Intelligent machines present us every day with urgent ethical challenges.

Is the facial recognition software used by an agency fair? When algorithms determine questions of justice, finance, health, and defense, are the decisions proportionate, equitable, transparent, and accountable? How do we harness this extraordinary technology to empower rather than oppress?

Despite increasingly sophisticated programming, artificial intelligences share none of our essential human characteristics – sentience, physical sensation, emotional responsiveness, versatile general intelligence.

Join author of As If Human: Ethics and Artificial Intelligence, Nigel Shadbolt, as he discusses with Charles Godfray, that if we assess AI decisions, our interactions with AI systems, and the actions they recommend, as if they came from a human being, we can avert a disastrous and amoral future. Nigel will go beyond the headlines about rampant robots to apply established moral principles to shaping our AI future. The new framework constitutes basic design principles for building moral machines.

This talk will be followed by a drinks reception and book sale and signing, all welcome.

This event is a collaboration between the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub programme at Jesus College and the Oxford Martin School