James Moor¹\;s seminal paper\, ³\;What is Computer Ethics?²\; (1985)\, inaugurated a \;new generation of interdisciplinary reflection on how computing technologies \;evoked distinctive new ethical challenges. \; These challenges are often quite \;novel \; and their roots in specific technologies thus require equally novel \;and collaborative reflection across the otherwise diverse disciplines of \;philosophy\, applied ethics\, computer science\, social science\, and so on.
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Especially over the past decade\, increasing attention has been given to \;questions of trust and privacy in online and mediated environments. \;These \;questions are complicated by important differences between face-to-face and \;online/mediated experiences of trust and privacy - and further complicated \;by the increasingly important roles of Artificial Agents (AAs) and \;Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) such as those at work in ³\;recommendations for \;you²\; on commercial websites\, web-page ranking algorithms used in popular \;search engines\, and so on. At the same time\, AAs and MASs are becoming \;increasingly autonomous \; capable of making decisions independently of human \;control. Such autonomy raises centrally philosophical questions: \; Are such \;AAs and MASs further capable of making autonomous ethical judgments \;including the specific sort of judgment denoted by phronesis or ³\;practical \;wisdom²\;? \; And: how would we know if we can or should trust these agents \;precisely as they become increasingly indispensible to our lives?
Our lecturers / mentors have each undertaken leading work in these domains\, \;both within philosophically-grounded and -oriented reflection (J. Moor\, J. \;Simon\, M. Taddeo\, H. Tavani) and within the contexts of online and mediated \;communication environments (D. Elgesem\, E. Staksrud\, C.Ess). \;Our faculty and PhD workshops are designed to further important dialogue and \;debate\, and foster current doctoral research in these domains. The public \;debate will offer highlights of current insights and findings\, along with \;critical discussion of our defining themes and questions.
For more details\, including registration procedures\, please see the \;workshops / lecture website.