Themes from Kate Vredenburgh: XAI, Fairness, the Future of Work

The Department of Philosophy and Political Science at TU Dortmund University and the Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are delighted to announce the 2nd Dortmund Conference on Philosophy and Society, taking place on October 1–2, 2025, in Dortmund, Germany. The event will feature Kate Vredenburgh from the London School of Economics, who works in the philosophy of social science, political philosophy, and the philosophy of technology, and who was recently awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship for a project on the future of work.

The first day of the conference is reserved for presentations from speakers selected via a call for papers. Kate Vredenburgh will be present to respond to the papers. On the same day, she will also give a public keynote lecture. On the second day, we will hold a student workshop on Vredenburgh’s work.

Conference Themes

The conference will engage with themes from Vredenburgh’s work, in particular philosophical perspectives on artificial intelligence (AI) and on the future of work. Concerning AI, Vredenburgh investigates the moral implications of the use of opaque AI systems in the institutions of our society, arguing for a right to explanation. She has developed an ethically informed picture of algorithmic bias, and proposed an account of how we should respond to such bias from the perspective of justice and fairness. She is also an advocate of a right to explanation in the context of AI, based on explanation’s relevance in protecting the possibility of informed self-advocacy. Regarding the future of work, Vredenburgh’s research focuses on the impact of AI on the workplace. She draws on egalitarian theories of justice and argues that AI should be deployed so as to enable more equality at work, and she maintains that opaque AI contributes to working conditions which undermine workers’ autonomy while alienating them from their work.

Schedule

See attached PDF.

Organizing Committee

Florian Boge

Sara Mann

Chris Neuhäuser

Eva Schmidt