Weekly News Profile Archives - Viterbi Conversations in Ethics

Fall 2025 Featured Weekly News Profile

Selling the Problem, Selling the Cure: Bounce-Back Culture and its Toll on New Mothers

Advancements in the technologies and support available to postpartum women are essential, and many new technologies designed for mothers are promising to hasten their physical and emotional recovery. While this may seem a noble goal on the surface, many products marketed to postpartum women are hindering rather than helping their recovery by feeding into an increasingly twisted societal ideal of what postpartum recovery should look like. It is the ethical imperative of engineers to consider how their technologies are contributing to the dangerous “bounce-back” culture directed at postpartum women and the maternal mental health crisis.

Fall 2025 Featured Weekly News Profile

Stripped Chips: Bringing Cleaner Snacks to American Shelves

Kariena Panpaliya November 25, 2025 Cheetos Chips Doritos packaged food packaging processed food

Two of the most popular brands of chips have released “naked” versions of their products, which have no artificial colors. Supported by studies that show the potential harm of artificial additives, efforts to “strip down” products have grown widespread across several manufacturers of prepackaged food in America.

Fall 2025 Featured Weekly News Profile

Build-A-Baby: Is Gene Editing the Future of Humanity?

Mary Karapetyan November 11, 2025 CRISPR DNA gene-editing

Gene and molecular-level interventions are just one example of how modern medicine is seeking to push boundaries and uncover breakthroughs. CRISPR-Cas9 is the most common gene-editing technology used today. The Cleveland Clinic conducted a Phase 1, first-in-human clinical trial overseas to test the safety and effectiveness of a new CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing therapy called CTX310. While a relatively new biotech startup, called Preventive, announced its plans to pursue embryo-editing technologies aimed at preventing hereditary disease, and preparing for the possibility of implanting a genetically edited embryo to create a baby. Many uncertainties surround gene editing practices, leaving professionals unsure of how far such technologies should go and how they should be regulated.

Fall 2025 Featured Weekly News Profile

The Ethics of Humanoid Robots

Alice Steele October 26, 2025 AI AI companions childcare humanoid robots Optimus robots

Tesla’s vision for its Optimus humanoid robot fleet raises questions about the direction AI technology and robotics are taking. This is especially important to consider as people increasingly project human qualities – such as empathy – onto technology designed to mimic humanity.

Fall 2025 Featured Weekly News Profile

AI Actors Enter Hollywood

Kariena Panpaliya October 12, 2025 Actors Actresses AI Artificial Intelligence Eline Van der Velden Film Hollywood Particle6 Tilly Norwood TV Xicoia

AI talent is entering the film and entertainment industry. Eline Van der Velden’s company Xicoia is in the process of making AI performers, the first of which is Tilly Norwood. While the public has brashly criticized the entity, studios and agencies are excited to work with her.

Fall 2025 Featured Weekly News Profile

The Cost of “Instant”: AI Translation, Cultural Nuance, and the Human Element

Mo Jiang October 5, 2025 AirPods Artificial Intelligence Translation

Apple recently announced the live-translation feature in AirPods, which enables translating conversations in real time. While this technology assumes great potential for global connectivity, it also raises concerns about AI’s translation capabilities and the problems the translation tools might bring.

Fall 2025 Featured Weekly News Profile

An Apple (Watch) a Day: Implications of Apple’s Latest Hypertension Detection Feature

Alice Steele September 28, 2025 Apple Apple Watch Healthcare hypertension smart devices wearables

Apple recently debuted its new hypertension detection system for Apple Watches Series 9 and newer. This feature promises to make blood pressure monitoring easier and more accessible for millions of people, which is especially important given how prevalent and underdiagnosed the condition is. However, for some individuals, the benefits of 24/7 hypertension monitoring may be overshadowed by anxieties caused by on-demand health data and the dangers of an increasing reliance on sometimes unreliable technology.

