CFP: Where no proxy has gone before: avatars & responsibility frameworks

Venue: Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, 10 & 11 October 2024

Description: Avatars in the form of digital or robotic embodied representations of a person in virtual or physical environments are being deployed in fields such as healthcare, education, social interaction or workspace. Alternatively termed as digital/ robotic twins, clones or duplicates of real humans, personal avatars can be coupled with AI technologies such as (personalized/small/large) Language Models to the extent that their human users do not control them in real time. This seems to raise new challenges in terms of agency ascriptions, (dis)enhancement of human capabilities and oversight, potentially opening new responsibility gaps. The purpose of this two-day workshop is to explore the new set of issues opened by use of  digital and robotic avatars, and to assess the limits of our current frameworks of responsibility in relation to these issues.

Keynote and guest speakers include:

Paula Sweeney (University of Aberdeen) 

Daniele Pucci (Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia) 

Kathryn B. Francis (Keele University) 

Stefano Dafarra (Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia) 

Submissions: We have two open slots for workshop talks and four open slots for workshop posters. To this end, we welcome submissions of abstracts (maximum 500 words, excluding references) on topics relating to avatars (both digital and robotic) and responsibility. Please send your anonymised abstract and short bio by 15 August 2024 to [email protected]. Successful candidates will be notified by the end of August. Although full costs cannot be covered, there might be several (partial) travel reimbursements available for PhD students and post-doctoral researchers without current funding.

Organizers: 

This is the first of a series of five yearly workshops hosted by the Research Center in Applied Ethics of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, within the framework of the ERC Starting Grant project “avataResponsibility” (Avatar agency. Moral responsibility at the intersection of individual, collective, and artificial social entities in emergent avatar communities). The workshop is part of the larger series of events “Responsibility Matters Workshop Series” (RMWS) that address various facets of the topic of responsibility. For further details please contact Mihaela Constantinescu, PI of the ERC grant avataResponsibility: [email protected].