Stanford CIS

Ethics of Artificial Intelligence Conference: Ethics of Specific Technologies

By Peter Asaro on

On October 14-15, 2016, the NYU Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness in conjunction with the NYU Center for Bioethics hosted a conference on “The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence”.

Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) makes questions about the ethics of AI more pressing than ever. Existing AI systems already raise numerous ethical issues: for example, machine classification systems raise questions about privacy and bias. AI systems in the near-term future raise many more issues: for example, autonomous vehicles and autonomous weapons raise questions about safety and moral responsibility. AI systems in the long-term future raise more issues in turn: for example, human-level artificial general intelligence systems raise questions about the moral status of the systems themselves.

This conference will explore these questions about the ethics of artificial intelligence and a number of other questions, including:

What ethical principles should AI researchers follow?

Are there restrictions on the ethical use of AI?

What is the best way to design AI that aligns with human values?

Is it possible or desirable to build moral principles into AI systems?

When AI systems cause benefits or harm, who is morally responsible?

Are AI systems themselves potential objects of moral concern?

What moral framework and value system is best used to assess the impact of AI?

PARTICIPANTS:

Speakers and panelists:

Peter Asaro (The New School, Media Studies), John Basl (Northeastern University, Philosophy), Nick Bostrom(University of Oxford, Future of Humanity Institute), Meia Chita-Tegmark (Future of Life Institute), Kate Devlin(Goldsmiths College, University of London, Computer Science), Vasant Dhar (NYU Data Science, Stern), Virginia Dignum (Delft University of Technology, Technology, Policy and Management), Mara Garza (UC Riverside, Philosophy), Daniel Kahneman (Princeton, Psychology), Adam Kolber (Brooklyn Law), Yann LeCun (Facebook, NYU Data Science), S. Matthew Liao (NYU, Bioethics), Gary Marcus (NYU, Psychology), Steve Petersen (Niagara University, Philosophy), Francesca Rossi (IBM, University of Padova), Stuart Russell (UC Berkeley, Computer Science), Ronald Sandler (Northeastern University, Philosophy), Jürgen Schmidhuber (IDSIA, AI), Susan Schneider(University of Connecticut, Philosophy), Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside, Philosophy), Jaan Tallinn (CSER), Max Tegmark (Future of Life Institute), Wendell Wallach (Yale, Bioethics), Stephen Wolfram (Wolfram Research), and Eliezer Yudkowsky (Machine Intelligence Research Institute).

Watch Peter Asaro on NYU-TV.