Monthly Archives: October 2021

AI predicts gathering disease with a deep dive into evolutionary genetics – AI in Healthcare

Posted: October 30, 2021 at 3:30 pm

Researchers have used unsupervised machine learning to predict disease-causing properties in more than 36 million genetic variants across more than 3,200 disease-related genes.

In the process theyve advanced the classification of more than 256,000 genetic variants whose propertieshelpful, harmful or neitherhave been unknown.

The work was conducted at Harvard Medical School and Oxford University. The resulting study is posted online in Nature.

Quantifying the pathogenicity of protein variants in human disease-related genes would have a marked effect on clinical decisions, yet the overwhelming majority (over 98%) of these variants still have unknown consequences, write co-lead authors Jonathan Frazer, Mafalda Dias and colleagues to contextualize their pursuit.

In principle, computational methods could support the large-scale interpretation of genetic variants, they add. However, state-of-the-art methods have relied on training machine learning models on known disease labels.

For the current project, the team sought to overcome this limitation by modeling the distribution of sequence variation across organismsand over vast swaths of time.

In so doing, they hypothesized, they would isolate fitness-maintaining features in protein sequences.

Calling their model EVE for evolutionary model of variant effect, the authors report their technique proved more accurate than labeled-data AI approaches.

Whats more, it can equal or improve upon predictions from more commonly used approaches.

The team states their work with EVE suggests models of evolutionary information can provide valuable independent evidence for variant interpretation that will be widely useful in research and clinical settings.

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Gene Therapies Given Boost In NIH-FDA Partnership, New Aetna Network – Kaiser Health News

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Aetna's Gene-based Cellular and Other Innovative Therapies network is aimed at curbing million-dollar costs of the gene therapy market. Separately, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration launched a public-private partnership to speed up gene treatments.

Modern Healthcare:Aetna To Cover Multi-Million Dollar Gene TherapiesAetna debuted a network focused on curbing the rising costs of the growing gene therapy market, the insurer announced on Thursday. Structured like a Center of Excellence program, the company's Gene-based Cellular and Other Innovative Therapies network includes more than 75 providers who treat inherited retinal diseasewhich impacts approximately 2 million people worldwideand spinal muscular atrophy, which impacts an estimated 9,000 Americans. Treatment for these conditions comes in the form of gene therapy, where providers manipulate genes at the cellular level. (Tepper, 10/27)

Stat:Partnership Aims To Accelerate Gene Therapies For Rare DiseasesThe National Institutes of Health and U.S. Food and Drug Administration unveiled a public-private partnership Wednesday aimed at accelerating gene therapies for the roughly 30 million Americans living with a rare genetic disease. Theyve waited a long time for something to be focused this way to address the incredibly wrenching stories we see all around us of children and adults with rare diseases where we can do a diagnostic test to tell them what they have but beyond that havent had much to offer, Francis Collins, the pioneering genetics researcher and longtime NIH director, told STAT. (Molteni, 10/27)

Stat:The Vast Majority Of Genes Have Been Tied To Cancer, Complicating ResearchJoo Pedro de Magalhes scours the human genome for clues that might help us understand why people age and what we might do to stop that. Without fail, each time hes done one of these studies, nearly every gene ends up having some kind of link to cancer. Always, he said. You always have some cancer-related genes in there. (Chen, 10/27)

In other pharmaceutical industry news

Stat:Feds Probe Novartis Over Entresto Marketing And Compensation To DoctorsIn what might become a new scandal for Novartis, federal investigators recently demanded information from the drug maker (NVS) about the pricing and marketing of one of its biggest-selling drugs, and the focus of the probe includes compensation paid to physicians. Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a civil investigative demand about Entresto, a heart failure drug that generated $924 million in sales in the third quarter, a 46% gain. The demand was disclosed by the company in a regulatory filing, but further details were not made available (see page 36). (Silverman, 10/27)

Stat:CytoDyn Knew Its FDA Application Was Incomplete When It Filed, Docs ShowCytoDyn and its CEO Nader Pourhassan have known the companys long-delayed HIV drug was in far more trouble with the Food and Drug Administration than was disclosed to investors, according to new documents filed this week as part of an ongoing civil lawsuit. The documents reveal that in May 2020, CytoDyn submitted a marketing application for its drug called leronlimab with the FDA, despite knowing the filing was missing crucial information and was largely incomplete. (Feuerstein, 10/28)

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The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies – Nature.com

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COVID-19: Studying genetic predisposition to disease severity – Medical News Today

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SARS-CoV-2 is highly likely to transmit from one person to the members of their household.

One 2020 review suggests that on average, the likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 transmitting to household contacts is 16.9%. But this increases to 41.5% in households made up of the person with the infection and one other contact.

Yet some people do not develop the infection even after prolonged contact with household members who have it. This suggests that these people may be resistant to SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Genetic factors are known to play a significant role in determining response to infectious disease.

A recent review published in Nature Immunology summarizes current evidence about genetic factors that could explain the variability in individual response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Specifically, it describes genes that may result in increased susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 and those that could potentially confer resistance.

The review was authored by researchers participating in the COVID Human Genetic Effort, an international collaboration that aims to understand the genetic and immune factors underlying SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Paul Bastard, a doctoral student at Imagine Institute, in Paris, and a collaborator in the COVID Human Genetic Effort, explained the significance of identifying genes that may confer natural resistance against SARS-CoV-2 to Medical News Today:

This would be of major importance, as it could help identify the pathways involved in the fight against COVID-19. It could help us better understand the pathogenesis of COVID-19. In addition, it could potentially lead to the development of new therapeutics.

Previous studies have shown that possessing certain genetic variants can increase susceptibility to tuberculosis. These genes generally encode proteins that are involved in the immune response.

Similarly, scientists have found mutations in genes that are involved in or influence the type-1 interferon response in people with severe COVID-19. Type-1 interferons are important chemical messengers in the immune system and are crucial to our antiviral response.

Certain gene variants can also, however, protect a person from severe illness and even confer resistance to an infectious disease.

For instance, people with a mutation in the gene that encodes the CCR5 receptor are naturally resistant to HIV-1. The CCR5 receptor binds to chemokines, a family of immune proteins, and is used by HIV-1 to enter human cells and spread in the body. People with a CCR5 gene mutation express a shorter version of the CCR5 protein, preventing HIV from entering and infecting cells.

The discovery of this natural resistance led to the development of drugs that block the receptor. This example shows how characterizing genes that confer natural resistance can facilitate the development of treatments for infectious diseases.

Likewise, scientists have identified several candidate genes that could potentially confer resistance against SARS-CoV-2 infection.

SARS-CoV-2 enters human cells by binding to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) protein, which is expressed on the surface of a wide variety of cells.

A recent preprint study, which has yet to be peer reviewed, showed that a rare gene variant located close to the ACE2 gene is associated with a lower risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe illness.

Moreover, the study suggests that these protective effects may result from the variant genes ability to reduce ACE2 expression and, thus, potentially influence the entry of SARS-CoV-2.

Other laboratory studies have identified human proteins that interact with SARS-CoV-2 and facilitate processes essential for viral infection. Variants of these genes could thus potentially confer resistance to SARS-CoV-2.

The characterization of genes that confer resistance to SARS-CoV-2 requires the identification of individuals with a natural resistance to the infection. However, there are a few major methodological obstacles.

One is demonstrating that a person has contracted SARS-CoV-2 in the past. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests using nasal swabs or other respiratory samples only provide information about recent exposure to the virus. While detecting antibodies in plasma samples can provide information about a prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, a small percentage of individuals who have had the infection do not have detectable levels of antibodies.

It can also be challenging to distinguish individuals who have never been exposed to the virus from those who possess natural resistance.

The authors of the Nature Immunology review are currently conducting a study to characterize genes that may confer resistance to SARS-CoV-2 infection and propose a strategy to address these challenges.

To identify people with natural resistance to SARS-CoV-2 infection, the authors intend to enroll participants who do not have the infection but have a household member, especially a spouse or partner, with symptomatic COVID-19. They also intend to include people without the infection who have been in contact, without protective equipment, with a symptomatic person during the first 35 days of their infection.

