We are delighted to announce that the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub at Jesus College Oxford is to host the Institute for Ethics in AI’s Annual Lecture 2023, which will be given by Professor Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, and a distinguished senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress.

The lecture, which takes place on Thursday 19th October from 5pm – 6.30pm, is the first event of the Michaelmas Term 2023 Digital Hub Events Programme to be announced. Bookings are now open. Please visit the Institute for Ethics in AI Eventbrite page for full details and to reserve your free tickets.

 

Professor Nelson is a former deputy assistant to President Joe Biden, and served as acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Her work at OSTP drove Biden-Harris Administration strategy to generate policy that expands economic opportunity and ensures emerging science and technologies work for, not against, our democratic values.

During her time at OSTP, Professor Nelson led a team writing the landmark Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, which lays the groundwork for policymakers, technology developers, and others to better safeguard people’s rights as algorithms and AI reach further into our lives. Including her in the list of “Ten People Who Shaped Science in 2022”, Nature said of Nelson’s OSTP tenure, “this social scientist made strides for equality, integrity, and open access.”

Professor Nelson’s talk will focus on the theme of ‘Thick Alignment’.

The Institute’s Annual Lecture will be hosted by its inaugural Director, Professor John Tasioulas, Professor of Ethics and Legal Philosophy in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford. He was previously the inaugural Chair of Politics, Philosophy & Law and Director of the Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy & Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law, Kings College London. Professor Tasioulas has degrees in Law and Philosophy from the University of Melbourne, and a DPhil in Philosophy from Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

He was previously a Lecturer in Jurisprudence at the University of Glasgow, Reader in Moral and Legal Philosophy at the University of Oxford, where he taught from 1998-2010, and Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London. He has also acted as a consultant on human rights for the World Bank and is a member of the International Advisory Board of the European Parliament’s Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA). He has published widely in moral, legal, and political philosophy.

 

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE FOR ETHICS IN AI

The Institute for Ethics in AI will bring together world-leading philosophers and other experts in the humanities with the technical developers and users of AI in academia, business and government. The ethics and governance of AI is an exceptionally vibrant area of research at Oxford and the Institute is an opportunity to take a bold leap forward from this platform.

Every day brings more examples of the ethical challenges posed by AI; from face recognition to voter profiling, brain machine interfaces to weaponised drones, and the ongoing discourse about how AI will impact employment on a global scale. This is urgent and important work that we intend to promote internationally as well as embedding in our own research and teaching here at Oxford.