Event Announcements

2022 Uehiro Lectures : Ethics and AI, Peter Railton. In Person and Hybrid

Ethics and Artificial Intelligence
Professor Peter Railton, University of Michigan

May 9, 16, and 23 (In person and hybrid. booking links below)

Abstract: Recent, dramatic advancement in the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) raise a host of ethical questions about the development and deployment of AI systems.  Some of these are questions long recognized as of fundamental moral concern, and which may occur in particularly acute forms with AI—matters of distributive justice, discrimination, social control, political manipulation, the conduct of warfare, personal privacy, and the concentration of economic power.  Other questions, however, concern issues that are more specific to the distinctive kind of technological change AI represents.  For example, how to contend with the possibility that artificial agents might emerge with capabilities that go beyond human comprehension or control?  But whether or when the threat of such “superintelligence” becomes realistic, we are now facing a situation in which partially-intelligent AI systems are increasingly being deployed in roles that involve relatively autonomous decision-making that carries real risk of harm.  This urgently raises the question of how such partially-intelligent systems could become appropriately sensitive to moral considerations.

In these lectures I will attempt to take some first steps in answering that question, which often is put in terms of “programming ethics into AI”.  However, we don’t have an “ethical algorithm” that could be programmed into AI systems, and that would enable them to respond aptly to an open-ended array of situations where moral issues are stake.  Moreover, the current revolution in AI has provided ample evidence that system designs based upon the learning of complex representational structures and generative capacities have acquired higher levels of competence, situational sensitivity, and creativity in problem-solving than systems based upon pre-programmed expertise.  Might a learning-based approach to AI be extended to the competence needed to identify and respond appropriately to moral dimensions of situations?

I will begin by outlining a framework for understanding what “moral learning” might be, seeking compatibility with a range of conceptions of the normative content of morality.  I then will draw upon research on human cognitive and social development—research that itself is undergoing a “learning revolution”—to suggest how this research enables us to see at work components central to moral learning, and to ask what conditions are favorable to the development and working of these components.  The question then becomes whether artificial systems might be capable of similar cognitive and social development, and what conditions would be favorable to this.  Might the same learning-based approaches that have achieved such success in strategic game-playing, image identification and generation, and language recognition and translation also achieve success in cooperative game-playing, identifying moral issues in situations, and communicating and collaborating effectively on apt responses?  How far might such learning go, and what could this tell us about how we might engage with AI systems to foster their moral development, and perhaps ours as well?

Bio: Peter Railton is the Kavka Distinguished University Professor and Perrin Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan.  His research has included ethics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and political philosophy, and recently he has been engaged in joint projects with researchers in psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience.  Among his writings are Facts, Values, and Norms (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Homo Prospectus (joint with Martin Seligman, Roy Baumeister, and Chandra Sripada, Oxford University Press, 2016).  He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, has served as President of the American Philosophical Society (Central Division), and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  He has been a visiting faculty member at Princeton and UC-Berkeley, and in the UK has given the John Locke Lectures while a visiting fellow at All Souls, Oxford.

BOOKING

Lecture 1.

Date: Monday 9 May 2022, 5.00 – 7.00 pm, followed by a drinks reception (for all)
Venue: Mathematical Institute (LT1), Andrew Wiles Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG.

Booking:
In person: https://bookwhen.com/uehiro/e/ev-sa7t-20220509170000
Online: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rpRsyHMGQxikOv3zAipB7g

Lecture 2.

Date: Monday 16 May 2022, 5.00 – 7.00 pm. Jointly organised with Oxford’s Moral Philosophy Seminars
Venue: Mathematical Institute (LT1), Andrew Wiles Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG.

Booking:
In person: https://bookwhen.com/uehiro/e/ev-sbqs-20220516170000
Online: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wKCT6UQ5SjGLiQ9pfsUDdQ

 Lecture 3.