And in addition to PCR and antibody testing, they propose to assess the participants T-cell responses.

The immune response to a SARS-CoV-2 infection is characterized by the production of antibodies and a response by T cells, a type of white blood cell. The absence of a T-cell response specific to the virus, along with negative PCR and antibody tests, could thus help confirm the absence of a prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.

After analyzing the genomes of these participants to identify genes associated with natural resistance to SARS-CoV-2 infection, the authors will conduct subsequent studies to determine the role of the genes in the infection process.

Dr. Nikolai Klebanov, of the Harvard Dermatology Residency Program, in Boston, told MNT:

Studying host genetic predisposition for susceptibility or resistance to COVID-19, through genome-wide association studies or whole exome or genome sequencing, could uncover potential viral entry points and key pathways of immune resistance to the virus. This could allow for the development of new, targeted drugs or vaccines for COVID-19, as well as to better risk-stratify vulnerable populations.

For live updates on the latest developments regarding the novel coronavirus and COVID-19, click here.

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Fortune and Great Place to Work Name Amgen One of the World’s Best Workplaces in 2021 – PRNewswire

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THOUSAND OAKS, Calif., Oct. 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) today announced that it has been selected as one of the World's Best Workplaces for 2021 by Fortune magazine and Great Place to Work. Amgen ranked eighth among the 25 companies named to the list. Those on the list were selected from 10,000 companies, representing the voices of nearly 20 million employees in more than 100 countries.

"We are very proud of this honor," said Robert A. Bradway, Amgen's chairman and chief executive officer. "To be recognized on a global scale demonstrates our ongoing commitment to providing staff with an environment in which they are able to grow and thrive even during challenging times."

"The World's Best Workplaces are the most sweeping and consistent examples of inclusive company cultures we've ever known," said Michael C. Bush, chief executive officer of Great Place to Work. "In a global workforce, alignment is everything, and these companies are fortifying their culture around the world a nearly impossible feat. Even when tested by the pandemic, these companies recognize sub-communities in each region and their leaders carry an equitable employee experience across cultures."

Earlier this year, Amgen was ranked by Great Place to Work as the seventh best workplace in Europe. Additionally, 25 Amgen affiliates around the world have either been certified or recognized by Great Place to Work nationally. The Fortune World's Best Workplaces list is available at https://www.greatplacetowork.com/best-workplaces-international/world-s-best-workplaces/2021.

About AmgenAmgen is committed to unlocking the potential of biology for patients suffering from serious illnesses by discovering, developing, manufacturing and delivering innovative human therapeutics. This approach begins by using tools like advanced human genetics to unravel the complexities of disease and understand the fundamentals of human biology.

Amgen focuses on areas of high unmet medical need and leverages its expertise to strive for solutions that improve health outcomes and dramatically improve people's lives. A biotechnology pioneer since 1980, Amgen has grown to beone ofthe world'sleadingindependent biotechnology companies, has reached millions of patients around the world and is developing a pipeline of medicines with breakaway potential.

For more information, visitwww.amgen.comand follow us onwww.twitter.com/amgen.

CONTACT: Amgen, Thousand OaksMegan Fox, 805-447-1423 (media)Trish Rowland, 805-447-5631(media)Arvind Sood, 805-447-1060 (investors)

SOURCE Amgen

http://www.amgen.com

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Opinion: Why I Still Believe Covid-19 Could Not Have Originated in a Lab – Undark Magazine

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Where did the Covid-19 pandemic come from? Almost since the beginning of the outbreak, a bitter and explosive controversy has raged over the origins of the novel coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2. The rapid shut-down of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan immediately suggested to Western observers that the Chinese government itself thought that the market was the source, especially since 26 out of 47 of the original cases could be linked to it. An article published in Nature in March 2020 seemed to leave no doubt: The viruss genome showed every evidence of natural origins.

But the story did not stop there. Many writers and researchers suggested that the presence of a high-containment laboratory in Wuhan, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, could point to a laboratory origin for the pandemic: a bioweapons experiment; or gain-of-function research, in which genetic manipulation adds some new feature to an existing germ; or simply the laboratory escape of a lethal bat virus. Since many lab escapes have happened in the past, some argue, a lab leak is a plausible explanation for this devastating explosion of disease. While a team convened by the World Health Organization declared in March that a lab leak was extremely unlikely and suggested wildlife farms that supplied the market could be the culprit, a new group of scientists is now set to revisit the issue.

Still, there remains, as of this writing, no physical evidence linking the pandemics origins with a laboratory escape. And furthermore, from a logical and evolutionary viewpoint, there is something fundamentally wrong with all lab-leak arguments. SARS-CoV-2 is a human-adapted virus capable of effective, stealthy transmission from person to person. Lab escape theories cannot clearly account for the adaptation of the virus to its new host, or, in other words, for the evolution of human-to-human transmissibility.

In order for a virus to adapt to a new species, it needs to evolve to a point where it can easily and readily spread within that species. This is not the work of an instant, but rather the end result of a long chain of adaptation and transmission. Thats an evolutionary process. Human-to-human transmissibility has never been produced deliberately in laboratory experiments because no one knows exactly how to make a virus more transmissible among people. Its not something that can happen accidentally, because the genetics of transmission are so subtle and complex the result of numerous specific tiny adaptations. And a virus thats readily transmissible among humans in the way that SARS-CoV-2 is has never been found in the wild, because animal viruses are adapted to their own host species. To make a human-to-human transmissible disease, you need human beings, a lot of human beings, to be exposed to a pathogen. And you need the repeated action of natural selection on the pathogen spreading among those human beings.

Transmission is key to a pathogens adaptation. In SARS-CoV-2, transmission is effective, silent, and relentless because the virus replicates at high levels in the upper respiratory tract, making it easy to spread through coughing, sneezing, talking, and breathing. According to coronavirus expert Susan Weiss of the University of Pennsylvania, SARS-CoV-2 replicates better at slightly lower temperatures than some other viruses, allowing it to populate nasal passages and the upper airways, where the temperature is lower than in the lungs. Though it has not been proven, Weiss said it would make logical sense that better replication at lower temperatures could permit the virus to shed early in the infection, before symptoms set in.

In contrast, highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu, for instance, never acquired the ability to transmit from person-to-person at all, despite a fair number of fatal human infections. This is, at least in part, because the virus attaches to receptors deep in the lungs, and not, unlike SARS-CoV-2, in the upper airways.

How would you design a virus to spread stealthily in the ways that SARS-CoV-2 does, either for general research or for nefarious purposes? You wouldnt. You wouldnt know how. Theres a vanishingly low likelihood that you could design a virus so that it spreads asymptomatically, says Weiss.

Human-to-human transmissibility has never been produced deliberately in laboratory experiments because no one knows exactly how to make a virus more transmissible among people.

Transmission is a subtle thing, involving many genes and many functions. Only natural selection, in the context of repeated spread from host to host within a single species, can guide its evolution. The idea that all of these traits could be accidentally picked up in laboratory experiments and introduced into a bat virus seems no more likely than the idea that they were consciously designed by researchers. Huge mink farms in Denmark and the Netherlands, where, in several instances, infected workers introduced SARS-CoV-2 to the crowded animals, show us how this adaptive evolutionary process works: The human-adapted virus rapidly evolved, several times over, to be a mink-adapted disease which may be better at transmitting among minks than people.

No one really understands the genetics of transmissibility for any virus. The closest scientists have come is in a notorious series of experiments, the results of which were published in 2012. Two laboratories, one in the Netherlands, one in Wisconsin, separately showed that by changing one aspect of transmission, the receptor by which highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu attach to cells in the respiratory tract, they could, by repeatedly passing their altered strain through ferrets, ultimately infect ferrets via the airborne route. Many scientists insisted that this gain-of-function research was inherently dangerous, and the labs agreed to a voluntary year-long moratorium.

But as Columbia University virologist Vincent Racaniello points out, that work actually did not produce a more dangerous virus. By shifting receptors to those high in ferrets airways, the virus lost its virulence. None of the ferrets died. Weiss quips that sometimes gain-of-function research actually involves loss of function.

