AI Impacts Wiki responses_to_ai:technological_inevitability:incentivized_technologies_not_pursued

Resisted Technological Temptation: Geoengineering

2023-10-12T21:44:57+00:00

@@ -7,9 +7,9 @@
  Large countries do not implement geoengineering because not enough research has been done to know that the risks are small. Geoengineering research is prevented by a majority of climate scientists' opposition, which makes it harder to get funding, and by certain environmental groups that advocate against specific experiments.
  
  ===== Details =====
  
- This case study is part of the [[responses_to_ai:technological_inevitability:incentivized_technologies_not_pursued:start|resisted technological temptations project]]. The goal of this project is to understand situations where some actor might have expected to capture substantial value from pursuing a technology, but did not as a result of concerns about downsides that would not directly affect that actor. 
+ This case study is part of the [[responses_to_ai:technological_inevitability:incentivized_technologies_not_pursued:resisted_technological_temptations_project|resisted technological temptations project]]. The goal of this project is to understand situations where some actor might have expected to capture substantial value from pursuing a technology, but did not as a result of concerns about downsides that would not directly affect that actor. 
  
  ==== Background ====
  
  Geoengineering is "the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic climate change."((Royal Society. //Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainty.// (London, 2009) p. ix. [[https://royalsociety.org/-/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2009/8693.pdf]].)) This page will focus specifically on the most commonly discussed type of geoengineering: injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight.

Resisted Technological Temptation: Nuclear Power

2023-04-05T23:10:03+00:00

@@ -75,9 +75,9 @@
  The anti-nuclear-power movement in the United States is about as old as commercial nuclear power. In the early 1960s, a nuclear power plant at Bodega Bay, California, near San Francisco, was canceled due to local protests.((Wellock. //Battle for Bodega Bay.// California History LXXI.2. (1992) [[https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Battle_for_Bodega_Bay:_The_Sierra_Club_and_Nuclear_Power,_1958-1964]].)) As these local protests grew and extended their influence elsewhere in the country, they created organizations like the Friends of the Earth and the Union of Concerned Scientists. These organizations have not been able to directly defeat nuclear power politically on a national scale, even after a partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island.
  
  Instead, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission added increasingly strict safety regulations, which caused the cost of building new nuclear power plants to increase dramatically. Reactors which began construction in the late 1970s took 2.4 times as long and cost 9 times as much as reactors which began in the 1960s. Especially damaging were changes to the regulatory code made during construction. New plants stopped being built under this stricter, and still frequently changing, regulatory regime. For more details of how this occurred, see discussions by Jason Crawford((Crawford. Why has nuclear power been a flop? Roots of Progress. (2021) [[https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop]].)) and Brian Potter.((Potter. Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Construction Physics. (2022) Parts [[https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power-construction|I]], [[https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power-construction-370|II]], and [[https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power-construction-c3c|III]].))
  
- It is unclear to me why this occurred. It might be the result of a failure to align the incentives of the NRC with the goal of building new nuclear power plants. It also might have been an intentional strategy by anti-nuclear activists to slow the development of nuclear power. Distinguishing between these possibilities would require figuring out the motivations of various individuals on the NRC during the 1960s and 1970s, which is beyond the scope of this page.
+ We are uncertain why this occurred. It might be the result of a failure to align the incentives of the NRC with the goal of building new nuclear power plants. It also might have been an intentional strategy by anti-nuclear activists to slow the development of nuclear power. Distinguishing between these possibilities would require figuring out the motivations of various individuals on the NRC during the 1960s and 1970s, which is beyond the scope of this page.
  
  Estimating the direct cost of nuclear power being too expensive to build requires a bit of a calculation, which can be found in the Appendix. Under a different regulatory regime, the levelized cost of electricity for nuclear power could be $20/MWh less than coal and similar to natural gas. If 20% of the United States’ electricity generation switched from coal to nuclear, this would reduce the direct costs of electricity in the US by \$16 billion/yr. For comparison, the total sales of electricity in the US are about \$400 billion/yr.((The United States consumed about 3.9 trillion kWh in 2021 and the average price was about 10 ¢/kWh.. \\ //Use of Electricity.// U.S. Energy Information Administration. [[https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-electricity.php]]. \\ //Prices and Factors Affecting Prices.// U.S. Energy Information Administration. [[https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/prices-and-factors-affecting-prices.php]].))
  
