Book talk: 'As If Human: Ethics and Artificial Intelligence' - Nigel Shadbolt in conversation with Charles Godfray

Past Event

Date
 12 November 2024, 5:00pm - 6:00pm

Location
 Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub, Jesus College
Corner of Market Street and Cornmarket, Oxford (entrance on Market Street)

Event Recording:

Intelligent machines present us every day with urgent ethical challenges.

Is the facial recognition software used by an agency fair? When algorithms determine questions of justice, finance, health, and defense, are the decisions proportionate, equitable, transparent, and accountable? How do we harness this extraordinary technology to empower rather than oppress?

Despite increasingly sophisticated programming, artificial intelligences share none of our essential human characteristics - sentience, physical sensation, emotional responsiveness, versatile general intelligence.

Join author of As If Human: Ethics and Artificial Intelligence, Nigel Shadbolt, as he discusses with Charles Godfray, that if we assess AI decisions, our interactions with AI systems, and the actions they recommend, as if they came from a human being, we can avert a disastrous and amoral future. Nigel will go beyond the headlines about rampant robots to apply established moral principles to shaping our AI future. The new framework constitutes basic design principles for building moral machines.

This event is a collaboration between the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub programme at Jesus College and the Oxford Martin School

Shadbolt book

Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt
Principal, Jesus College & Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Ethical Web & Data Architecture

Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt is a leading researcher in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and was one of the originators of the interdisciplinary field of Web Science. He is Principal of Jesus College Oxford and a Professor of Computing Science at the University of Oxford. He is chairman of the Open Data Institute which he co-founded with Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

In 2009 he was appointed Information Advisor by the Prime Minister and, working with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, led the development of the highly acclaimed data.gov.uk website. In 2010, he joined the UK government’s Public Sector Transparency Board – overseeing Open Data releases across the public sector. He was knighted in 2013 for services to science and engineering.

Most recently he was asked to lead the setting up of the University of Oxford’s Institute of Ethics in AI. With over 500 publications, he has researched and published on topics ranging from cognitive psychology to computational neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence to the Semantic Web. In 2018 he published The Digital Ape: how to live (in peace) with smart machines, described as a ‘landmark book’. He is a Fellow of The Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society.

Charles Godfray

Professor Sir Charles Godfray
Director, Oxford Martin School

Professor Charles Godfray was appointed Director of the Oxford Martin School on 1 February 2018.

He is a population biologist with broad interests in the environmental sciences and has published in fundamental and applied areas of ecology, evolution and epidemiology.

He is interested in how the global food system will need to change and adapt to the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, and in particular in the concept of sustainable intensification, and the relationship between food production, ecosystem services and biodiversity.

In 2017 he was knighted for services to scientific research and for scientific advice to government.