Day 1: Ethics of Artificial Intelligence | Exploring Pluri-Perspectives
The last several years have seen a surge in dialogues, papers and debates on the ethics of AI, and a multitude of similar frameworks designed to guide the ethical design, development and deployment of AI. Most of these initiatives are steeped in European moral and ethical traditions and, while very important, have not necessarily taken into account the diversity of philosophical thought and insight that the world has to offer. This Dialogue on Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: Exploring Pluri-perspectives explores what various Asian schools of philosophical enquiry have to offer the global effort to understand and operationalise an ethical approach to AI.
Agenda: Day 1 (24 May, 2021)
Inaugural session | 18:00 – 18:30 (IST)
Session 1 | 18:30 – 20:00
Reimagining humanity: Alan Turing asked in the 1950s if a machine could “think”, an ability at the heart of the anthropocentrism of many major philosophical and spiritual traditions. This session will explore the cognition landscape of AI, the futurist idea of the singularity of human-machine integration, philosophical investigations on the meaning and future of humanity, and implications of the emergence of “real” artificial intelligence on assigning human ethical duties, rights, and privileges to machines. Given the current developments, how would the spread of AI challenge the prevailing ethical frameworks? How are these frameworks to be re-engineered, and in what desired directions?
Session 2 | 20:00 – 21:30
Can a robot be a moral agent? With the technological progress of AI rooted in the optimization and efficiency discourses, particularly as narrow AI is rolled out in specific use cases, philosophers have had to deal with the ethical design of decision making (through accurate data, removing statistical bias, and answering the trolley problem for driverless cars). This session aims to consider further what an “ethical machine” means from the lens of philosophies of legal personhood, responsibilities of an application that bridges the human-machine divide, determinism, and whether the philosophical origins of bioethics can add value to this new scientific landscape.
The last several years have seen a surge in dialogues, papers and debates on the ethics of AI, and a multitude of similar frameworks designed to guide the ethical design, development and deployment of AI. Most of these initiatives are steeped in European moral and ethical traditions and, while very important, have not necessarily taken into account the diversity of philosophical thought and insight that the world has to offer. This Dialogue on Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: Exploring Pluri-perspectives explores what various Asian schools of philosophical enquiry have to offer the global effort to understand and operationalise an ethical approach to AI.
Agenda: Day 1 (24 May, 2021)
Inaugural session | 18:00 – 18:30 (IST)
Session 1 | 18:30 – 20:00
Reimagining humanity: Alan Turing asked in the 1950s if a machine could “think”, an ability at the heart of the anthropocentrism of many major philosophical and spiritual traditions. This session will explore the cognition landscape of AI, the futurist idea of the singularity of human-machine integration, philosophical investigations on the meaning and future of humanity, and implications of the emergence of “real” artificial intelligence on assigning human ethical duties, rights, and privileges to machines. Given the current developments, how would the spread of AI challenge the prevailing ethical frameworks? How are these frameworks to be re-engineered, and in what desired directions?
Session 2 | 20:00 – 21:30
Can a robot be a moral agent? With the technological progress of AI rooted in the optimization and efficiency discourses, particularly as narrow AI is rolled out in specific use cases, philosophers have had to deal with the ethical design of decision making (through accurate data, removing statistical bias, and answering the trolley problem for driverless cars). This session aims to consider further what an “ethical machine” means from the lens of philosophies of legal personhood, responsibilities of an application that bridges the human-machine divide, determinism, and whether the philosophical origins of bioethics can add value to this new scientific landscape.