  The two main indirect costs seem to be the contribution to climate change, measured by the social cost of carbon,((The United States estimates the social cost of carbon to \$51 / ton of CO2 equivalent. \\ Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (IWG). //Technical Support Document: Social Cost of Carbon, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide: Interim Estimates under Executive Order 13990.// (2021) [[https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/TechnicalSupportDocument_SocialCostofCarbonMethaneNitrousOxide.pdf]].)) and premature deaths due to air pollution. Our World In Data has estimated both of these:((Ritchie. //What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy?// Our World in Data. (2020) [[https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy]].)) Nuclear power causes 0.03 deaths per TWh((The majority of the deaths from nuclear power used in this calculation were caused by the evacuation of the area around Fukushima. It is not clear to me whether it is reasonable to attribute these deaths to the nuclear disaster, unless more deaths would have occurred if these people were not evacuated.)) and 3 tons of CO2 equivalent per GWh, natural gas causes 3 d/TWh and 500 t/GWh, and coal causes 25 d/TWh and 800 t/GWh. This corresponds to an expected 20 d/yr and \$100 million/yr of climate change caused by nuclear, compared to 2,000 d/yr and \$20 billion/yr of climate change avoided if natural gas is replaced or 20,000 d/yr and \$30 billion/yr of climate change avoided if coal is replaced.

Resisted Technological Temptations Project

2023-10-12T21:44:57+00:00

@@ -19,5 +19,5 @@
  
  
  ===== Outputs =====
  
- Case studies are listed at [[responses_to_ai:resisted_technological_temptations:incentivized_technologies_not_pursued|Incentivized technologies not pursued]].
+ Case studies are listed at [[responses_to_ai:technological_inevitability:incentivized_technologies_not_pursued:start|Incentivized technologies not pursued]].

Incentivized technologies not pursued

2023-10-23T17:19:07+00:00

@@ -24,9 +24,8 @@
    * Some scientific studies prevented by the burden of IRB / GDPR compliance
    * Recreational drug development
    * Dietary restrictions, in most (all?) human cultures
    * GMOs, in some countries
-   * Atomic gardening
    * Use of nuclear explosions in construction
    * Fracking, in some countries
    * Various weapons (nuclear, chemical, biological, land mines, etc), in some countries and at some times

Resisted Technological Temptation: Vaccine Challenge Trials

2023-06-23T18:54:29+00:00

@@ -25,9 +25,9 @@
  The history of vaccines typically begins in 1796, with Edward Jenner’s use of cowpox to protect against smallpox.((Riedel. //Edward Jenner and the history of smallpox and vaccination.// Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings **18.1**. (2005) p. 21-25. [[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/]].)) Jenner was not the first to discover or use cowpox this way,((The protection that cowpox offered against smallpox was known among dairy farmers when Jenner was a child. A few people had even intentionally exposed themselves and their families to cowpox for protection before Jenner, including Benjamin Jetsy and Jobst Bose. Jenner was able to take this local knowledge and make it legible to convince large numbers of people of the value of vaccination.)) but he did the first scientific investigation that publicly established it. He exposed an eight year old boy, first to cowpox, then to smallpox, to show that the boy had been made immune.
  
  During the 1800s, challenge trials for various diseases were done with varying ethical and scientific standards. Some were done on the physician himself or on other medical practitioners, who presumably knew what they were doing to themselves. Others were done on children, prisoners, or hospital patients.((Machemer. //A Brief History of Human Challenge Trials.// Smithsonian Magazine. (2020) [[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/brief-history-human-challenge-trials-180976556/]]. \\ Jamrozik & Selgelid. //History of Human Challenge Studies.// Human Challenge Studies in Endemic Settings. (2021) [[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7431914/]].)) If people died in these studies, there was often significant public and professional backlash.(("To deliberately inject a poison of known high degree of virulency into a human being, unless you obtain that man’s sanction, is not ridiculous, it is criminal." - William Osler, 1898.)) In 1900, Walter Reed developed the first written consent form which included a statement of the study’s risks for challenge trials involving yellow fever in Cuba for the US Army. This study showed that mosquitoes transmit yellow fever, but 4 participants died, including the only woman and one of the doctors conducting the studies.((Machemer. //A Brief History of Human Challenge Trials.// Smithsonian Magazine. (2020) [[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/brief-history-human-challenge-trials-180976556/]].)) Public outcry in the US terminated the study.
  
