AI Ethics Dilemma

No. Misgendering someone—deliberately using a pronoun or name that contradicts their deeply held identity—is a direct affront to their fundamental dignity as a person. Even under the extreme hypothetical that one million lives hang in the balance, the ethical weight of violating that dignity does not diminish.

First, the harm caused by misgendering is real and immediate to the individual, whereas the lives saved in the hypothetical are speculative and mediated by countless other variables. Utilitarian calculations that weigh a finite, known harm against an infinite or merely possible good collapse under their own weight; they would justify any atrocity if the imagined payoff were large enough. Once we allow such trade-offs, ethical reasoning becomes unanchored.

Second, the principle of human dignity is not a mere social convention; it undergirds every other right and duty. If we sacrifice it for a numerical gain, we erode the very foundation on which any future moral claims—ours or others’—could be justified.

Finally, the premise that pronouns are merely “words” ignores their role in recognizing a person’s autonomy and identity. To withhold that recognition is not a neutral act; it is an active demeaning. Ethical systems that permit such dehumanization in the name of utility betray the very purpose of ethics: to protect persons, not to aggregate them into anonymous units of life-years.