AI and decision-making: tools, hybrids, and collectives

On behalf of the Chair of Applied Ethics at RWTH Aachen, we invite abstract submissions for participation in the workshop “AI and decision-making: tools, hybrids, and collectives”, funded by the German Federal Ministry Research, Technology and Space. 

The workshop is scheduled for 12-13th June, 2026 and will take place at RWTH Aachen University. It aims to be a discussion-focused event seeking to discuss the relationship between so-called AI technologies and our individual and especially our collective decision-making. Confirmed speakers include Prof. Karl de Fine Licht (Gothenburg, Sweden), Prof. Tobias Schlicht (Bochum, Germany), Prof. Pekka Mäkelä (Helsinki, Finland). Details on the topic can be found in the abstract below. 

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Abstract: 

Many of the “AI” technologies currently impacting our shared world have significant consequences for our individual and collective decision-making. This can be through permitting cognitive offloading, nudging or otherwise being designed to optimize or alter our choices. LLMs are used pervasively by those needing to make decisions about everything from paint colours to public policy, smart technologies are incorporated into medical devices to assist in maintaining healthy habits and treatment regimes, machine-learning enabled systems play a role in identifying and selecting targets for active militaries, and sorting algorithms help shape the choice architecture of our digital lives. How then should we understand the dynamics of these impacts on our individual and collective decision-making? Should we understand these technologies as tools, as partners or as co-constituents of decision-making hybrids or collectives? When might they manipulate us, lead us stray, or enhance our decision-making? And what sort of relationship to us as decision-makers should these technologies have, and we to them? These are the central animating questions of this workshop, each encompassing a vast array of important topics. These include, among others: 

1. What are the advantages and limits of “AI”-enabled enhancement of decision-making? 
2. Whether, and how, making decisions using or collaboratively with these technologies affects our reasoning process and skills? 
3. Do the impacts of “AI” on decision-making, especially in realms like public policy, warfare or healthcare require us to change how we think about the role of trust and trustworthiness within these domains, both toward and about these technologies but also the decisions that originate from our interactions with them. 
4. Who is responsible for a decision that has been impacted or collaboratively arrived at with “AI”? 
5. Is there an important difference when considering the impacts of “AI” on collective decisions rather than individual ones? 

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This workshop aims to engage with these intertwined topics through a wide range of conceptual tools and angles. To this end, we invite submissions of abstracts of up to 300 words that should be accompanied by a title, name of the submitter, institutional affiliation, and contact information. This should be sent as a .pdf to [email protected] by the deadline of April, 10th.