The Ethics of Getting Ahead When All Heads Are Enhanced

Dinh et al. (2020) found that the use of cognitive enhancement (CE) is more publicly acceptable when it is: used noncompetitively, becomes more normative among peers, and sanctioned or even encouraged by authorities. It may thus be deduced that CE is less favorable when not everyone is using CE in the same contexts, when authorities do not sanction use, and when CE use generates high potential for clear winners and losers in a zero-sum game. As the authors note, public opposition to CE use in competitive contexts appears linked to the unfairness of competing when winners start with an advantage (i.e., enhancement). That is, some people have access to enhancement benefits while others do not, leading to subsequent inequalities in status or resource wealth. While the emphasis on noncompetitiveness points to the value of fairness and distributive justice in considerations of CE acceptability, it is not clear how preferences for noncompetitive use hold up in contexts of universal access. Where CE use is normative and equitable (everybody’s cognition is equally enhanced) rather than privileged, will CE use necessarily be considered acceptable?

We argue that public acceptability of CE use will likely ultimately depend on cultural and political orientations toward free versus regulated markets for competition. For example, individuals with strong beliefs that competition stimulates innovation which advances society more broadly may view the use of CE in competitive contexts (so long as everyone in that context has equal access to it) as not only acceptable but even preferable—not in spite of but because of the fact that clear winners and losers emerge. Rewards for winners are viewed as incentivizing to achieve gains not only for individuals but for society more broadly. Some scholars suggest that enhancing the world’s most innovative and capable minds engaged in science, medicine, technological development and humanitarian work may lead to “trickle-down” benefits for the rest of society (Faber, Savulescu, and Douglas 2016). And, if universal access to CE is granted, others would be equally free to utilize this technology, with benefits at both the personal and societal levels. For example, scholars have suggested that even modest increases in cognitive function among the world’s populations can lead to widespread reductions in global poverty and sizeable increases in gross domestic product across nations (Salkever 1995). Similarly, improving the cognition of those with lower or declining cognitive ability (e.g., the aging) could reduce the need for public services and resources to ensure their welfare in society (Diener and Seligman 2004; Kramer and Willis 2002). The acceptability of the use of CE in competitive contexts where everyone has equal access to CE may thus align with U.S. societal norms that strongly tolerate (and even prefer) competition, assuming everyone is provided an equal chance to succeed. Given this logic, an emphasis on universal access (a policy proxy for normativeness) to CE would seem paramount for acceptability over considerations of competitiveness, because it aligns with the long-held myth of a “level playing field.” In other words, to compete with enhanced cognition and to reap the benefits of one’s contributions to society is acceptable so long as everyone has the opportunity or choice to be enhanced.

At the other end of the political spectrum, where egalitarianism is paramount over competitiveness, acceptability of CE use may be low even in scenarios of complete—even mandated—equal access. This is because evidence suggests that CE builds on existing variation in cognition (Krause and Cohen Kadosh 2014) (e.g., cortical excitability, plasticity, responsiveness to stimulation (López-Alonso et al. 2014)) and prior learning experience (Mückschel et al. 2020) and is therefore likely to always generate inequalities in performance outcomes (Bostrom and Sandberg 2009). Equal access will not ensure equal outcomes, potentially contributing to social unrest. Further, uncertainties persist over how exponentially CE will improve cognition. While pharmaceutical-based forms of CE like Provigil^® (Modafinil) or Ritalin^® are currently unable to drastically enhance cognitive function or create large-scale disparities in performance, more powerful neurotechnologies (e.g., brain implants or transcranial devices) may emerge in the coming years or decades with the ability to confer more drastic benefits. To illustrate the potential concern over CE with exponential versus incremental enhancement capabilities (and putting aside debates about the validity of “IQ” as a measure of cognitive ability), consider that the disparity between an IQ of 90 and an IQ of 110, for example, is a matter of 20 IQ points, whereas a doubling of the two, respectively, will lead to a difference of 40 IQ points. Though the magnitude of changes at higher ranges may be smaller than those at the lower end of the spectrum (i.e., diminishing returns), the gains of CE that offers the same increment of exponential gain per person will nevertheless result in even vaster disparities than currently exist.

Thus, even universal access is not likely to be considered fair or acceptable, if one subscribes to a belief that active measures should be taken to truly level the playing field. Why should society allow incrementally or exponentially more gains for those who enjoy the luck of higher baseline cognitive performance? Whether used for the explicit purpose of competition or not, competitive gains will be evident, even inevitable, as long as resource attainment has any correlation with cognitive performance. From this perspective, acceptability will presumably entail the use of CE in ways that correct for rather than exacerbate existing inequalities, aligning with a utopian ideal of equality in outcomes, if not equality in baselines.

Such an approach invokes an “affirmative action” solution to the ethical challenges of CE use. If acceptability necessitates that CE should not be used to gain a competitive edge and that normative access must be distributed in ways that do not allow for indirect or incidental competitive advantages, then an affirmative action approach to CE would seem to be the only morally acceptable option. This would entail offering greater access to CE or more powerful CE (using differentially advantageous algorithms) to individuals with lower baseline cognitive performance, or to social groups who have historically faced long-standing socioeconomic disadvantages.

One can easily see, then, how future debates about the distributive justice surrounding the use of CE are likely to take place—like most heated public debates about distributive justice—along political lines. Will the “right” of an individual—regardless of class or creed—to access the full benefits and advantages of CE be argued against the ethical imperative to create a more just and equal society? To what degree should social inequality be tolerated—which constitutes harm to individuals—if enhancing the most intelligent, creative and resource-wealthy will likely result in net potential gains in medical, scientific, technological and even humanitarian breakthroughs that the rest of us might benefit from?

The ultimate acceptability of CE depends on personal and cultural beliefs about what counts as a “successful” society. While idealists will say that the vision of a truly egalitarian society—in terms of equal cognitive capacity—is not orthogonal to a vision of a society motivated by the generation of knowledge and innovation, in practice they require substantially different regulatory strategies. How we choose to wield and distribute enhancement technologies in the future depends on how much we trust our fellow citizens to use the advantages of CE for the advancement of the common good or the promotion of individual agendas, an uncertainty that has smoldered since the dawn of society itself.