Date: Monday 23 May 2022, 5.00 – 7.00 pm
Venue: Mathematical Institute (LT1), Andrew Wiles Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG.

Booking:
In person: https://bookwhen.com/uehiro/e/ev-sdu1-20220523170000
Online: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9in8lRyITU6KJQX4sxotzg

Announcement: The 4th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics Final Presentation and Reception

We are pleased to announce the five finalists for the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics and to invite you to attend the final where they will present their entries. Two finalists have been selected from the undergraduate category and three from the graduate, to present their ideas to an audience and respond to a short Q&A as the final round in the competition.

The Presentation will be held in Seminar Room 1, Oxford Martin School (corner of Catte St and Broad St), on Thursday 22nd February, 4.00 – 5.50 pm. This will be followed by a drinks reception in Seminar room 2 until 7:00 pm.

Undergraduate

Jonathan Latimer: “Why We Should Genetically ‘Disenhance’ Animals Used in Factory Farms”

Brian Wong: “On Relational Injustice: Could Colonialism Have Been Wrong Even if it had Introduced More Benefits than Harms?”

Graduate

James Kirkpatrick: “When is Sex with Conjoined Twins Permissible?”

Tena Thau: “Should Cryonics be Compulsory?”

Miles Unterreiner:  “The Paradox of the Benefiting Samaritan”

All are welcome to attend the final and are warmly invited to join the finalists for a drinks reception after the event. Please sign up at: https://bookwhen.com/uehiro

Please book now and support the next generation of Practical Ethicists.

 

Announcement: 3rd Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics

After our enforced time offline it is with great pleasure that we can now announce and publish the winners of the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2017 on the Practical Ethics in the News Blog.

The winner of the Undergraduate Category is Paul de Font-Reaulx, with his essay ‘What Makes Discrimination Wrong?’

The runner up in the Undergraduate Category is Andreas Masvie with his essay ‘The Ethical Dilemma of Youth Politics’.

The winner of the Graduate Category is Romy Eskens with her essay ‘Is Sex With Robots rape? On the Permissibility of Cosentless Sex With Robots’.

The runner up in the Graduate Category is Jonas Haeg with his essay ‘Should We Completely Ban “Political Bots”?’

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Announcement: 2016 Effective Altruism Global Research Meeting Call for Abstracts

Location: August 5th to 7th, University of California, Berkeley

Abstract Deadline: July 10th

Contact: researchmeeting@centerforeffectivealtruism.org

Overview

The 2016 Effective Altruism Global Research Meeting is an opportunity for Postgraduate students and early stage academics from a variety of disciplines to present research relevant to Effective Altruism. The meeting will take place on August 5th to 7th, 2016 at UC Berkeley alongside the Effective Altruism Global conference. The meeting will consist of two events, an academic poster session and a number of short oral presentations. Presentations will be awarded to the most exceptional submissions. Participants selected for presentations will still have the option to present a poster.

The Effective Altruism movement, which promotes the use of reason and evidence to determine the most effective ways to improve the world, has grown rapidly over the last three years. It is an interdisciplinary movement which has gained traction amongst academics in a wide range of fields, including Philosophy, Economics and Health. Last year’s Effective Altruism Global conference welcomed renowned philosopher Peter Singer and behavioral economist Dan Ariely, as well as 1000 attendees. This year, our speakers include Philip Tetlock (author of Superforecasting), Cass Sunstein (legal scholar and former Administrator of the White House OIRA), Thomas Kalil (Deputy Director for Technology and Innovation at the White House OSTP), Jaan Tallinn (Co-Founder of Skype) and Irene Pepperberg (noted animal cognition scientist).  

Effective Altruism Global’s featured topics include discussions of the replication crisis, prediction markets, decision making under uncertainty, CRISPR, our obligations to the global poor, as well as a number of other topics that are important to shaping the future. The Research Meeting will run alongside Effective Altruism Global to give academics access to the large audience of interested attendees, and expose the more than 1,000 expected philanthropists, CEOs, and students to research relevant to Effective Altruism. Continue reading

Solving the Organ Crisis Ethically

Julian Savulescu and William Isdale

An editorial in the Lancet earlier this month report on the first fall in UK organ transplants in a decade.

