Crossing the Uncanny Threshold: Moral Dilemmas in Creating Digital Humans

Chosen theme: Moral Dilemmas in Creating Digital Humans. Welcome to a thoughtful exploration of identity, empathy, and responsibility in an age when lifelike avatars talk back. Join the conversation, challenge assumptions, and subscribe to follow our evolving ethical journey.

Consent and Identity: Who Owns a Face That Isn’t Flesh?

A daughter builds a griefbot from her father’s messages and voicemail, only to realize he never consented to becoming a posthumous companion. Is love enough authority here, or should law and ethics strictly define boundaries? Share how you would handle this aching dilemma.

Consent and Identity: Who Owns a Face That Isn’t Flesh?

Contracts increasingly include clauses about scanning bodies and voices, yet many performers discover later that reuse feels broader than promised. When a digital double headlines an ad years later, does initial consent truly endure, or should renewal be mandatory and transparent?

Agency and Accountability: When a Digital Human Causes Harm

A hospital’s digital receptionist misroutes an urgent request, delaying care. Is the developer, the hospital, the integrator, or the data provider responsible? Accountability should follow control and foreseeability, backed by auditable decisions and clear, preassigned escalation paths.

Agency and Accountability: When a Digital Human Causes Harm

Black-box systems complicate fault-finding. Yet opacity is not an excuse. Mandating event logging, counterfactual explanations, and risk registries helps investigators reconstruct why a digital human acted—and helps victims obtain timely remedies without chasing shadows.

Emotional Authenticity: Companions, Care, and the Line Between Comfort and Manipulation

Mr. Rao chats nightly with a compassionate avatar and stops attending his community center. Companionship soothed loneliness, yet narrowed his world. When does comfort become enclosure, and what design nudges could redirect users back to human connections?

Bias and Representation: Teaching Our Creations to See Us Fairly

A résumé screener avatar subtly rates mothers as less committed, echoing biased histories. Fixes require targeted reweighting, counterfactual testing, and human review. Fairness audits must be continuous, because social patterns evolve and harms resurface in new guises.

Work, Art, and Value: What Becomes of Human Craft?

A voice actor loses a regional campaign to a trained clone, then pivots into directing and safeguarding performances for studios. That bridge required microgrants and retraining. What transition tools would you fund to make displacement less devastating?

Rights, Personhood, and the Future of Care

Some propose baseline anti-abuse rules to avoid normalizing cruelty toward lifelike agents. Others fear anthropomorphism will dilute human rights. Where do you stand, and how might design discourage dehumanizing habits without granting personhood?

Rights, Personhood, and the Future of Care

Exposure therapy coaches and social rehearsal avatars can help, but require clinician oversight, clear crisis handoffs, and strict data minimization. Would you trust a synthetic therapist adjunct, and under what monitoring, auditing, and sunset provisions?