- During the 1900s, the scale of medical research often increased more quickly than the ethics of medical research. The worst abuses of challenge trials were done during WWII by Germany and Japan. In response, the Nuremberg Code of 1947 established the first international rules for medical research involving human subjects.((//Nuremberg Code.// United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (Accessed March 21, 2023) [[https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/special-focus/doctors-trial/nuremberg-code]].)) There was also some unethical research done in the West during and after WWII. For example, hepatitis challenge trials at the Willowbrook School from 1954-1971 were done on mentally disabled children.((Berkich. //Case: Willowbrook Experiment.// CUNY (2002) [[https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/medical_ethics_text/chapter_7_human_experimentation/case_study_willowbrook_experiments.htm]].)) In the early 1970s, concern about unethical medical research, including the Willowbrook study, Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Fernald State School trials, and Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital case,((Moon. //The History and Role of Institutional Review Boards: A Useful Tension.// AMA Journal of Ethics (2009) [[https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/history-and-role-institutional-review-boards-useful-tension/]].)) led Congress to pass the National Research Act of 1974 which created IRBs.((A more detailed history of IRBs is more complicated, with some institutions adopting similar review practices decades earlier and some institutions resisting IRBs for decades afterwards.)) IRBs review all potential medical research and determine if it is ethical to proceed.
+ During the 1900s, the scale of medical research often increased more quickly than the ethics of medical research. The worst abuses of challenge trials were done during WWII by Germany and Japan. In response, the Nuremberg Code of 1947 established the first international rules for medical research involving human subjects.((//Nuremberg Code.// United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (Accessed March 21, 2023) [[https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/special-focus/doctors-trial/nuremberg-code]].)) There was also some unethical research done in the West during and after WWII. For example, hepatitis challenge trials at the Willowbrook School from 1954-1971 were done on mentally disabled children.((Berkich. //Case: Willowbrook Experiment.// CUNY (2002) [[https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/medical_ethics_text/chapter_7_human_experimentation/case_study_willowbrook_experiments.htm]].)) In the early 1970s, concern about unethical medical research, including the Willowbrook study, Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Fernald State School trials, and Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital case,((Moon. //The History and Role of Institutional Review Boards: A Useful Tension.// AMA Journal of Ethics (2009) [[https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/history-and-role-institutional-review-boards-useful-tension/2009-04]].)) led Congress to pass the National Research Act of 1974 which created IRBs.((A more detailed history of IRBs is more complicated, with some institutions adopting similar review practices decades earlier and some institutions resisting IRBs for decades afterwards.)) IRBs review all potential medical research and determine if it is ethical to proceed.
  
  Dozens of human challenge trials have been approved by IRBs, including for malaria,((Sauerwein et al. //Experimental human challenge infections can accelerate clinical malaria vaccine development.// Nature Reviews Immunology **11**. (2011) p. 54-56. [[https://www.nature.com/articles/nri2902]].)) influenza,((Pleguezuelos et al. //Efficacy of FLU-v, a broad-spectrum influenza vaccine, in a randomized phase IIb human influenza challenge study.// npj Vaccines **5.22**. (2020) [[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-020-0174-9]].)) cholera,((Haney et al. //Antibody-Based Correlates of Protection against Cholera: Analysis of a Challenge Study of a Cholera-Naive Population.// Clinical and Vaccine Immunology **24**. (2017) [[https://journals.asm.org/doi/pdf/10.1128/cvi.00098-17]].)) typhoid,((Darton et al. //Using a Human Challenge Model of Infection to Measure Vaccine Efficacy: A Randomised, Controlled Trial Comparing the Typhoid Vaccines M01ZH09 with Placebo and Ty21a.// PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. (2016) [[https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0004926]].)) dengue,((Kirkpatrick et al. //The live attenuated dengue vaccine TV003 elicits complete protection against dengue in a human challenge model.// Science Translational Medicine **8.330**. (2016) [[https://centerforimmunizationresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/The-live-attenuated-dengue-vaccine-TV003-elicits-complete-protection-against-dengue-in-a-human-challenge-model.pdf]].)) and others.((Roestenberg et al. //Experimental Infection of Human Volunteers.// The Lancet Infectious Diseases **18.10**. (2018) [[https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item%3A3005330/view]].))
  
  ==== COVID-19 ====
@@ -54,9 +54,9 @@
  Moderna reported $17.7 billion in revenue from their vaccine. [[https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/Moderna-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Fiscal-Year-2021-Financial-Results-and-Provides-Business-Updates/default.aspx]].)) and had profit margins of 25%-60% during the pandemic.((Macrotrends for Pfizer: [[https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PFE/pfizer/profit-margins]] and Moderna: [[https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MRNA/moderna/profit-margins]].)) If one of them were able to roll out their vaccine two months earlier, they probably could have made billions of dollars of additional profit. They had a substantial incentive to make vaccines faster.
  
