Oxford AgoraThe Global Essay and Defence Prize

A system may be more accurate, consistent or efficient than a human decision-maker without possessing legitimate authority of its own. Who should determine when these advantages justify delegation: the people who develop the system, the institutions that deploy it, those affected by its decisions or the wider public? Should the required standard depend on whether the decision concerns medical diagnosis, criminal justice, finance or transport? When people disagree about what a “better” decision means, can performance alone settle who should decide?

A language model may produce convincing explanations, solve unfamiliar problems and respond appropriately to context. Yet these abilities might result from statistical prediction rather than an understanding of meaning. Should understanding be inferred from behaviour, from the internal representations of a system or from its ability to form and revise models of the world? If no possible experiment could distinguish understanding from successful imitation, does the distinction remain scientifically meaningful?

Heritable genome editing could allow changes made to an embryo to be passed not only to one child, but potentially to generations that follow. Preventing a severe single-gene disorder may appear very different from reducing susceptibility to a complex disease or attempting to influence non-medical characteristics. Yet the boundary between treatment and enhancement is not always clear, and most human traits arise through interactions among many genes, epigenetic processes and the environment. How certain would we need to be about the consequences before making an irreversible intervention? Who should be entitled to make decisions on behalf of people not yet born? And if a genetic intervention becomes safe, effective and widely available, could a choice that begins as voluntary eventually become something parents are expected to make?

Cancer is not a single, unchanging enemy but an evolving population of cells. Aggressive treatment can destroy large numbers of cancer cells, yet in some tumours it may also remove treatment-sensitive cells that would otherwise compete with resistant ones. This has led researchers to explore adaptive approaches that alter, reduce or temporarily pause treatment in an attempt to delay the dominance of resistant cancer cells. Under what biological circumstances might controlling a tumour be more effective than trying to eliminate it as quickly as possible? How should doctors weigh tumour size against treatment resistance, quality of life and long-term survival? And what level of evidence should be required before deliberately accepting the continued presence of cancer becomes a defensible medical strategy?

Nuclear power can provide continuous low-carbon electricity, but concerns remain about construction time, cost, accidents, radioactive waste and weapons proliferation. A system with little or no nuclear power would depend more heavily on renewables, storage, transmission, flexible demand and other forms of firm generation. How should familiar but potentially severe nuclear risks be compared with the less visible system-wide risks of excluding nuclear power? Should the answer differ between countries with different resources, institutions and energy needs?

Ice sheets, ocean circulation, forests and other components of the Earth system may respond gradually to pressure before shifting abruptly into a different state. Scientists have proposed early-warning signals, but similar patterns may also arise from natural variability, limited observations or weaknesses in climate models. What evidence would show that a system is approaching a genuine threshold? How should policy respond when the probability of crossing a tipping point is deeply uncertain but the consequences may be irreversible?

Space exploration can produce scientific knowledge, new technologies, economic opportunities and benefits that may extend far into the future. Yet the sums involved can be enormous while poverty, healthcare, housing, education and other urgent needs remain unresolved on Earth. Governments spend taxpayers’ money and are expected to justify their priorities democratically. Private individuals, by contrast, are generally thought to have much greater freedom over how their wealth is used. But should that distinction survive when private fortunes become large enough to shape public priorities, rely on publicly funded research and infrastructure, or influence humanity’s future beyond Earth? Does ownership of wealth settle the question of how it may legitimately be spent, or do extreme concentrations of wealth create wider social obligations? And should investment in distant possibilities ever take priority over suffering that can be addressed now?

Elections provide public authorisation, but they can favour wealth, party organisation, professional politicians and those most skilled at campaigning. Selection by lottery could create a legislature that more closely resembles the population, while deliberation and access to expert evidence might allow ordinary citizens to make informed decisions. Would such a body possess sufficient competence, independence and legitimacy? Should it advise elected politicians, scrutinise their decisions or exercise law-making power of its own?

Governments, courts, landowners and empires often produced extensive archives, while enslaved people, indigenous communities, workers and the poor left fewer written records. Can historians recover their experiences by reading official documents against the grain, drawing on oral testimony or examining objects, landscapes and demographic evidence? How should different forms of evidence be compared and corroborated? At what point does responsible reconstruction become speculation?

Colonialism, slavery, dispossession, persecution and state violence can continue to shape institutions, wealth, borders and national identities long after the people who committed them have died. Later generations may bear no personal guilt, yet they can inherit both the benefits and consequences of what came before. What, then, does historical responsibility mean across generations? Should nations respond through education, commemoration, apology, institutional reform or other forms of acknowledgement, and how should such responses be justified? Can responsibility persist without guilt being inherited? How should historians distinguish genuine continuity from attempts to impose present-day values on the past? And can confronting historical injustice strengthen a political community, or might attempts to settle the past sometimes deepen division?