On Monday, November 20, 2023, Dr. Regina Rini, Associate Professor of Philosophy at York University, presented her talk “Morals from Machines” at the SP Colloquium Brownbag.
You can find more information about Dr. Rini’s work here and her abstract below:
Abstract:
Morals from Machines
Should you turn to a computer program for advice when you face a difficult moral decision? That sounds absurd. But artificial intelligence has done a lot of surprising things lately. Perhaps most surprising of all: it seems to be able to implement the ethical theory of John Rawls, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. This talk will discuss the Delphi language model, which predicts moral judgments about novel situations based upon machine-learned patterns in actual human moral judgment. I will connect computer science, psychology, and moral philosophy.
Regina Rini holds the Canada Research Chair in Social Reasoning and is Associate Professor of Philosophy at York University. Her research focuses on how we navigate shifting norms in public life, particularly in response to technological disruption. Among other topics, she has written about the effects of social media on democratic politics and the significance of machine learning to moral life. In addition to her academic work, she writes the regular ‘Morals of the Story’ column for the Times Literary Supplement. Her most recent book is The Ethics of Microaggression, and she is currently writing a book about certainty and doubt in political life.