AI and Moral Intelligence: Preserving Humane Thinking in a Machine Age

In the coming decades, the spread of commercially viable artificial intelligence is projected to transform virtually every sociotechnical system, from finance and transportation to healthcare and warfare. Less often discussed is the growing impact of AI on human practices of self-cultivation, those critical to the development of intellectual and moral virtues. The art of moral self-cultivation is as old as human history and is one of the few truly unique capacities of our species. Today this humane art has largely receded from the modern mind, with increasingly devastating consequences on local and planetary scales. Reclaiming it may be essential to averting catastrophe for our species, and many others. How will AI impact this endangered art? What uses of AI risk impeding or denaturing our practices of moral cultivation? What uses of AI could amplify and sustain our moral intelligence? Which is a better goal for ethical AI: machines that are humane? Or machines that are humanizing?

This lecture will be delivered by Shannon Vallor who is a Regis and Dianne McKenna Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Santa Clara University.

No registration is required.

This event is part of the AI & Society Seminar Series and is co-sponsored by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies and CAIDA: UBC ICICS Centre for Artificial Intelligence Decision-making and Action.