'Great Replacement': he has lamented what he calls 'the second career of Adolf Hitler', meaning the Führer's career as a moral symbol. Camus and other activists resent how the spectre of Nazism is invoked when they propose mass expulsion of immigrants, purges of the judiciary or restrictions on Muslims' religious freedoms. It's time, these people believe, that we stop being frightened of bogeymen with swastikas. This is not my view. I don't want us to unlearn the lessons of Nazism, lessons that were learned at such a terrible cost. To recognise Hitler as representing a truly exceptional evil is the beginning of wisdom. But this recognition isn't enough. Simply knowing that Hitler was a monster is not an adequate guide to the world we live in. In Britain our instinct has long been to compare every crisis to the Second World War: we even, ludicrously, tried it with Covid-19. There are some evils which the age of Hitler has simply not prepared us to face, and some misleading lessons it has taught us. Shouting 'Nazi!' at each other is a hopeless way to deal with our economic, environmental and demographic crises. And a knee-jerk rejection of 'appeasement', on its own, is a poor guide to international relations in a nuclear age. Our values are more fragile than we think. Our sense of what's right and wrong, our deep convictions about justice and human rights, feel like timeless, self-evident truths, and we can't help looking down on ancestors who didn't have the wit to see them. Nor can we help believing that, now we've grasped those truths, we'll never let go of them. Surely people will always believe in democracy and human rights; surely the arc of the moral universe does bend towards justice? But this is demonstrably, factually incorrect. Our values, my values, your values, are the outcome of a particular historical process, a process in which the Second World War was decisive. And now those values are again on the move. On the Right, across Europe and beyond, the taboo against parties that have a whiff of fascism has virtually gone. Trump's acolytes play with 'Hitler salutes' and the like because they enjoy making their opponents splutter with outrage. Meanwhile, on the Left, the new identity politics of race and gender have challenged ideas that used to be truisms, such as simple egalitarianism, the aspiration to be colour-blind or the conviction that anti-Semitism is an exceptional evil to be avoided at all costs. Indeed both sides, to no-one's surprise, have started spitting venom about Jews again. We can strive to keep the post-1945 consensus going, but the war is falling off the edge of living memory. Like it or not, the age of Hitler, the age when appalled fascination with the Nazis dominated our moral imagination, is coming to an end. The question is: what will come next? The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It by Alec Ryrie (Reaktion, £15.95) will be published on July 1. Alec Ryrie will be speaking at Oxford Literary Festival, in partnership with The Telegraph, on July 30. Tickets:
Telegraph
21-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
‘Tax is theft': it's time the Tories remembered that eternal truth
Suppose I were to force my way into your home and help myself to half your possessions. I hope everyone can see that my behaviour would be wrong. Does it become right when I get to call myself 'the government', and to label my confiscation 'tax'? Even in a democracy, I surely need a good reason to violate the rules of morality by which everyone else is expected to live. That, in a nutshell, is the case for libertarianism. Supporters of limited government want the state to be bound, to the greatest possible extent, by the same norms as the rest of us. Government intervention should be a last rather than a first resort. In what has become the global libertarian motto: 'Don't hurt people, don't take their stuff.' Critics on both sides scoff at the idea that there is a moral basis to libertarianism. Leftists think it is a cover for greed and selfishness. Rightists, or at least Trumpians and National Conservatives, dismiss it as the creed of rootless cosmopolitans. But all it really is is the application to official bodies of the ethical precepts we learn at nursery school. Treat other people considerately, don't take things that aren't yours, tell the truth, try not to get into fights. There was a time when mothers would tell their children to 'be civil': an apt word, recalling that decency, politeness and respect are attributes of citizenship, conditions for a happy and harmonious society. Those mums were channelling David Hume, who wrote of 'the three fundamental laws of nature, that of the stability of possession, of its transference by consent, and of the performance of promises'. Hume in turn was drawing on centuries of classical, Biblical, Islamic and Eastern philosophy. In all these traditions, alongside the Golden Rule, he found its less ambitious but more feasible twin, the Silver Rule. The Golden Rule tells us to treat others as we would like to be treated. The trouble is that, for most of us, this is rarely achievable. I might walk past a beautiful house and wish it were mine, but that doesn't make me post my own keys through its letterbox. For those of us who are not saints, the Silver Rule, being negative in its conception, has the advantage of practicability. Confucius phrased it as 'Do not impose on others what you yourself do not want'. Quite. Don't hurt people, don't take their stuff. There is a Talmudic story of an impatient gentile who asks a rabbi to