ART-AI Seminar
We are very pleased to have Dr Malcolm Brown, Director of Mission and Public Affairs for the Church of England, join us for this ART-AI Seminar entitled ‘The ethics of being human … and the non-human’ on the 3rd December. Abstract and Bio below:
Please see below Abstract and Bio;
Abstract: If ethical conclusions can be arrived at through the exercise of reason, there is nothing in principle to prevent technologies from developing the capacity to reason ethically. But if the Enlightenment attempt to derive ethics from reason is flawed, and people learn what is good and right as much from their context and nature as from reason, then there is something specifically human about living ethically which cannot easily be replicated. Dilemmas in technology, including AI, demand a well-thought-out theory of what it means to be human. How can we develop an understanding of the human which embraces all those we would want to include (including infants, disabled people, people with dementia and others) but does full justice to human beings’ capacity to think, innovate and reason? How might we start to build a theory of the human into our thinking about what AI should and should not be used for?
Bio: The Revd Prof. Malcolm Brown is Director of Mission and Public Affairs for the Church of England, Visiting Professor at the University of Winchester and an Honorary lecturer at the University of Bath. In his day job, he is responsible for a small team of specialist ethicists who advise the church on matters of public policy and social ethics. His own research background is in political economy and the ethics of market economics. Malcolm has taught ethics in a number of universities at undergraduate, Masters and Doctoral levels. His books include: After the Market (Peter Lang, 2004); Tensions in Christian Ethics (SPCK, 2010) and Anglican Social Theology (CHP, 2014). He has contributed to many multi-authored books including, most recently, works on ethics in AI and post-digital contexts.
