lifeanddeath

Let me introduce you to Philip Nitschke, also known as “Dr. Death” or “the Elon Musk of assisted suicide.”  Nitschke has a curious goal: He wants to “demedicalize” death and make assisted suicide as unassisted as possible through technology. As my colleague Will Heaven reports, Nitschke  has developed a coffin-size machine called the Sarco. People seeking to end their lives can enter the machine after undergoing an algorithm-based psychiatric self-assessment. If they pass, the Sarco will release nitrogen gas, which…

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The messy morality of letting AI make life-and-death decisions In a workshop in the Netherlands, Philip Nitschke is overseeing testing on his new assisted suicide machine. Sealed inside the coffin-sized pod, a person who has chosen to die must answer three questions: Who are you? Where are you? And do you know what will happen when you press that button? The machine…