My husband and I support several animal charities and shelters in our area, mostly through financial donations. While most seem well run, one in particular has raised concerns. It has been in the local news for mistreating staff members and volunteers. This same shelter also does a great deal of fund-raising. We have sponsored animals before, but recently I received a mailing saying the animal we sponsored had been adopted. Later, I saw that same animal still listed as available on the shelter’s website. When I asked about it, I was told a third-party mailing vendor had sent the notice based on an anticipated adoption that didn’t happen because of unforeseen medical issues. Here’s my dilemma: I want to continue supporting the animals at this shelter, because they are well cared for, but I’m uncomfortable with the leadership’s behavior toward the staff and the misleading fund-raising practices. If I stop donating, the animals lose; if I continue, I feel I’m enabling questionable practices. I’d appreciate your guidance. — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
You’re right not to want to subsidize an institutional culture that sits poorly with you. Why not transfer your support to another place? There’s no shortage of animals that could use help. Neither, fortunately, does there seem to be a shortage of shelters and rescue groups doing excellent work, with real transparency and respect for their staff. Backing a better one would let you stay true to your values while still supporting the kinds of animals you care about. Not the very same creatures, perhaps, but others equally in need, and through an organization whose practices you can stand behind. And maybe, on the way out the door, you could push that troubled shelter to do better by explaining why you’re leaving.
A Bonus Question
My brother and I jointly own a house that has had a rent-paying tenant for 13 years. We inherited it together, but while he wanted to rent it out, I wanted no part of being a landlord. Our verbal agreement was that he would cover operating expenses and minor repairs, while I would pay half of any major replacement or repair. I accepted this lopsided arrangement because he needed the income and I did not.
In practice, only one major expense arose — a boiler replacement, which we split. Over 13 years he collected, by my estimate, about $400,000 in rent, maybe more, and property taxes, insurance and minor repairs totaled well under $200,000. Now the tenant has left, and we are selling the property. My brother insists that I should pay half the operating costs until the sale, given that he no longer receives rent. I maintain that our agreement had no expiration date and was not conditional on his collecting income. Nothing was ever put in writing.
Separately, years ago I lent him more than $150,000 to cover debts; he pays me interest quarterly, and the principal is due when the house sells.
We have been estranged for more than a year — well before this dispute arose. Will you weigh in on the ethics? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
Financial arrangements between family members have a way of going awry unless they’re detailed clearly in a proper contract. But why do you think the underlying deal was so lopsided? Your brother shouldered the open-ended burden and costs of minor repairs and the daily responsibilities of being a landlord — fielding tenant calls, arranging service visits, dealing with troubles you didn’t want. As for the boiler replacement: That kind of big-ticket item is a capital expense necessary for the eventual sale of the house, in which you retain a half interest.
Now that your brother is no longer getting rental income, his proposal that you split the carrying costs sounds fair. Sure, you could insist that the original deal obliges him to keep paying until the very end, but that’s a weak rationale for a fight. The carrying costs will soon be dwarfed by the cash from the sale. What will endure, if you contest those costs, is not the money but the conflict. So the sounder course, ethically and practically, is to accept his terms, cover your half and resist adding another grievance to an already strained relationship.
Readers Respond
The previous question was from a screenwriter who is experimenting with different ways of using A.I. in his work and struggling with the ethical implications of submitting creative work that has been enhanced by these tools. They wrote:
“I write for television, both series and movies. Much of my work is historical or fact-based, and I have found that researching with ChatGPT makes Googling feel like driving to the library, combing the card catalog, ordering books and waiting weeks for them to arrive. This new tool has been a game changer. Then I began feeding ChatGPT my scripts and asking for feedback. The notes on consistency, clarity and narrative build were extremely helpful. Recently I went one step further: I asked it to write a couple of scenes. In seconds, they appeared — quick paced, emotional, funny, driven by a propulsive heartbeat, with dialogue that sounded like real people talking. With a few tweaks, I could drop them straight into a screenplay. So what ethical line would I be crossing? Would it be plagiarism? Theft? Misrepresentation? I wonder what you think. — Name Withheld”
In his response, the Ethicist noted:
“A good deal of scripted TV has long felt pretty algorithmic, an ecosystem of heavily recycled tropes. In a sitcom, the person others are discussing pipes up with “I’m right here!” After a meeting goes off the rails, someone must deadpan, “That went well.” In a drama, a furious character must sweep everything off the desk. And so on. For some, A.I. is another soulless contraption we should toss aside, like a politician in the movies who stops reading, crumples the pages and starts speaking from the heart. (How many times have we seen that one?) But human beings have been churning out prefab dialogue and scene structures for generations without artificial assistance. Few seem to mind. When screenwriters I know talk about generative A.I., they’re not dismissive, though they’re clear about its limits. … Suspense, in some form, is what keeps people watching anything longer than a TikTok clip, and it’s where A.I. flounders.”
(Reread the full question and answer here.)
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Many companies train their A.I. programs on copyrighted material without taking appropriate measure to get consent from or compensate human creators. The works generated by models and chatbots are therefore not entirely original — they are composed of recycled aspects of pre-existing creations that the programs have been illegally fed. For this reason, I believe it is unethical to incorporate A.I.-generated pieces into content made for profit, copyright and public consumption. Additionally, I would encourage the letter writer to cite any information A.I. provides them that they would cite if they had found it from a human-made source. Chatbots should be used as tools to inspire one’s own creativity, not to recycle the products of others’. — Chloé
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I believe there is a difference between using A.I. as a research tool vs. heavier editing or synthesis. Because of the ever-growing volume of media being produced, more and more people like myself are having to make decisions about what we spend our time on, including to avoid A.I.-generated content, my logic being: If someone didn’t spend the time to make it, why would I spend the time to consume it? So I would consider it to be misrepresentation if someone isn’t open about the role A.I. played in their work. — Coleman
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I feel as though the Ethicist really missed the actual ethical question here: Should any artist be using A.I.? As A.I. threatens to completely eradicate any work for which artists can be paid, why would the writer want to contribute to his own redundancy? Why would he want to take part in the devaluation of his own creative agency? The W.G.A. strike was not really about using A.I. in line with negotiated rules, it was about protecting and valuing what writers and other artists are trying desperately to preserve — the importance of humanity in art. — Sarah
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I’m a TV writer and W.G.A. member who takes a hard line that using A.I. in our work is not ethical. When audiences are clamoring for fresh stories, the writers who embraced the hard parts of the process, who built up their creative muscles, who refused to trade away their skills for convenience. Writers using A.I. are harming their fellow artists and betraying their audiences, but the person they’re cheating most is themselves. — Name Withheld
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The Ethicist sets up a false equivalency between an artist’s education and the programming of an A.I. system. Yes, writers are influenced by what they have read and may render homage or even try to imitate what they admire. But even if their work is not purely artistic and they are trying to create something commercially successful, a human creator is filled with a particular mixture of literature, music and art over the course of a lifetime, which they remember imperfectly. When they sit down to create, all of this is still filtered through their own human experiences. An A.I. system has no inner dialogue with previous artists, it is just cannibalizing others’ work and spitting it out in a new combination. That is not art and it is not ethical. — Sarah L.
Kwame Anthony Appiah is The New York Times Magazine’s Ethicist columnist and teaches philosophy at N.Y.U. To submit a query, send an email to [email protected].
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