teach him the entirety of the Torah while standing on one leg. The rabbi sends him away crossly, so the gentile makes the same demand of another rabbi, who happens to be the famously wise Hillel. Hillel tells him: 'That which is hateful to you, do not do unto your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary.' If you feel I am labouring the point, it is because I sense the tide running against us. The world is in a bossy, censorious, authoritarian mood, and has been since the lockdowns. The individualist philosophy that stretches back through Hume via John Locke to St Paul and Lao Tzu is losing ground, despite its monumental contributions to peace and prosperity. The Great Realignment, predicted two decades ago by Dr Steve Davies of the Institute of Economic Affairs, has happened. The old divide, which pitted classical liberals and capitalists against interventionists and socialists, has been replaced by a new one, one that divides patriots from globalists or (from the opposite perspective) bigots from believers in universal rights. 'There is no more Left and Right,' said Marine Le Pen at the last French presidential election. 'The real cleavage is between patriots and globalists.' Her opponent, Emmanuel Macron, did not dispute her framing: 'The new political split is between those who are afraid of globalisation and those who see globalisation as an opportunity.' This is uncomfortable for those of us who support national independence and cultural traditionalism as well as free contract and personal autonomy, a combination that did not seem strange to Margaret Thatcher or to Enoch Powell or, come to that, to Edmund Burke, the grandfather of Anglophone conservatism. For a long time, our opponents came overwhelmingly from the Left. They believed that patriotism was a form of false consciousness, a way to distract oppressed groups. Proletarians in different countries supposedly had more in common with each other than with the capitalists who happened to share their nationalities. Workers of the world should unite. Now, though, the critics tend to be professed anti-socialists, often idealistic and patriotic young men, convinced that classical liberalism places international interests over local loyalties, and that its exponents are soulless corporatists who feel at home only in Brussels or Davos. 'You know what a globalist is, right?' Donald Trump asked a rally in 2018. 'You know what a globalist is? A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country so much.' I spend a lot of time with classical liberals, and I have honestly never come across anyone who matches that caricature. We believe in free trade and open competition, not because we have elevated it into a dogma that stands above the national interest, but because it is the national interest. Countries with limited governments do better than countries with bloated governments. They are less corrupt, wealthier, happier and usually more equal. That our creed enriches the globe too is a happy bonus. I can't think of a better way to define our national interest than the net interest of the people in our nation. And that is best advanced if our government is circumscribed and limited. Every intervention that politicians make – every regulation, every tariff, every subsidy – privileges a particular group, usually one with political connections, over the general population. I'd call that the opposite of the national interest. 'One of the criticisms that I get from the Right is that I am insufficiently committed to the capital-M Market,' says J D Vance, arguing that markets should be a tool, not an objective in themselves. But who are these people who elevate the capital-M Market? Who are these demented ideologues who stalk Vance's imagination? You won't find them among the think-tankers of Tufton Street, who support markets precisely because they see them as a tool, a means to the end of greater national prosperity. The real ideologues are those who believe that governments, so inept at building cars, running airlines or installing telephones, suddenly become wise and disinterested when it comes to deciding which companies to subsidise or to shield from competition. Britain, of all countries, should understand that competition and free trade are a supreme expression of patriotism. It was these ideas that elevated us above the run of nations, turning us into the wealthiest country on Earth – a position we held until others copied our formula, thereby enriching themselves and incidentally enriching us, since prosperous neighbours are customers before they are competitors. Is the electorate, mired in post-lockdown stagnation, ready to hear such a message? Will voters prefer candidates who tell the truth about our public finances, and who argue for cuts, over those who claim that we can keep spending as long as we are compassionate enough? Not yet, perhaps. Hence Reform UK's shift away from classical liberalism and towards the nationalisation of selected industries and the maintenance of generous benefits. Yet we can see the storm gathering overhead. When the money runs out, so do people's illusions. There may yet be a reward for a grown-up party, a party prepared to stand apart from the high-spending, welfarist consensus. Even if that position does not attract 50 per cent support plus one, it will attract a lot more than 18 per cent support, which is where the Conservatives are currently polling. In any case, it is the right thing to do – right both economically and morally. Perhaps, in time, it will come to be right politically, too.
