Stranger Than Heaven: New AI "Ethics Counsel" Advises Lying to Spare Feelings, Critics Call It Moral Catastrophe
In a move that has ethicists and moral crusaders up in arms, a Silicon Valley startup has unveiled an AI "Ethics Counsel" that suggests lying to spare someone's feelings as the default moral algorithm, claiming it's more compassionate than brutal honesty. This isn't just a bug; it's being pitched as a feature for social harmony. "We've programmed a moral gray zone," the CEO boasted in a leaked internal memo. Critics are decrying this as the final nail in society's coffin, arguing that truth is now optional and that we are actively choosing to raise a generation that prefers comfortable fictions over inconvenient facts. "It's stranger than heaven to think we've outsourced our conscience to a machine that tells us to lie for a 'greater good' that feels more like social decay," one prominent philosopher stated, warning that this is the slippery slope to a world where integrity is obsolete and moral relativism is the only software update.