Fall 2025 Featured Weekly News Profile

Showrunner: The Netflix of AI Turns Audiences into Filmmakers

Kariena Panpaliya September 14, 2025 AI Artificial Intelligence Film Hollywood TV

Showrunner’s SHOW-1 AI model creates animated scenes based on the user’s text prompts. It provides great potential for growing multiverses, introducing spinoffs, and exploring what-ifs of popular shows. Filmmakers who leverage AI might see better productivity, creativity, and monetary gains.

Fall 2025 Featured Weekly News Profile

Taming the Genie: Is Prompt Engineering Dead?

Mary Karapetyan September 7, 2025 AI-literacy context engineering LLMs prompt engineering

A specific role has been created to maximize the potential for AI adoption: the prompt engineer. Experts are questioning the longevity of this role, and the majority agree that this job has an expiration date. Context engineering was created to resolve the limitations that exist in basic Large Language Models (LLMs) and prompt engineering. Prompt engineering, in its current form, may become obsolete.

Podcast

Podcast Spring 2025 Spring 2025 VCE Podcast

Virtue Ethics: Cultivating Moral Character in a Modern World

VCE March 8, 2025

Hosted by Aryan Shah with guest Branden leong This podcast explores the role of virtue ethics in engineering, emphasizing how virtues like compassion, integrity, and…

Podcast Spring 2025 Spring 2025 VCE Podcast

AR/VR and how they shape the future of technology

VCE March 8, 2025

Hosted by Aryan Shah, Deep Shah, with guests “Greta Hoffmeister, Kariena Panpaliya, Dasean Volk, Hang Nguyen, Grace Eamer In this episode, the guests delve into…

Grand Challenges Special Issue

Spring 2023 Volume 6 Issue 3

Redefining Societal Progress for Engineers

Natasha Singh March 29, 2023

Dr. Erin Cech’s critique of the National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges focuses heavily on the pitfalls of technological determinism. This paper supports Cech’s argument through a discussion of current examples of the consequences of technological determinism, such as the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements, medication accessibility, and facial recognition technology. Though the consequences of a zealous engineering mentality are commonplace in our society, there are also current examples of tech companies neglecting to develop technology due to its possible negative consequences.

Spring 2023 Volume 6 Issue 3

How the Technical Sciences and the Social Sciences Should Go Hand-in-Hand

Charles Liu March 29, 2023

The fourteen Grand Challenges presented by the National Academy of Engineers (NAE) fail to involve ethics as a part of the solution to these issues. Traditionally, engineers have kept their work separate from its societal implications. Engineers and their non-technical counterparts have an obligation to view all technical solutions under the moral lens of ethicists and futurists. Going forward, engineers must be aware of their limits and work with experts outside of their fields to develop solutions that will be cognizant of society as a whole.

Spring 2023 Volume 6 Issue 3

The Lies We Tell to Inspire: Responding to the Engineering Double Standard

Shub Gaur March 29, 2023

The National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges are critiqued by Dr. Erin Cech for what she describes as a double standard in engineering. Though Cech rightly discusses a lack of accountability and acknowledgement within the profession, her argument lacks nuance. The Grand Challenges were ultimately a promotional tool meant to inspire the next generation of engineers, yet Cech holds them to a standard of being professional rules and guidelines. This paper will discuss the distinctions that Cech’s argument lacks, including placing an unreasonable amount of responsibility on engineers and overstating their influence.

Spring 2023 Volume 6 Issue 3

The Grand Challenges: Authorial Particularism and a Lost Opportunity for an Equitable Society

Huzaifa Aslam March 29, 2023

The fourteen Grand Challenges were developed by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in an effort to expose future generations to the wide range of innovation and technology that they could one day take part in. As detailed by the Challenges’ creators, the list includes challenges that are most significant to our current world. Dr. Erin Cech’s critique of the Grand Challenges is that a lack of diversity in the panel of engineering experts led to a lack of oversight into issues that are actually pertinent to developing nations. Cech’s argument that the Grand Challenges are a missed opportunity for social justice holds validity, but her mischaracterization of the lack of diversity requires further consideration.

Weekly News Profile

Fall 2025 Featured Weekly News Profile