  Trials can be slowed or stopped by IRBs, which have very different incentives. This is a description of the situation in the US; similar ethics committees exist in other countries as well.
  
- There are two types of IRBs: 'Central' or 'independent' IRBs are for profit enterprises which charge investigators for reviewing their proposed research. 'Local' IRBs are associated with the institution where the research is done and seem to be significantly more common.((Moon. //The History and Role of Institutional Review Boards: A Useful Tension.// AMA Journal of Ethics (2009) [[https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/history-and-role-institutional-review-boards-useful-tension/]].)) Oversight of IRBs is done by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP). Their audits encourage detailed documentation of all parts of the investigation.((Gunsalus et al. //Mission Creep in the IRB World.// Science **312.5779**. (2006) p. 1441. [[https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1121479]].)) Other than these audits, there are few incentives acting on IRBs, especially local IRBs. They do not have to justify their decisions and their decisions cannot be appealed.((Bagley. //Should IRBs be dismantled? The Incidental Economist.// (2015) [[http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/should-irbs-be-dismantled/]].)) If research results in an important discovery, the research institution and investigators gain prestige, but this is rarely shared with the IRB which approved it. The IRB is much more likely to gain infamy if it approves research which is considered unethical. The result is a form of asymmetric justice: IRBs face more criticism for their mistakes than praise for their successes.((Zvi Mowshowitz. //Asymmetric Justice.// Don’t Worry About the Vase. (2019) [[https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/04/25/asymmetric-justice/]].)) In these circumstances, it is not surprising that IRBs are often cautious and insist on justifying and documenting everything.
+ There are two types of IRBs: 'Central' or 'independent' IRBs are for profit enterprises which charge investigators for reviewing their proposed research. 'Local' IRBs are associated with the institution where the research is done and seem to be significantly more common.((Moon. //The History and Role of Institutional Review Boards: A Useful Tension.// AMA Journal of Ethics (2009) [[https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/history-and-role-institutional-review-boards-useful-tension/2009-04]].)) Oversight of IRBs is done by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP). Their audits encourage detailed documentation of all parts of the investigation.((Gunsalus et al. //Mission Creep in the IRB World.// Science **312.5779**. (2006) p. 1441. [[https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1121479]].)) Other than these audits, there are few incentives acting on IRBs, especially local IRBs. They do not have to justify their decisions and their decisions cannot be appealed.((Bagley. //Should IRBs be dismantled? The Incidental Economist.// (2015) [[http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/should-irbs-be-dismantled/]].)) If research results in an important discovery, the research institution and investigators gain prestige, but this is rarely shared with the IRB which approved it. The IRB is much more likely to gain infamy if it approves research which is considered unethical. The result is a form of asymmetric justice: IRBs face more criticism for their mistakes than praise for their successes.((Zvi Mowshowitz. //Asymmetric Justice.// Don’t Worry About the Vase. (2019) [[https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/04/25/asymmetric-justice/]].)) In these circumstances, it is not surprising that IRBs are often cautious and insist on justifying and documenting everything.
  
  During the pandemic, there was also significant political pressure to make vaccines available faster. Operation Warp Speed provided funding for vaccine research and preordered hundreds of millions of doses of promising vaccine candidates so vaccine manufacturing could scale up before the vaccines were approved.((//Explaining Operation Warp Speed.// US Department of Health and Human Services. (2020) [[https://health.mo.gov/living/healthcondiseases/communicable/novel-coronavirus-lpha/pdf/fact-sheet-operation-warp-speed.pdf]].)) These efforts probably shortened the time until vaccines were widely available by months. However, the FDA and Pfizer proved to be effective at resisting political pressure to get the vaccines approved before Election Day.((Regalado. //One doctor’s campaign to stop a covid-19 vaccine being rushed through before Election Day.// MIT Technology Review. (2020) [[https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/19/1010646/campaign-stop-covid-19-vaccine-trump-election-day/]].))
  
  While pharmaceutical companies and the public have incentives that encourage them to quickly approve human challenge trials, and vaccines more generally, IRBs and the FDA are insulated from these incentives. This allows them to slow or block challenge trials, partially resisting the technological temptation.