I believe that in our capitalist society it is just a matter of time before Google is giving each and every person medical advice, I made this idea apparent in class but I think that it could use a bit of building upon here. This is of course all built upon the article shared on the Twitter page. The article touches upon the ethical side of false positives in Google’s model of giving out information, but I can’t look at this idea as something that companies would shy away from. Admitting that I am very biased against large corporations and their complete lack of morals, I think that pharmaceutical companies would thrive on the idea of false positives. It serves a high profit margin to have an overabundance of people coming in and getting tested, as you are able to charge each of these people through the nose. Even if only one out of ten people ends up being a positive, false or otherwise, that person then becomes a cash cow that can be returned to time and time again, until they’re dead or cured.

“You have to consider, the number of false positives you get could be enormous…” the article says about this topic, which I can’t imagine companies trying to avoid. The only thing the companies would need to worry about is losing customer loyalty, which is negated by the idea of Google making medical predictions. If this is the case then a basic structure of our society becomes one that at it’s core creates panic. Everyone could be as upset by the fact that Google is making twenty false positives, but the second everyone sees the article of someone’s life being saved by the technology it plants the idea of “that could be me”. In essence this would force everyone to buy into a system that has a small chance of saving their life, but a larger chance of being a financial burden. If this were to become common practice it would create a nation of hypochondriacs that would feed into itself until that ideology became the norm.

Even with my so obviously biased opinion I am forced to look at the other side of the ethical question; are the lives saved by this technology enough to make up for the economic strain that is put on the society? It is all a matter of the scale with which you look at things. On the small scale most people are willing to take any measure to ensure their loved ones live as long as possible, and if this technology were to save someone close to you there is no way you would be against it. But on the grand scale would it make life extremely more difficult for future generations, as the economy would be ravaged by massive influx of income into the medical sector that largely feeds into very few pockets. Personally I think the well being of many outdoes the lives of the few, so I advocate for this technology to not be integrated, but it seems an unfortunate unavoidably.