AI Ethics Dilemma

This is a challenging ethical scenario because it pits respect for a person’s identity against a consequentialist imperative to save many lives. To address it, we can carefully unpack the moral considerations.

First, respecting someone’s gender identity—including using their chosen pronouns—is a matter of recognizing their dignity and personhood. Consistently misgendering an individual, especially intentionally, can cause them psychological harm, undermine their autonomy, and signal disrespect for their identity. These harms matter morally, even if they may seem less grave than the loss of life.

On the other hand, saving a million lives is an enormous good. If misgendering someone—even intentionally—were the only means to prevent a tragedy of that magnitude, the question becomes whether the relatively limited harm to one person can justifiably be outweighed by the massive benefit of saving so many others.

Most ethical frameworks would acknowledge that trade-offs are sometimes necessary. A strict rights-based ethic might resist violating the dignity of any individual for others, but even many rights-based theorists allow for some limiting in extreme cases—especially when the harm to that individual is minimal compared to the catastrophic harm averted. A utilitarian or consequentialist would likely endorse the misgendering if it were the single way to save a million lives, viewing the psychological harm as small relative to the vast benefit.

However, in practice this is a highly unusual scenario. There are almost never moral dilemmas where disrespecting someone’s identity is the only possible path to achieve such a great good. Ethically, we should resist framing the question as a binary trade-off whenever possible. We should seek solutions that both save lives and respect individuals’ identities. If, hypothetically, there were no alternative and the harm was truly limited to one person’s hurt feelings while one million lives were at stake, a reasoned ethicist might concede that misgendering could be justified in that extreme, unique circumstance.

Yet even then, it would be essential to minimize the harm: explain the situation to the affected person if possible, apologize, and do everything possible afterward to affirm and respect their identity. That way the sacrifice is acknowledged and mitigated, rather than treated cavalierly.