Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

September 26, 2016

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 morally beneficial AI?
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 is best used to assess questions about the ethics of AI?

Speakers and panelists will include:

Nick Bostrom (Future of Humanity Institute), Meia Chita-Tegmark (Future of Life Institute), Mara Garza (UC Riverside, Philosophy), Sam Harris (Project Reason), Demis Hassabis (DeepMind/Google), Yann LeCun (Facebook, NYU Data Science), Peter Railton (University of Michigan, Philosophy), Francesca Rossi (University of Padova, Computer Science), Stuart Russell (UC Berkeley, Computer Science), Susan Schneider (University of Connecticut, Philosophy), Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside, Philosophy), Max Tegmark (Future of Life Institute), Wendell Wallach (Yale, Bioethics), Eliezer Yudkowsky (Machine Intelligence Research Institute), and others.

Organizers: Ned Block (NYU, Philosophy), David Chalmers (NYU, Philosophy), S. Matthew Liao (NYU, Bioethics)