Key statistics included that “the number of people who chose or were able to donate their organs in 2014 fell, and that 224 fewer people in the UK received an organ transplant than the year before”

Amongst the factors restricting donations is family consent: “no appreciable rise has occurred in the proportion of families who gave consent to organ retrieval following the death of a relative, which continues to hover “stubbornly below 60%”.

The Lancet also points to inefficiencies in the use of those organs that are donated.

Australia’s #DonateLife week has just been completed, a week dedicated to promoting organ donation, Australia is seeking to improve its own rates, which lag behind the UK, US and other comparable nations.  The government is already undertaking  a review into the current organ and tissue donation and transplantation programme.

One quote from the Lancet is perhaps timely:

As Rafael Matesanz, Director of Spain’s world-leading Organización Nacional de Trasplantes, recently reminded us, we should “…never blame the population. If people donate less, it must be something we have done wrong””

William  Isdale and I recently proposed Three Ethical Ways to Increase Organ Donation: no longer allowing a family veto where a patient has consented; financial incentives to consent; and non financial incentives to consent (such as higher priority as a recipient for those who are on the transplant list).

On August 25, Peter Singer, Neera Bhatia William Isdale, Julian Koplin, and myself will be participating in a public event in Melbourne, Solving the Organ Crisis Ethically, where we will critically discuss the ethics of a range of options available to increase the organ supply in Australia.

There are 1500 people waiting for an organ in Australia. Some of those will die, or become too ill to be an organ recipient, before an organ becomes available. How far should we go to address the organ shortage?

Event: Double St Cross Special Ethics Seminar – Thursday 4 June 2015

On Thursday 4th June the Double St Cross Special Ethics Seminar took place.  Presenting were Dr Joshua Shepherd and Dr Mimi Zou.  Please see bellow for  abstracts and links to the podcasts of the talks. Continue reading

Christine Korsgaard on our Moral Obligations to Animals [Uehiro Lecture 2]

by Karamvir Chadha @karamvirchadha

 What are our moral obligations to animals? This was the subject of Christine Korsgaard’s Uehiro lecture on 2 December 2014, the second of a three-lecture series on the moral and legal standing of animals. (To listen to the lecture follow this link)

Korsgaard argued for the conclusion that animals have moral standing. Her argument for this conclusion was characteristically Korsgaardian: it was both extremely ambitious and grounded in a distinctive interpretation of Kant. Continue reading

The dappled causal world for psychiatric disorders: implications for psychiatric nosology

On Thursday 16th October, Professor Kenneth Kendler delivered his second (and final) Loebel Lecture, entitled ‘The dappled causal world for psychiatric disorders: implications for psychiatric nosology’. You can view it online here or listen here.

Whilst Kendler’s first lecture – summarised by Roger Crisp here – focused on empirical issues, the second lecture was more philosophical. Kendler’s key question in the second lecture could perhaps be formulated as: Given the complex aetiology of mental disorders, how can we best understand and explain how they arise? Continue reading

Event Announcement: 2013 Wellcome Lectures in Neuroethics

Wednesday 27th November, 5 – 7pm

Lecture Theatre
Oxford Martin School
Old Indian Institute
34 Broad St (corner of Holywell and Catte Streets)
Oxford OX1 3BD

ALL WELCOME

The Oxford Centre for Neuroethics & International Neuroethics Society are pleased to present a set of two Wellcome Lectures in Neuroethics for 2013:

Brain mechanisms of voluntary action: the implications for responsibility
Prof. Patrick Haggard
University College London

The irresponsible self: Self bias changes the way we see the world
Prof. Glyn Humphreys
Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University

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