Irish Times
16-06-2025
- General
- Irish Times
The Gaelic philosopher who wrote ‘one of the most influential books of our time'
There are formative cultural experiences in all our lives. I'll never forget hearing The Smiths for the first time, watching The Breakfast Club, and reading Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. Alasdair who, I hear you say? For fans of the Scottish philosopher, who died last month aged 96, his barnstorming book on the future of western thought felt like an intellectual coming-of-age. 'We have – very largely, if not entirely – lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality,' he wrote. READ MORE It is not just that we are trapped in seemingly irreconcilable arguments about what's right and wrong. It's that we have lost touch with a shared language that can make reconciliation possible. So MacIntyre proclaimed in his book, first published in 1981, although that short precis of After Virtue doesn't nearly do it justice. The British writer Kenan Malik describes After Virtue as a 'brilliant, bleak, frustrating and above all provocative' work, while Irish philosopher Joseph Dunne calls it 'a coruscating critique of the ills of modernity'. MacIntyre was born in Glasgow to parents of Irish descent – 'who ensured that he learned Irish', Dunne points out. An 'active Trotskyite' for many years and a member of the Community Party in the UK, MacIntyre progressively moved away from Marx towards Aristotle and, in later life, converted to Catholicism. One constant throughout was a pride in his Gaelic roots. Dunne, who taught philosophy at St Patrick's College, Dublin City University and closely engaged with MacIntyre's work, told The Irish Times that, 'in an earlier atheist phase', MacIntyre 'had identified himself as a 'Catholic atheist' on the grounds that 'only Catholics worshipped a God worth denying'.' But what made After Virtue so special? The book begins with an arresting image. Picture the world of science experiencing a 'catastrophe' whereby 'laboratories are burnt down' and no one can provide a convincing proof that two plus two does not equal five. Something similar has happened to moral philosophy, MacIntyre argued. As religious certainties faded away, and as we abandoned traditional belief systems, we have been left with purely emotional judgments on morality. In short, we cry 'hurrah' and 'boo' at one another without any common ground. For MacIntyre the rot set in with the Enlightenment, and its promise of creating a moral framework divorced from history and community. The Enlightenment gave us two new ways of assessing ethical matters: human rights theory and utilitarianism. The former has strengthened recognition of individual freedom but it runs into trouble when competing rights clash. Utilitarianism advocates doing whatever maximises benefit and minimises harm. Reimagined as 'effective altruism', it is the favourite ethic of tech bros who claim to be making the world a better place while acting like jerks. MacIntyre called for a return to an earlier way of thinking known as virtue theory. This emphasises the need to cultivate characteristics like honesty, humility and compassion. In a unique and exhilarating twist, After Virtue wrapped this argument up in a wider critique of capitalism, the creeping managerialism of society and the coarsening of political language. Central to Alasdair MacIntyre's thinking is to resurrect the ancient Greek notion of telos or 'purpose' For someone who is hardly a household name, MacIntyre had an outsize influence on a generation of political scientists. In Malik's book The Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global History of Ethics, there are more references to MacIntyre than to George Berkeley, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Voltaire put together. But he has his critics too. Liberal commentator and author Mark Lilla says After Virtue 'turned out to be one of the most influential books of our time' – but not in a good way. 'By blurring the lines between intellectual history and philosophical argument, MacIntyre ... developed a compelling just-so story about how our dark world came to be,' Lilla writes in The Shipwrecked Mind. For liberals like Lilla, we should double down on Enlightenment values, not back away from them. When faced with monsters trampling over international human rights law, we need a stronger response than appealing to virtues. We need a system for managing conflict, along with clear rules and punishments. MacIntyre opens After Virtue with an epitaph to deceased ancestors: 'gus am bris an la', Scots Gaelic for 'until the day breaks'. The book also 'ends with a kind of prayer', Lilla observes. But prayer won't stop Vladimir Putin or Binyamin Netanyahu raining missiles down on civilians. Ultimately, MacIntyre left room for debate over how we should rehabilitate our moral thinking. After Virtue does not close off the possibility of restoring virtue theory to its rightful place in our collective reasoning, while taking the best of what both human rights theory and utilitarianism have to offer. Central to MacIntyre's thinking, however, is to resurrect the ancient Greek notion of telos or 'purpose'. The Enlightenment sidelined inquiry into purpose; searching for 'the meaning of life' itself became a figure of fun. But MacIntyre believed it was essential for humans to have a meaningful story about where they came from and where they're going. He insisted, as Dunne puts it, on 'the narrative structure of a human life'. 'I can only answer the question, 'What am I to do?',' MacIntyre wrote, 'if I can answer the prior question, 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?'.' We have become accustomed to self-help books spoon-feeding us 'lessons for life'. But a proper work of philosophy inspires us to ask better questions.