The closest anyone has come to creating an entirely novel virus is likely an experiment conducted by Ralph Baric and colleagues at the University of North Carolina, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the WIV, among other institutions, in which the researchers used the spike protein of an existing bat coronavirus and spliced it to the backbone of a mouse coronavirus. Baric, who was not available for comment, showed his chimera could infect and replicate in human airways cells in vitro and the lungs of living mice. Then the scientists tried to develop a full-length virus, but that proved significantly attenuated both in human airway cells and mice. It would need, according to the study, further adaptation to become an effective pathogen. And theres no evidence at all that that derived virus could spread.

Even less is known about the genetics of coronavirus transmissibility, which remains a black box, even as variant after variant has emerged and spread. Racaniello describes these new, spreading variants as simply more fit. But other virologists, including Stephen Goldstein, a researcher at the University of Utah School of Medicine, think that in this case fitness implies more effective transmission. The take-home is that that these new variants are worse because they spread more quickly and to more people, he says. It all adds up to greater transmissibility. Evolution towards increased transmissibility is, indeed, a likely scenario, as more transmissible strains should outcompete less transmissible ones, and that seems to have happened here.

But we still do not thoroughly understand the genetics of viral transmission for SARS-CoV-2, or, for that matter, for any other pathogen.

Some people propose that an accidental release of a natural virus, probably a bat virus, triggered the pandemic but that scenario is no more likely. First, no one has found a bat virus close enough genetically to be the culprit. The bat virus until recently believed to be most closely related to SARS-CoV-2, RATG13, is 96 percent similar. That doesnt mean, according to coronavirus expert Weiss, that one small stretch (4 percent of the genome) is different and the rest is identical. It is different in small ways all across the genome.

Results posted on the preprint server Research Square in September, which have not yet been peer reviewed, suggest three new viruses identified in bats in Laos are even more closely related to SARS-CoV-2. But even assuming that scientists in Wuhan cultured such viruses in the lab which they told investigators early this year was not the case this doesnt mean that a bat-adapted virus escaped from the WIV could have seeded the Covid pandemic. A virus is never going to come out of a bat ready to go, says Racaniello. It never has.

Bat-borne viruses, including Hendra, Nipah, Marburg, and rabies, can kill people, but they dont easily spread from person to person. While, in theory, a bat virus that has the ability to infect people via the ACE-2 receptor might be able to spread from person to person, there is no known record of any bat virus (or any other wild animal virus) having done so. Six cases of SARS-like illnesses among miners cleaning bat feces from a bat cave in Yunnan province have been reported, but there is no indication that these cases (three of which were fatal) spread to anyone else. There are known instances of a bat-adapted disease transmitting among people, but always, as in the case of Nipah virus, through very close contact or exposure to bodily fluids, not via airborne transmission. Lab releases of a wild bat virus would necessarily mean that lab workers had to be infected many of them, to allow transmissibility to evolve but despite speculation, there have been no reported Covid infections among lab researchers at the WIV.

We still do not thoroughly understand the genetics of viral transmission for SARS-CoV-2, or, for that matter, for any other pathogen.

Proponents of the lab-release explanation also point to prior accidental releases as evidence that this could have happened in Wuhan. Proponents cite the six times SARS-CoV, a related virus that infected more than 8,000 people and killed 774 in 2002-2003, escaped from research laboratories by infecting scientists who passed it on. Or they bring up Janet Parker, who died of smallpox in 1978 when a British scientist, experimenting with smallpox virus, apparently allowed the virus to move through the ventilation system and infect Parker, who was working in a room just above the laboratory.

The difference between SARS-CoV-2 and these instances is that none of them involve new pathogens. Citing instances of the release of pathogens that have already established transmissibility among humans doesnt begin to address the question of Covids origins. And that remains the fundamental question.

But the actual key to Covids origins has been there all along. According to Weiss, SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 are more closely related to each other than either is to other human coronaviruses. But Weiss says both are also closer to related bat viruses than they are to each other. After more than a decade of research, its been established that the SARS-CoV originated in a bat and then moved, in the live-animal market of Guangdong in southern China, into intermediate hosts, civets, and likely raccoon dogs. Infecting other animals seems to disentangle, so to speak, a well-adapted bat virus from its original host, making it, for a time, something of a generalist, able to infect a range of species, including humans.

SARS-CoV-2 probably evolved in similar circumstances. It is likely that, again, civets, raccoon dogs, or other species acquired a bat-borne virus and spread it to other animals and then to people: keepers, customers, passers-by in the 1,000-stall Huanan market, where wild animals of many different species were caged together in crowded, filthy conditions. These live animal markets are essentially disease factories, effective laboratories for the evolution of deadly pathogens. Huanan was soon shut down. No outsiders were permitted to examine it, or test workers for seroprevalence, which is, according to Goldstein, a critically important step.

According to the Chinese Academy of Engineering, as of 2016, the exotic food trade was a $19 billion industry in China, out of $76 billion for the overall wildlife industry. Countless live wild animals are sold for the luxury market each year. A lot of money is involved, and theres a lot of incentive to keep quiet. Though the Huanan market remains shuttered and the wildlife trade for food banned, other markets, selling live animals such as chickens, ducks, and pigs, apparently remain open, and in regions far from the main centers trade in wildlife may continue. Live wild animals are also sold in markets throughout Asia.

Obsession with the lab leak hypothesis, combined with the secrecy and lack of cooperation showed by the Chinese government in helping the world understand the origins of the virus, has taken energy and focus away from an important step that can be taken now to prevent future outbreaks of new viruses. We remain at risk for the evolution of new pathogens, of other pandemics, until all wet markets, worldwide, are shuttered for good.

Wendy Orent, who holds a Ph.D. in anthropology, has been writing about biological weapons and the evolution of infectious disease for 25 years.

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Opinion: Why I Still Believe Covid-19 Could Not Have Originated in a Lab - Undark Magazine

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Ethics of artificial intelligence – Wikipedia

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Ethical issues specific to AI

The ethics of artificial intelligence is the branch of the ethics of technology specific to artificially intelligent systems.[1] It is sometimes divided into a concern with the moral behavior of humans as they design, make, use and treat artificially intelligent systems, and a concern with the behavior of machines, in machine ethics. It also includes the issue of a possible singularity due to superintelligent AI.

The term "robot ethics" (sometimes "roboethics") refers to the morality of how humans design, construct, use and treat robots.[2] Robot ethics intersect with the ethics of AI. Robots are physical machines whereas AI can be only software.[3] Not all robots functions through AI systems and not all AI systems are robots. Robot ethics considers how machines may be used to harm or benefit humans, their impact on individual autonomy, and their effects on social justice.

Machine ethics (or machine morality) is the field of research concerned with designing Artificial Moral Agents (AMAs), robots or artificially intelligent computers that behave morally or as though moral.[4][5][6][7] To account for the nature of these agents, it has been suggested to consider certain philosophical ideas, like the standard characterizations of agency, rational agency, moral agency, and artificial agency, which are related to the concept of AMAs.[8]

Isaac Asimov considered the issue in the 1950s in his I, Robot. At the insistence of his editor John W. Campbell Jr., he proposed the Three Laws of Robotics to govern artificially intelligent systems. Much of his work was then spent testing the boundaries of his three laws to see where they would break down, or where they would create paradoxical or unanticipated behavior. His work suggests that no set of fixed laws can sufficiently anticipate all possible circumstances.[9] More recently, academics and many governments have challenged the idea that AI can itself be held accountable.[10] A panel convened by the United Kingdom in 2010 revised Asimov's laws to clarify that AI is the responsibility either of its manufacturers, or of its owner/operator.[11]

In 2009, during an experiment at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems in the Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale of Lausanne in Switzerland, robots that were programmed to cooperate with each other (in searching out a beneficial resource and avoiding a poisonous one) eventually learned to lie to each other in an attempt to hoard the beneficial resource.[12]

Some experts and academics have questioned the use of robots for military combat, especially when such robots are given some degree of autonomous functions.[13] The US Navy has funded a report which indicates that as military robots become more complex, there should be greater attention to implications of their ability to make autonomous decisions.[14][15] The President of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence has commissioned a study to look at this issue.[16] They point to programs like the Language Acquisition Device which can emulate human interaction.

