Quotes About Ethics

What I worry about ultimately is that when we're stripped of our privacy, when we're stripped of free will, when we start to merge with machines in a more robust way, at some point, we'll cease to be identifiably human. And therefore, I think our humanity is, in some ways, the thing that's under existential threat.

I was very taken aback and disappointed in Sheryl Sandberg's public statement that if an individual did not want to continue to share their data with FB they would have to pay. To me, that sounds like a threat. Continue to let us use your property or pay?

The real problem is not the existential threat of AI. Instead, it is in the development of ethical AI systems.

The corruption that hides in plain sight is the real threat to our democracy.

One threatens the innocent who spares the guilty.

In the absence of sound oversight, responsible businesses are forced to compete against unscrupulous and underhanded businesses, who are unencumbered by any restrictions on activities that might harm the environment, or take advantage of middle-class families, or threaten to bring down the entire financial system.

There were certain questions about the foundations of morals that advances in science all threaten to make more complicated.

The very success of medicine in a material way may now threaten the soul of medicine.

Encryption threatens to lead all of us to a very dark place.

Threaten me, but don't threaten my wife or say something about my kids. It's just wrong.

There are two kinds of cloning right now. One is therapeutic cloning which is for coming up with cures for life threatening, really, really awful diseases. Then there is reproductive cloning, which is to make a human being out of your DNA and a donor egg.

Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don't need religion.

To be fair, the collection business does have a few good people in it. But it also has those who will lie and make threats.

It is immoral from almost any point of view to refuse to defend yourself and others from very grave and terrible threats, even as there are limits to the means that can be used in such defense.

Where do these arms come from, these Saturday night specials that constitute the instrument of threats in bank robberies, or the hand grenades used by terrorists? How can their sales and their import be permitted?

Sporting cannot be subjected to fear, blackmail and threats.

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

Before I accept a job, I always talk to folks about it. 'Why does he kill these 22 people?' If they say, 'What difference does it make?' I know we have nothing more to talk about. A character has to be three-dimensional.

I operated a business where I let someone steal three-quarters of a million dollars.

Should surveillance be usable for petty crimes like jaywalking or minor drug possession? Or is there a higher threshold for certain information? Those aren't easy questions.

Once, I had a huge fight on a film set with an actor who threw tea on a spot boy's face. I refused to shoot until he apologised.

Writing at the 'American Spectator' in the 1990s, we threw everything we thought would stick at President Clinton.

I think most character people that you talk to, it's like, whatever they offer us, we are thrilled to do. I won't do anything that's immoral or illicit. I did turn down eating a dead body once. I turned down a few really creepy horror movies. For the most part, I can usually find a way into whatever character.

Real politics is messy and morally ambiguous and doesn't make for a compelling thriller.