Events

In this talk Julian Nida_Rümelin will develop the main features of what he calls ‘digital humanism’ (Nida-Rümelin/Weidenfeld 2018), based on a general philosophical account of humanistic theory and practice (Nida-Rümelin 2016): (1) preconditions of human authorship (JNR 2019); (2) human authorship in times of digital change; (3) ethical implications.

J. Nida-Rümelin: Humanistische Reflexionen (Berlin: Suhrkamp 2016)
J. Nida-Rümelin/N. Weidenfeld: Digitaler Humanismus. Eine Ethik für das Zeitalter der Künstlichen Intelligenz (München: Piper 2018)
J. Nida-Rümelin: Structural Rationality and other essays on Practical Reason (Berlin / New York: Springer International 2019)

This panel debate will investigate the development of AI from a philosophical perspective. In particular, we will discuss the ethical implications of AI and the global challenges raised by the widespread adoption of socio-technical systems powered by AI tools. These challenges will be addressed by the three speakers from different cultural and geographical perspectives. We invite the audience to be part of the debate to increase with the panel our understanding how AI is reshaping the world and the awareness of the challenges we will face in the future.

Safety, Fairness, and Visual Integrity in an AI-shaped world
Deborah Johnson

AI algorithms are potent components in decisions that affect the lives of individuals and the activities of public and private institutions. Although the use of algorithms to make decisions has many benefits, a number of problems have been identified with their use in certain domains, most notably in domains in which safety and fairness are important. AI algorithms are also used to produce tools that enable individuals to do things they would not otherwise be able to do. In the case of synthetic media technologies, users are able to produce deepfakes that challenge the integrity of visual experience. In my presentation, I will discuss safety, fairness, and visual integrity as three ethical issues arising in an AI-shaped world.

Global Challenges for AI Ethics
Guglielmo Tamburrini

The Covid-19 pandemics is forcing us to address some global challenges concerning human well-being and fundamental rights protection. This panel presentation explores ethically ambivalent roles that AI plays in connection with two additional global challenges: (1) climate warming and (2) threats to international peace. 1. AI has a significant carbon footprint. Should one set quantitative limits to the energy consumption required for AI model training? And if so, how must one distribute AI carbon quotas among States, businesses, and research? Should one limit the collection of user data to feed into data-hungry AI systems? And who should be in charge of deciding which data to collect, preserve or get rid of for the sake of environmental protection? 2. An AI arms race is well under its way, ranging from the development of autonomous weapons systems to the development of AI systems for discovering software vulnerabilities and waging cyberconflicts. Should the weaponization of AI be internationally regulated? And if so, how to interpret and apply within this domain human rights, humanitarian principles and the UN fundamental goal of preserving world peace and stability? This panel presentation is rounded out by looking at EU efforts to cope with some of these global ethical issues.

Building Ethical AI for the Human-AI Symbiotic Society
Yi Zeng

In this talk, I will provide a global landscape of AI Ethical Principles and investigate on how the efforts complete each other, instead of compete with each other. I will then talk about concrete groundings of AI Ethical principles and introduce technical and social efforts in different domains. Finally, I will extend the discussion to long-term A(G)I ethical challenges and a possible positive path.

A growing number of contact tracing apps are being developed to complement manual contact tracing. Yet, for these technological solutions to benefit public health, users must be willing to adopt these apps. While privacy was the main consideration of experts at the start of contact tracing app development, privacy is only one of many factors in users’ decision to adopt these apps. In this talk I showcase the value of taking a descriptive ethics approach to setting best practices in this new domain. Descriptive ethics, introduced by the field of moral philosophy, determines best practices by learning directly from the user — observing people’s preferences and inferring best practice from that behavior — instead of exclusively relying on experts’ normative decisions. This talk presents an empirically-validated framework of the inputs that factor into a user’s decision to adopt COVID19 contact tracing apps, including app accuracy, privacy, benefits, and mobile costs. Using predictive models of users’ likelihood to install COVID apps based on quantifications of these factors, I show how high the bar is for these apps to achieve adoption and suggest user-driven directions for ethically encouraging adoption.

This panel debate will have a hard and critical look at the sense and nonsense of digital sovereignty.

We will debunk some of the terminology that is being thrown around in debates on digital sovereignty, analyse the good, the bad, and the ugly of geopolitical technology battles between the USA and China and provide specific look insight into two harbingers of the emerging perceptions of sovereignty in cyberspace: global telecommunications and global standardization.

We invite the audience to be part of the debate to increase with the panel our understanding how Europe can best navigate the good, the bad and the ugly of geopolitics and the digital world.

Prof Paul Timmers will set the scene by a critical reflection where we are in the debate on ‘digital sovereignty’ and consequences for EU policy development. Paul Timmers is at the European University Cyprus, Research Associate at Oxford University, Senior Advisor at EPC, former Director European Commission, and leading thinker on strategic autonomy and digital sovereignty.

Subsequently, we will engage in a panel and audience discussion where three leading cybersecurity personalities will put forward their response to the scene setter:

Prof Ciaran Martin, Oxford University, former head UK NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre), a world top person in cybersecurity, recent interview by the Financial Times on east-west split over the internet.

Dr Margot Dor, Strategy Director of ETSI a European Standards Organization, driver of the Carl Bildt Report on Strategic Standardisation for Europe in the Digital Era

Dr Georg Serentschy, advisor on telecoms and IT, senior advisor SquirePattonBoggs, Board of Directors International Telecommunications Society, former Head of BEREC (European Telecoms Regulators).