Vernor Vinge has suggested that a moment may come when some computers are smarter than humans. He calls this "the Singularity."[17] He suggests that it may be somewhat or possibly very dangerous for humans.[18] This is discussed by a philosophy called Singularitarianism. The Machine Intelligence Research Institute has suggested a need to build "Friendly AI", meaning that the advances which are already occurring with AI should also include an effort to make AI intrinsically friendly and humane.[19]

There are discussion on creating tests to see if an AI is capable of making ethical decisions. Alan Winfield concludes that the Turing test is flawed and the requirement for an AI to pass the test is too low.[20] A proposed alternative test is one called the Ethical Turing Test, which would improve on the current test by having multiple judges decide if the AI's decision is ethical or unethical.[20]

In 2009, academics and technical experts attended a conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence to discuss the potential impact of robots and computers and the impact of the hypothetical possibility that they could become self-sufficient and able to make their own decisions. They discussed the possibility and the extent to which computers and robots might be able to acquire any level of autonomy, and to what degree they could use such abilities to possibly pose any threat or hazard. They noted that some machines have acquired various forms of semi-autonomy, including being able to find power sources on their own and being able to independently choose targets to attack with weapons. They also noted that some computer viruses can evade elimination and have achieved "cockroach intelligence." They noted that self-awareness as depicted in science-fiction is probably unlikely, but that there were other potential hazards and pitfalls.[17]

However, there is one technology in particular that could truly bring the possibility of robots with moral competence to reality. In a paper on the acquisition of moral values by robots, Nayef Al-Rodhan mentions the case of neuromorphic chips, which aim to process information similarly to humans, nonlinearly and with millions of interconnected artificial neurons.[21] Robots embedded with neuromorphic technology could learn and develop knowledge in a uniquely humanlike way. Inevitably, this raises the question of the environment in which such robots would learn about the world and whose morality they would inherit or if they end up developing human 'weaknesses' as well: selfishness, a pro-survival attitude, hesitation etc.

In Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong,[22] Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen conclude that attempts to teach robots right from wrong will likely advance understanding of human ethics by motivating humans to address gaps in modern normative theory and by providing a platform for experimental investigation. As one example, it has introduced normative ethicists to the controversial issue of which specific learning algorithms to use in machines. Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky have argued for decision trees (such as ID3) over neural networks and genetic algorithms on the grounds that decision trees obey modern social norms of transparency and predictability (e.g. stare decisis),[23] while Chris Santos-Lang argued in the opposite direction on the grounds that the norms of any age must be allowed to change and that natural failure to fully satisfy these particular norms has been essential in making humans less vulnerable to criminal "hackers".[24]

According to a 2019 report from the Center for the Governance of AI at the University of Oxford, 82% of Americans believe that robots and AI should be carefully managed. Concerns cited ranged from how AI is used in surveillance and in spreading fake content online (known as deep fakes when they include doctored video images and audio generated with help from AI) to cyberattacks, infringements on data privacy, hiring bias, autonomous vehicles, and drones that don't require a human controller.[25]

In the review of 84[26] ethics guidelines for AI 11 clusters of principles were found: transparency, justice and fairness, non-maleficence, responsibility, privacy, beneficence, freedom and autonomy, trust, sustainability, dignity, solidarity.[26]

Luciano Floridi and Josh Cowls created an ethical framework of AI principles set by four principles of bioethics (beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice) and an additional AI enabling principle explicability.[27]

Bill Hibbard argues that because AI will have such a profound effect on humanity, AI developers are representatives of future humanity and thus have an ethical obligation to be transparent in their efforts.[28] Ben Goertzel and David Hart created OpenCog as an open source framework for AI development.[29] OpenAI is a non-profit AI research company created by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and others to develop open-source AI beneficial to humanity.[30] There are numerous other open-source AI developments.

Unfortunately, making code open source does not make it comprehensible, which by many definitions means that the AI code is not transparent. The IEEE has a standardisation effort on AI transparency.[31] The IEEE effort identifies multiple scales of transparency for different users. Further, there is concern that releasing the full capacity of contemporary AI to some organizations may be a public bad, that is, do more damage than good. For example, Microsoft has expressed concern about allowing universal access to its face recognition software, even for those who can pay for it. Microsoft posted an extraordinary blog on this topic, asking for government regulation to help determine the right thing to do.[32]

Not only companies, but many other researchers and citizen advocates recommend government regulation as a means of ensuring transparency, and through it, human accountability. This strategy has proven controversial, as some worry that it will slow the rate of innovation. Others argue that regulation leads to systemic stability more able to support innovation in the long term.[33] The OECD, UN, EU, and many countries are presently working on strategies for regulating AI, and finding appropriate legal frameworks.[34][35][36]

On June 26, 2019, the European Commission High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI HLEG) published its Policy and investment recommendations for trustworthy Artificial Intelligence.[37] This is the AI HLEG's second deliverable, after the April 2019 publication of the "Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI". The June AI HLEG recommendations cover four principal subjects: humans and society at large, research and academia, the private sector, and the public sector. The European Commission claims that "HLEG's recommendations reflect an appreciation of both the opportunities for AI technologies to drive economic growth, prosperity and innovation, as well as the potential risks involved" and states that the EU aims to lead on the framing of policies governing AI internationally.[38]

AI has become increasingly inherent in facial and voice recognition systems. Some of these systems have real business applications and directly impact people. These systems are vulnerable to biases and errors introduced by its human creators. Also, the data used to train these AI systems itself can have biases.[39][40][41][42] For instance, facial recognition algorithms made by Microsoft, IBM and Face++ all had biases when it came to detecting people's gender;[43] These AI systems were able to detect gender of white men more accurately than gender of darker skin men. Further, a 2020 study reviewed voice recognition systems from Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, and Microsoft found that they have higher error rates when transcribing black people's voices than white people's.[44] Furthermore, Amazon terminated their use of AI hiring and recruitment because the algorithm favored male candidates over female ones. This was because Amazon's system was trained with data collected over 10-year period that came mostly from male candidates.[45]

Bias can creep into algorithms in many ways. For example, Friedman and Nissenbaum identify three categories of bias in computer systems: existing bias, technical bias, and emergent bias.[46] In natural language processing, problems can arise from the text corpus the source material the algorithm uses to learn about the relationships between different words.[47]

Large companies such as IBM, Google, etc. have made efforts to research and address these biases.[48][49][50] One solution for addressing bias is to create documentation for the data used to train AI systems.[51][52]

The problem of bias in machine learning is likely to become more significant as the technology spreads to critical areas like medicine and law, and as more people without a deep technical understanding are tasked with deploying it. Some experts warn that algorithmic bias is already pervasive in many industries and that almost no one is making an effort to identify or correct it.[53] There are some open-sourced tools [54] by civil societies that are looking to bring more awareness to biased AI.

"Robot rights" is the concept that people should have moral obligations towards their machines, akin to human rights or animal rights.[55] It has been suggested that robot rights (such as a right to exist and perform its own mission) could be linked to robot duty to serve humanity, analogous to linking human rights with human duties before society.[56] These could include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law.[57] The issue has been considered by the Institute for the Future[58] and by the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry.[59]

Experts disagree on how soon specific and detailed laws on the subject will be necessary.[59] Glenn McGee reported that sufficiently humanoid robots might appear by 2020,[60] while Ray Kurzweil sets the date at 2029.[61] Another group of scientists meeting in 2007 supposed that at least 50 years had to pass before any sufficiently advanced system would exist.[62]

The rules for the 2003 Loebner Prize competition envisioned the possibility of robots having rights of their own:

61. If in any given year, a publicly available open-source Entry entered by the University of Surrey or the Cambridge Center wins the Silver Medal or the Gold Medal, then the Medal and the Cash Award will be awarded to the body responsible for the development of that Entry. If no such body can be identified, or if there is disagreement among two or more claimants, the Medal and the Cash Award will be held in trust until such time as the Entry may legally possess, either in the United States of America or in the venue of the contest, the Cash Award and Gold Medal in its own right.[63]

In October 2017, the android Sophia was granted "honorary" citizenship in Saudi Arabia, though some considered this to be more of a publicity stunt than a meaningful legal recognition.[64] Some saw this gesture as openly denigrating of human rights and the rule of law.[65]

The philosophy of Sentientism grants degrees of moral consideration to all sentient beings, primarily humans and most non-human animals. If artificial or alien intelligence show evidence of being sentient, this philosophy holds that they should be shown compassion and granted rights.

