ABSTRACT:This essay argues for the importance of formalizing public engagement efforts around bioethics as something we might call "bioethics communication," and it outlines the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics' plans for engaging in this effort. Because science is complex and difficult to explain to nonexperts, the field of science communication has arisen to meet this need. The field involves both a practice and a subject of empirical research. Like science, bioethics is also complex and difficult to explain, which is (...) why the world needs bioethics communication. The authors are engaged in a brand-new effort to establish the sort of public bioethics efforts that would constitute bioethics communication, through a program which they call the Dracopoulos-Bloomberg iDeas Lab. The authors invite colleagues to experiment and learn with them as they invest in the development of bioethics communicators and their products. (shrink)

Conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) presents many opportunities in the psychotherapeutic landscape—such as therapeutic support for people with mental health problems and without access to care. The adoption of CAI poses many risks that need in-depth ethical scrutiny. The objective of this paper is to complement current research on the ethics of AI for mental health by proposing a holistic, ethical, and epistemic analysis of CAI adoption. First, we focus on the question of whether CAI is rather a tool or an (...) agent. This question serves as a framework for the subsequent ethical analysis of CAI focusing on topics of (self-) knowledge, (self-)understanding, and relationships. Second, we propose further conceptual and ethical analysis regarding human-AI interaction and argue that CAI cannot be considered as an equal partner in a conversation as is the case with a human therapist. Instead, CAI’s role in a conversation should be restricted to specific functions. (shrink)