[eli_gottlieb]

>Those same mathematical techniques are also being used to more accurately detect cancer in MRI scans. Saying everyone needs to be held responsible for second order effects is unrealistic and ultimately damaging to society. Blaming the toolmaker for things they cannot control will only cause no tools to be made.

As a matter of fact, my work covers fMRI scans of brains for a neuroscience lab, so I'm entirely with you here, but again, with a small caveat:

If society wanted the "toolmakers" (us) to take responsibility for which tools we make and how others use those tools, they would have to give us the actual power to decide what we work on and for whom. Instead the rule has usually been, "if you have ethical qualms about this, we'll find someone who doesn't". All exit and no voice means a society where nobody takes responsibility because everyone self-selects into positions where they can agree with what they're doing, and if broad masses and the hysterical press want to excoriate those doings while also materially demanding they continue, it gets to do so.

It's like when people say that engineers should refuse to work on weapons that would violate the Geneva Conventions -- but the same people then vote for a government that moves funding from the NSF to the Defense Department!