Joanna Bryson has argued that creating AI that requires rights is both avoidable, and would in itself be unethical, both as a burden to the AI agents and to human society.[66]

Joseph Weizenbaum[67] argued in 1976 that AI technology should not be used to replace people in positions that require respect and care, such as:

Weizenbaum explains that we require authentic feelings of empathy from people in these positions. If machines replace them, we will find ourselves alienated, devalued and frustrated, for the artificially intelligent system would not be able to simulate empathy. Artificial intelligence, if used in this way, represents a threat to human dignity. Weizenbaum argues that the fact that we are entertaining the possibility of machines in these positions suggests that we have experienced an "atrophy of the human spirit that comes from thinking of ourselves as computers."[68]

Pamela McCorduck counters that, speaking for women and minorities "I'd rather take my chances with an impartial computer," pointing out that there are conditions where we would prefer to have automated judges and police that have no personal agenda at all.[68] However, Kaplan and Haenlein stress that AI systems are only as smart as the data used to train them since they are, in their essence, nothing more than fancy curve-fitting machines; Using AI to support a court ruling can be highly problematic if past rulings show bias toward certain groups since those biases get formalized and engrained, which makes them even more difficult to spot and fight against.[69]

Weizenbaum was also bothered that AI researchers (and some philosophers) were willing to view the human mind as nothing more than a computer program (a position now known as computationalism). To Weizenbaum, these points suggest that AI research devalues human life.[67]

AI founder John McCarthy objects to the moralizing tone of Weizenbaum's critique. "When moralizing is both vehement and vague, it invites authoritarian abuse," he writes. Bill Hibbard[70] writes that "Human dignity requires that we strive to remove our ignorance of the nature of existence, and AI is necessary for that striving."

As the widespread use of autonomous cars becomes increasingly imminent, new challenges raised by fully autonomous vehicles must be addressed.[71][72] Recently,[when?] there has been debate as to the legal liability of the responsible party if these cars get into accidents.[73][74] In one report where a driverless car hit a pedestrian, the driver was inside the car but the controls were fully in the hand of computers. This led to a dilemma over who was at fault for the accident.[75]

In another incident on March 19, 2018, a Elaine Herzberg was struck and killed by a self-driving Uber in Arizona. In this case, the automated car was capable of detecting cars and certain obstacles in order to autonomously navigate the roadway, but it could not anticipate a pedestrian in the middle of the road. This raised the question of whether the driver, pedestrian, the car company, or the government should be held responsible for her death.[76]

Currently, self-driving cars are considered semi-autonomous, requiring the driver to pay attention and be prepared to take control if necessary.[77][failed verification] Thus, it falls on governments to regulate the driver who over-relies on autonomous features. as well educate them that these are just technologies that, while convenient, are not a complete substitute. Before autonomous cars become widely used, these issues need to be tackled through new policies.[78][79][80]

Some experts and academics have questioned the use of robots for military combat, especially when such robots are given some degree of autonomy.[13][81] On October 31, 2019, the United States Department of Defense's Defense Innovation Board published the draft of a report recommending principles for the ethical use of artificial intelligence by the Department of Defense that would ensure a human operator would always be able to look into the 'black box' and understand the kill-chain process. However, a major concern is how the report will be implemented.[82] The US Navy has funded a report which indicates that as military robots become more complex, there should be greater attention to implications of their ability to make autonomous decisions.[83][15] Some researchers state that autonomous robots might be more humane, as they could make decisions more effectively.[84]

Within this last decade, there has been intensive research in autonomous power with the ability to learn using assigned moral responsibilities. "The results may be used when designing future military robots, to control unwanted tendencies to assign responsibility to the robots."[85] From a consequentialist view, there is a chance that robots will develop the ability to make their own logical decisions on whom to kill and that is why there should be a set moral framework that the AI cannot override.[86]

There has been a recent outcry with regard to the engineering of artificial intelligence weapons that have included ideas of a robot takeover of mankind. AI weapons do present a type of danger different from that of human-controlled weapons. Many governments have begun to fund programs to develop AI weaponry. The United States Navy recently announced plans to develop autonomous drone weapons, paralleling similar announcements by Russia and Korea respectively. Due to the potential of AI weapons becoming more dangerous than human-operated weapons, Stephen Hawking and Max Tegmark signed a "Future of Life" petition[87] to ban AI weapons. The message posted by Hawking and Tegmark states that AI weapons pose an immediate danger and that action is required to avoid catastrophic disasters in the near future.[88]

"If any major military power pushes ahead with the AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow", says the petition, which includes Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn and MIT professor of linguistics Noam Chomsky as additional supporters against AI weaponry.[89]

Physicist and Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees has warned of catastrophic instances like "dumb robots going rogue or a network that develops a mind of its own." Huw Price, a colleague of Rees at Cambridge, has voiced a similar warning that humans might not survive when intelligence "escapes the constraints of biology." These two professors created the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University in the hope of avoiding this threat to human existence.[88]

Regarding the potential for smarter-than-human systems to be employed militarily, the Open Philanthropy Project writes that these scenarios "seem potentially as important as the risks related to loss of control", but research investigating AI's long-run social impact have spent relatively little time on this concern: "this class of scenarios has not been a major focus for the organizations that have been most active in this space, such as the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), and there seems to have been less analysis and debate regarding them".[90]

Approaches like machine learning with neural networks can result in computers making decisions that they and the humans who programmed them cannot explain. It is difficult for people to determine if such decisions are fair and trustworthy, leading potentially to bias in AI systems going undetected, or people rejecting the use of such systems. This has led to advocacy and in some jurisdictions legal requirements for explainable artificial intelligence.[91]

Many researchers have argued that, by way of an "intelligence explosion," a self-improving AI could become so powerful that humans would not be able to stop it from achieving its goals.[92] In his paper "Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence" and subsequent book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, philosopher Nick Bostrom argues that artificial intelligence has the capability to bring about human extinction. He claims that general superintelligence would be capable of independent initiative and of making its own plans, and may therefore be more appropriately thought of as an autonomous agent. Since artificial intellects need not share our human motivational tendencies, it would be up to the designers of the superintelligence to specify its original motivations. Because a superintelligent AI would be able to bring about almost any possible outcome and to thwart any attempt to prevent the implementation of its goals, many uncontrolled unintended consequences could arise. It could kill off all other agents, persuade them to change their behavior, or block their attempts at interference.[93]

However, instead of overwhelming the human race and leading to our destruction, Bostrom has also asserted that superintelligence can help us solve many difficult problems such as disease, poverty, and environmental destruction, and could help us to enhance ourselves.[94]

The sheer complexity of human value systems makes it very difficult to make AI's motivations human-friendly.[92][93] Unless moral philosophy provides us with a flawless ethical theory, an AI's utility function could allow for many potentially harmful scenarios that conform with a given ethical framework but not "common sense". According to Eliezer Yudkowsky, there is little reason to suppose that an artificially designed mind would have such an adaptation.[95] AI researchers such as Stuart J. Russell,[96] Bill Hibbard,[70] Roman Yampolskiy,[97] Shannon Vallor,[98] Steven Umbrello[99] and Luciano Floridi[100] have proposed design strategies for developing beneficial machines.

There are many organisations concerned with AI ethics and policy, public and governmental as well as corporate and societal.

Amazon, Google, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft have established a non-profit, The Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society, to formulate best practices on artificial intelligence technologies, advance the public's understanding, and to serve as a platform about artificial intelligence. Apple joined in January 2017. The corporate members will make financial and research contributions to the group, while engaging with the scientific community to bring academics onto the board.[101]

The IEEE put together a Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems which has been creating and revising guidelines with the help of public input, and accepts as members many professionals from within and without its organization.

Traditionally, government has been used by societies to ensure ethics are observed through legislation and policing. There are now many efforts by national governments, as well as transnational government and non-government organizations to ensure AI is ethically applied.

