An ethical assessment of powered exoskeletons: Implications from clinical use to industry and military contexts.

Exoskeletons are technologies that can help to increase or improve mobility, dexterity, and strength. They can be used as assistive devices, to restore lost affordances, or for rehabilitation. While mechanical exoskeletons are passive and rely on the body's power for movement, powered exoskeletons are active mechanical systems that can assist or enhance a user's capacity, including in strength and performance. They also offer scope to augment or enhance beyond simple medical support, with potential in the future for superhuman power and strength. While these technologies present promising clinical opportunities, including for those who want to regain walking capacity, they also bring ethical questions, such as about data privacy and accessibility. In addition, the physical features of the technology can prove mentally, physically, and financially demanding, and may be deployed in contexts where user choice and autonomy is constrained. In this article, we discuss these issues, and raise some pertinent ethical questions, not all of which can be easily answered. We touch upon medical and therapeutic uses, for industrial and workplace settings, and in military contexts specially, given these are contexts where such technology may be required or even imposed. We argue that reasonable optimism for such technologies needs to be tempered by sufficient ethical assessment to identify and address barriers to research, development, and use. As well as managing any impacts and expectations for the health and wellbeing of users, the potential impact on autonomy and the risk of coercion, we have to consider what kind of data may be recorded or used, and the risk that these technologies could exacerbate existing inequalities or harms.

Neurotechnology and ethics guidelines for human enhancement: The case of the hippocampal cognitive prosthesis.

Neurotechnologies offer both therapeutic and enhancement potential. In this article, we demonstrate how ethics guidelines can help with critical reflection on their potential for enhancement. We do this through the case of the hippocampal cognitive prosthesis. This prothesis developed in the US, has primarily therapeutic ends, with scope for enhancement. This technology raises several ethical issues, including as related to identity and memory, autonomy and authenticity. In the first section, we outline what we mean by enhancement, and introduce neurotechnologies generally and the hippocampal cognitive prosthesis specifically, with an introduction to generally relevant ethical issues. In the second section, we outline ethical issues pertinent to the hippocampal cognitive prosthesis and explore how ethics guidelines can help to promote essential critical reflection on a technology like this. Through all this, our emphasis is to balance between technological optimism and caution, especially where technologies have enhancement potential.

Correcting the Brain? The Convergence of Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, Psychiatry, and Artificial Intelligence.

The incorporation of neural-based technologies into psychiatry offers novel means to use neural data in patient assessment and clinical diagnosis. However, an over-optimistic technologisation of neuroscientifically-informed psychiatry risks the conflation of technological and psychological norms. Neurotechnologies promise fast, efficient, broad psychiatric insights not readily available through conventional observation of patients. Recording and processing brain signals provides information from 'beneath the skull' that can be interpreted as an account of neural processing and that can provide a basis to evaluate general behaviour and functioning. But it ought not to be forgotten that the use of such technologies is part of a human practice of neuroscience informed psychiatry. This paper notes some challenges in the integration of neural technologies into psychiatry and suggests vigilance particularly in respect to normative challenges. In this way, psychiatry can avoid a drift toward reductive technological approaches, while nonetheless benefitting from promising advances in neuroscience and technology.

Ethics guidelines for human enhancement R&D.

Technologies to improve human performance raise ethical concerns.

Automating autism assessment: What AI can bring to the diagnostic process.

This paper examines the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD, hereafter autism). In so doing we examine some problems in existing diagnostic processes and criteria, including issues of bias and interpretation, and on concepts like the 'double empathy problem'. We then consider how novel applications of AI might contribute to these contexts. We're focussed specifically on adult diagnostic procedures as childhood diagnosis is already well covered in the literature.