Ethics in AI Colloquium - 'AI, Democracy, and the Common Good'

Abstract: As many leading voices in debates about ethics and AI recognize, AI creates risks for democracy and we need to democratize AI. But what, exactly, are these risks, and what does it mean to democratize AI? Drawing on his forthcoming book Why AI Undermines Democracy And What To Do About It, Mark Coeckelbergh offers an overview of some of the risks and mobilizes the tradition of political-philosophical republicanism to argue that and why AI should be developed in a more participatory way and serve the common good, enabled by education and regulation that create possibilities for non-domination and communication.

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.