Intergovernmental initiatives:

Governmental initiatives:

Academic initiatives:

The role of fiction with regards to AI ethics has been a complex one. One can distinguish three levels at which fiction has impacted the development of artificial intelligence and robotics: Historically, fiction has been prefiguring common tropes that have not only influenced goals and visions for AI, but also outlined ethical questions and common fears associated with it. During the second half of the twentieth and the first decades of the twenty-first century, popular culture, in particular movies, TV series and video games have frequently echoed preoccupations and dystopian projections around ethical questions concerning AI and robotics. Recently, these themes have also been increasingly treated in literature beyond the realm of science fiction. And, as Carme Torras, research professor at the Institut de Robtica i Informtica Industrial (Institute of robotics and industrial computing) at the Technical University of Catalonia notes,[118] in higher education, science fiction is also increasingly used for teaching technology-related ethical issues in technological degrees.

History

Historically speaking, the investigation of moral and ethical implications of thinking machines goes back at least to the Enlightenment: Leibniz already poses the question if we might attribute intelligence to a mechanism that behaves as if it were a sentient being,[119] and so does Descartes, who describes what could be considered an early version of the Turing Test.[120]

The romantic period has several times envisioned artificial creatures that escape the control of their creator with dire consequences, most famously in Mary Shelleys Frankenstein. The widespread preoccupation with industrialization and mechanization in the 19th and early 20th century, however, brought ethical implications of unhinged technical developments to the forefront of fiction: R.U.R Rossums Universal Robots, Karel apeks play of sentient robots endowed with emotions used as slave labor is not only credited with the invention of the term robot (derived from the Czech word for forced labor, robota) but was also an international success after it premiered in 1921. George Bernard Shaw's play Back to Metuselah, published in 1921, questions at one point the validity of thinking machines that act like humans; Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis shows an android leading the uprising of the exploited masses against the oppressive regime of a technocratic society.

The Impact of Fiction on Technological Development

While the anticipation of a future dominated by potentially indomitable technology has fueled the imagination of writers and film makers for a long time, one question has been less frequently analyzed, namely, to what extent fiction has played a role in providing inspiration for technological development. It has been documented, for instance, that the young Alan Turing saw and appreciated G.B. Shaw's play Back to Metuselah in 1933[121] (just 3 years before the publication of his first seminal paper[122] which laid the groundwork for the digital computer), and he would likely have been at least aware of plays like R.U.R., which was an international success and translated into many languages.

One might also ask the question which role science fiction played in establishing the tenets and ethical implications of AI development: Isaac Asimov conceptualized his Three laws of Robotics in the 1942 short story Runaround, part of the short story collection I, Robot; Arthur C. Clarke's short The sentinel, on which Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey is based, was written in 1948 and published in 1952. Another example (among many others) would be Philip K. Dicks numerous short stories and novels in particular Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, published in 1968, and featuring its own version of a Turing Test, the Voight-Kampff Test, to gauge emotional responses of Androids indistinguishable from humans. The novel later became the basis of the influential 1982 movie Blade Runner by Ridley Scott.

Science Fiction has been grappling with ethical implications of AI developments for decades, and thus provided a blueprint for ethical issues that might emerge once something akin to general artificial intelligence has been achieved: Spike Jonze's 2013 film Her shows what can happen if when a user falls in love with the seductive voice of his smartphone operating system; Ex Machina, on the other hand, asks a more difficult question: if confronted with a clearly recognizable machine, made only human by a face and an empathetic and sensual voice, would we still be able to establish an emotional connection, still be seduced by it? (The film echoes a theme already present two centuries earlier, in the 1817 short story The Sandmann by E.T.A. Hoffmann.)

The theme of coexistence with artificial sentient beings is also the theme of two recent novels: Machines like me by Ian McEwan, published in 2019, involves (among many other things) a love-triangle involving an artificial person as well as a human couple. Klara and the Sun by Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, published in 2021, is the first-person account of Klara, an AF (artificial friend), who is trying, in her own way, to help the girl she is living with, who, after having been lifted (i.e. having been subjected to genetic enhancements), is suffering from a strange illness.

TV Series

While ethical questions linked to AI have been featured in science fiction literature and feature films for decades, the emergence of the TV series as a genre allowing for longer and more complex story lines and character development has led to some significant contributions that deal with ethical implications of technology. The Swedish series Real Humans (20122013) tackled the complex ethical and social consequences linked to the integration of artificial sentient beings in society. The British dystopian science fiction anthology series Black Mirror (20132019) was particularly notable for experimenting with dystopian fictional developments linked to a wide variety of resent technology developments. Both the French series Osmosis (2020) and British series The One deal with the question what can happen if technology tries to find the ideal partner for a person.

Future Visions in Fiction and Games

The movie The Thirteenth Floor suggests a future where simulated worlds with sentient inhabitants are created by computer game consoles for the purpose of entertainment. The movie The Matrix suggests a future where the dominant species on planet Earth are sentient machines and humanity is treated with utmost Speciesism. The short story "The Planck Dive" suggests a future where humanity has turned itself into software that can be duplicated and optimized and the relevant distinction between types of software is sentient and non-sentient. The same idea can be found in the Emergency Medical Hologram of Starship Voyager, which is an apparently sentient copy of a reduced subset of the consciousness of its creator, Dr. Zimmerman, who, for the best motives, has created the system to give medical assistance in case of emergencies. The movies Bicentennial Man and A.I. deal with the possibility of sentient robots that could love. I, Robot explored some aspects of Asimov's three laws. All these scenarios try to foresee possibly unethical consequences of the creation of sentient computers.[123]

The ethics of artificial intelligence is one of several core themes in BioWare's Mass Effect series of games.[124] It explores the scenario of a civilization accidentally creating AI through a rapid increase in computational power through a global scale neural network. This event caused an ethical schism between those who felt bestowing organic rights upon the newly sentient Geth was appropriate and those who continued to see them as disposable machinery and fought to destroy them. Beyond the initial conflict, the complexity of the relationship between the machines and their creators is another ongoing theme throughout the story.

Over time, debates have tended to focus less and less on possibility and more on desirability,[125] as emphasized in the "Cosmist" and "Terran" debates initiated by Hugo de Garis and Kevin Warwick. A Cosmist, according to Hugo de Garis, is actually seeking to build more intelligent successors to the human species.

Experts at the University of Cambridge have argued that AI is portrayed in fiction and nonfiction overwhelmingly as racially White, in ways that distort perceptions of its risks and benefits.[126]

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Ethics of artificial intelligence - Wikipedia

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Faiths are uniting to support planet but we must repent – Jewish News

Posted: at 3:28 pm

From across the globe Jewish leaders from all parts of the religious spectrum will participate in COP, or Conference of the Parties, meaning states that have signed on to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

From pupils in school, through youth movements, to members of XR Jews and the increasing number of congregations signed up to EcoSynagogue, we are passionately concerned about the future of our world. We care as Jews, as human beings, and as part of the vast interdependent community of all living beings.

Before the covenant at Sinai, we were a part of the ancient, universal bond between God, humanity and all life on earth. It was established with Noah after the first great destruction. Only mindfulness of it now can preventa new environmental disaster.

Ever since God instructed Adam and Eve to work the land with respect while protecting the earth and the rich biodiversity it supports, Judaism has taught that we are not owners but trustees and caretakers because the world and its fullness belong to God. We are not entitled simply to commodify, monetise and exploit nature. For, as we are reminded in this sabbatical year, the land and all creatures matter to God.

The authors of the Bible, like the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud, lived in close relationship with the soil; they knew in their bones our interdependence with nature.

They experienced droughts and floods. They understood the truth taught by Ecclesiastes, that even the king or prime minister is subject to the field. If they were alive today, they would uphold the demand for climate justice for the worlds poorest populations. For justice is a central value of Torah.

The Torahs commandment, bal tashchit(do not destroy), forbids wanton destruction. We should interpret this now to include our participation, directly or through investments, in patterns of consumption, extraction and waste, which cause devastation anywhere on earth. We cannot pursue in good consciencea way of life in one part of the world that causes destitution in another.

The Torah forbids cruelty, not just to people but to animals. There can be few greater forms of cruelty than causing their extinction.

Over and above these reasons, I feel passionate concern for the future of the planet because the world is full of wonder and Gods spirit flows through all creation. Im a lover of forests, streams and mountains; they restore the soul, and our physical and mental health as well. Therefore, I fear for the future of nature.

We owe the worlds children and grandchildren a planet as rich, beautiful and sustaining as it once was and can again become. How can we live with ourselves unless we try to do our best for them and for this earth?

Religions have a crucial role in the climate crisis. With their ethos of collective responsibility, they have the capacity to mobilise whole communities to work for a better world. People of all faiths will be campaigning together at COP and working together afterwards.

We need to engage collectively in environmental teshuvah (repentance). Maimonides describes teshuvah as a process beginning with acknowledgement, followed by reparation and lasting change.

We have to rethink habits of wastefulness, unnecessary consumption and inattentiveness to our impact on the biosphere. We must fall back in love with the natural world and deepen our awareness of the peoples, animals and plants with whom we share our planet. We can join remarkable organisations supporting nature, here, in Israel and globally. We can plant trees and make gardens into miniature biodiverse reserves.

We can pursue environmental justice while filling our lives with wonder.

Jonathan Wittenberg is Rabbi at New North Masorti London Synagogue

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Faiths are uniting to support planet but we must repent - Jewish News

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The season of the Jewitch: Meet the occultists who blend witchcraft and Jewish folklore – JTA News – Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Posted: at 3:28 pm

(JTA) Occult practices and totems are a mainstay of Halloween season, and sage bundles, altars and crystals are an increasingly trendy way to dabble in divination and witchcraft. But the spooky supernatural world also has a long history in Judaism, and modern Jewitches are encouraging the connection though their practices often slightly differ from their non-Jewish contemporaries.

I do not burn sage, said Zo Jacobi, who runs Jewitches, a popular blog and podcast that deep dives into ancient Jewish myths and folkloric practices. The sage-related ritual of smudging, an Indigenous ceremony popular among modern witches for cleansing a person or place of negative energy, is not a Jewish practice, she said. But Jews had crystals. Actually, they were called gems.

Jacobi and her peers are revitalizing ancient Jewish practices of witchcraft, which have been seeing something of a revival as of late. Far from having an uneasy relationship with magic practitioners, Judaism or at least Kabbalistic strands of it has long embraced them.

Jacobi, based in Los Angeles, studies those gems role in Jewish ritual, along with the connections between assorted other magical artifacts and Judaica. Eight shelves in her home are filled with books on Judaism as well as Jewish magic, witchcraft and folklore.

Her studies have revealed the historical ways that items like gems have been used in Jewish magical correspondences. Like healing crystals, gems are meant to protect and heal based on their properties, according to Midrash (Numbers Rabbah 2:7). For example, sapphire was thought to strengthen eyesight.

Its in a medieval text called the Sefer Ha-Gematriaot, Jacobi said. But even if we go to the Torah, we see crystals on the breastplates of the kohanim (high priests of Israel).

Many Jewish rituals today have their roots in warding off demons, ghosts and other mythological creatures. When we break glass at a wedding, scholars say, were not just remembering the destruction of the Temple; were also scaring off evil spirits that may want to hurt the bride and groom. Likewise, ancient Jews believed that the mezuzah protected them from messengers of evil a function parallel to that of an amulet, or good-luck charm.

The mezuzah is absolutely an amulet, said Rebekah Erev, a Jewish feminist artist, activist and kohenet (Hebrew priestexx, a gender-neutral term for priest or priestess) who uses the pronouns they/them and teaches online courses on Jewish magic. I consider it to be a reminder of the presence of spirit, of goddess, of shechinah [the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God]. Much of magic is about reminding ourselves that were all connected and that everything is alive and animate.

The moniker Jewitch itself can be seen as controversial within the group. Erev first heard the term while attending a 2014 Jewitch Collective retreat in the Bay Area.

I feel that any word that identifies someone as a witch is controversial in nature because of how society, including Jewish society, has demonized witches leading to violence and ostracizing, Erev said. To be a Jew and to be a witch has had serious repercussions throughout time. I hope the recent popularity of the term Jewitch will bring more acceptance and understanding of both identities and help to make our practices more widely accessible.

Priestexx Rebekah Erev calls the mezuzah an amulet. (Vito Valera)

I feel that any word that identifies someone as a witch is controversial in nature because of how society, including Jewish society, has demonized witches leading to violence and ostracizing, they said, even though they do consider both witchcraft and Judaism to be major tenets of their life.

Cooper Kaminsky, a Denver-based intuitive artist and healer, concurred that the portmanteau was revisionist to some, but added, Many, including myself, are empowered by identifying as a Jewitch.

Historically, as Judaic practices grew more patriarchal, women were exempt from studying the Talmud and Torah. They knew little Hebrew, so they created their own prayers in Yiddish, used herbal remedies and centered their religious practices around the earth.

Erev mirrors these customs by creating magical rituals, like meditating on cinnamon sticks during the month of Shvat, hearkening back to how cinnamon trees in Jerusalem scented the land during the harvest.

Theres a Kabbalistic idea of making oneself smaller for creation to emerge. Connecting with a cinnamon stick is a simple ritual. The cinnamon folds in, and the bark contracts in on itself, Erev said. Sometimes contracting inward can give us space to emerge and create.

They also do spellwork, creating spells for new love, pregnancy protection and social justice; on their blog, they shared an incantation designed to bring more awareness to Indigenous Land Back movements.

The goal of many Jewitch educators and practitioners, they say, is to shine a light on rituals that have been forgotten or buried for self-preservation. Jacobi believes that many folkloric practices died out following the 13th-18th centuries because, at the time, Jews were viewed as demonic witches.

Jewish communities did what they thought would protect them from literal certain death. Some of that came at the expense of some of these practices, Jacobi said. Instead of the supernatural reasons, they tried to give rational reasons for what they were doing. Ashkenazi Jews routinely tried to debate with their oppressors in the hopes that they could out-logic antisemitism.

This traumatic history, the Jewitches say, is often papered over or dismissed as myths and superstitions. Saying superstition is a way that we downplay our magic, Kaminsky said. We protect ourselves because, historically, a huge part of our oppression has been because were magical.

Almost all of our Jewish spells are for the sake of healing, says Cooper Kaminsky. (Colin Lloyd)

Kaminsky, who uses the pronouns they/them, does spiritual readings for clients that draw upon Kabbalah, Tarot and the Akashic records a reference library of everything that has ever happened, which spiritual mediums believe resides in another dimension. Kaminsky incorporates Jewish prayers into their spellwork, like reciting the Psalms of David when doing candle spells and the Bsheim Hashem as a magical invocation.

Kaminsky, who uses the pronouns they/them, grew up in a Conservative Jewish household and learned the basic concepts of Kabbalah in Jewish day school.

Kabbalah looks at Judaism through a cosmic, mystical lens that clicked for me a lot more than looking at a story from the Torah, Kaminsky said. As I read more Kabbalah, I started feeling more connected to my Judaism.

Various scholars and rabbis have linked Kabbalah to Tarot, a deck of cards originally used in the mid-15th century to play games that evolved to divinatory practices in the 18th century (though Jacobi, for one, refutes this idea, claiming the connection has never been proven). The Tarots Major Arcana the trump cards of the deck, which detail the evolution of ones soul usually make up 22 cards in any given pack, a meaningful Jewish number: the same as the number of letters in the aleph-bet, and the number of pathways on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

For their energy work, Kaminsky draws parallels between the chakras, energy points in the body discussed in Hinduism, and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

The Tree of Life is an energy network, they said. Theres the meridians of energy, and the chakras are like the middle pillar.

Mystical practices were a part of Jacobis upbringing. Her parents practiced Kabbalah, metaphysics, folklore and folk mythology. They have attended the same local Chabad since Jacobi was three years old.

Thanks to these experiences, Jacobi is comfortable living out of the (broom) closet a tongue-in-cheek term that some modern witches use to refer to openly practicing witchcraft. She grew up with astrology, used tarot cards on Shabbat and played with her mothers rose quartz crystal ball while her father led Havdalah prayers. The Jewitches blog and podcast are filled with mythological creatures with origins in Jewish beliefs, like dybbuks, werewolves, dragons and vampires.

Some creatures are unique to Jewish lore:the vampiric Alukah, a blood-sucking witch referred to in Proverbs 30, turned out to be Liliths daughter, while a Broxa originated as a bird from medieval Portugal that drank goats milk and sometimes human blood during the night.

Whenever there have been dire times throughout history, people have turned to mysticism; thats how Kabbalah emerged, Erev said. We need to look to our ancestors for guidance. There are a lot of tools in our human community for healing and re-dreaming and creating a world that is safe and generative for all beings.

Kaminsky thinks magic has the power to repair the world: Almost all of our Jewish spells are for the sake of healing. Tikkun olam, using our magic to repair the world, is beautiful.

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The season of the Jewitch: Meet the occultists who blend witchcraft and Jewish folklore - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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The season of the Jewitch J. – The Jewish News of Northern California

Posted: at 3:28 pm

Occult practices and totems are a mainstay of Halloween season, and sage bundles, altars and crystals are an increasingly trendy way to dabble indivination and witchcraft. But the spooky supernatural world also has a long history in Judaism,and modern Jewitchesare encouraging the connection though their practices often slightly differ from their non-Jewishcontemporaries.

I do not burn sage, said Zo Jacobi, who runs Jewitches, a popularblogandpodcastthat deep dives into ancient Jewish myths and folkloric practices. The sage-related ritual of smudging, an Indigenous ceremony popular among modern witches for cleansing a person or place of negative energy, is not a Jewish practice, she said. But Jews had crystals. Actually, they were called gems.

Jacobi and her peers are revitalizing ancient Jewish practices of witchcraft, which have been seeing something of a revival as of late. Far from having an uneasy relationship with magic practitioners, Judaism or at least Kabbalistic strands of it has long embraced them.

Jacobi, based in Los Angeles, studies those gems role in Jewish ritual, along with the connections between assorted other magical artifacts and Judaica. Eight shelves in her home are filled with books on Judaism as well as Jewish magic, witchcraft and folklore.

Her studies have revealed the historical ways that items like gems have been used in Jewish magical correspondences. Like healing crystals, gems are meant to protect and heal based on their properties, according toMidrash(Numbers Rabbah 2:7). For example,sapphirewas thought to strengthen eyesight.

Its in a medieval text called the Sefer Ha-Gematriaot, Jacobi said. But even if we go to the Torah, we see crystals on the breastplates of thekohanim(high priests of Israel).

Many Jewish rituals today have their roots in warding off demons, ghosts and othermythological creatures. When webreak glassat a wedding, scholars say, were not just remembering the destruction of the Temple; were also scaring off evil spirits that may want to hurt the bride and groom. Likewise, ancient Jews believed that themezuzahprotected them from messengers of evil a function parallel to that of an amulet, or good-luck charm.

The mezuzah is absolutely an amulet, said Rebekah Erev, a Jewish feminist artist, activist and kohenet (Hebrew priestexx, a gender-neutral term for priest or priestess) who uses the pronouns they/them and teaches online courses on Jewish magic. I consider it to be a reminder of the presence of spirit, of goddess, of Shechinah [the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God]. Much of magic is about reminding ourselves that were all connected and that everything is alive and animate.

The moniker Jewitch itself can be seen as controversial within the group. Erev first heard the term while attending a 2014 JeWitch Collective retreat in the Bay Area.

I feel that any word that identifies someone as a witch is controversial in nature because of how society, including Jewish society, has demonized witches leading to violence and ostracizing, Erev said, even though they do consider both witchcraft and Judaism to be major tenets of their life.

To be a Jew and to be a witch has had serious repercussions throughout time. I hope the recent popularity of the term Jewitch will bring more acceptance and understanding of both identities and help to make our practices more widely accessible.

Cooper Kaminsky,a Denver-based intuitive artist and healer, concurred that the portmanteau was revisionist to some, but added, Many, including myself, are empowered by identifying as a Jewitch.

Historically, as Judaic practices grew more patriarchal,women were exempt from studying the Talmud and Torah. They knew little Hebrew, so they created their own prayers in Yiddish, used herbal remedies and centered their religious practices around the earth.

Erev mirrors these customs by creating magical rituals, like meditating on cinnamon sticks during the month of Shvat, hearkening back to how cinnamon trees in Jerusalem scented the land during the harvest.

Theres a Kabbalistic idea of making oneself smaller for creation to emerge. Connecting with a cinnamon stick is a simple ritual. The cinnamon folds in, and the bark contracts in on itself, Erev said. Sometimes contracting inward can give us space to emerge and create.

They also do spellwork, creating spells for new love, pregnancy protection and social justice; on their blog, they shared an incantationdesigned to bring more awareness to Indigenous Land Back movements.

The goal of many Jewitch educators and practitioners, they say, is to shine a light on rituals that have been forgotten or buried for self-preservation. Jacobi believes that many folkloric practices died out following the13th-18th centuriesbecause, at the time, Jews were viewed as demonic witches.

Jewish communities did what they thought would protect them from literal certain death. Some of that came at the expense of some of these practices, Jacobi said. Instead of the supernatural reasons, they tried to give rational reasons for what they were doing. Ashkenazi Jews routinely tried to debate with their oppressors in the hopes that they could out-logic antisemitism.

This traumatic history, the Jewitches say, is often papered over or dismissed as myths and superstitions. Saying superstition is a way that we downplay our magic, Kaminsky said. We protect ourselves because, historically, a huge part of our oppression has been because were magical.

Kaminsky, who uses the pronouns they/them, does spiritual readings for clients that draw upon Kabbalah, Tarot and the Akashic records a reference library of everything that has ever happened, which spiritual mediums believe resides in another dimension. Kaminskyincorporates Jewish prayers into their spellwork, like reciting the Psalms of David when doing candle spells and the Bsheim Hashem as a magical invocation.

Kaminsky grew up in a Conservative Jewish household and learned the basic concepts of Kabbalah in Jewish day school.

Kabbalah looks at Judaism through a cosmic, mystical lens that clicked for me a lot more than looking at a story from the Torah, Kaminsky said. As I read more Kabbalah, I started feeling more connected to my Judaism.

Variousscholarsandrabbishave linked Kabbalah to Tarot, a deck of cards originally used in the mid-15thcentury to play games that evolved to divinatory practices in the 18thcentury (though Jacobi, for one,refutes this idea, claiming the connection has never been proven). The Tarots Major Arcana the trump cards of the deck, which detail the evolution of ones soul usually make up 22 cards in any given pack, a meaningful Jewish number: the same as the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and the number of pathways on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

For their energy work, Kaminsky draws parallels between the chakras, energy points in the body discussed in Hinduism, and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

The Tree of Life is an energy network, they said. Theres the meridians of energy, and the chakras are like the middle pillar.

Mystical practices were a part of Jacobis upbringing. Her parents practiced Kabbalah, metaphysics, folklore and folk mythology. They have attended the same local Chabad since Jacobi was three years old.

Thanks to these experiences, Jacobi is comfortable living out of the (broom) closet a tongue-in-cheek phrase that some modern witches use to refer to openly practicing witchcraft. She grew up with astrology, used tarot cards on Shabbat and played with her mothers rose quartz crystal ball while her father led Havdalah prayers. The Jewitches blog and podcast are filled with mythological creatures with origins in Jewish beliefs, like dybbuks, werewolves, dragons and vampires.

Some creatures are unique to Jewish lore:the vampiricAlukah, a blood-sucking witch referred to in Proverbs 30, turned out to be Liliths daughter, while aBroxaoriginated as a bird from medieval Portugal that drank goats milk and sometimes human blood during the night.

Whenever there have been dire times throughout history, people have turned to mysticism; thats how Kabbalah emerged, Erev said. We need to look to our ancestors for guidance. There are a lot of tools in our human community for healing and re-dreaming and creating a world that is safe and generative for all beings.

Kaminsky thinks magic has the power to repair the world:Almost all of our Jewish spells are for the sake of healing.Tikkun olam, using our magic to repair the world, is beautiful.

Read more here:

The season of the Jewitch J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

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