Engaging Scientists in Ethics
Pelumi Obasaju is a neuroscience PhD candidate with the Midlands Integrative Biosciences Training Partnership (MIBTP). This summer from July-September, she spent three months with the Human Brain Project (HBP) Ethics Support Team at De Montfort University (Leicester, UK) as part of a non-laboratory work experience element of training known as PIPS – Professional Internships for…
100+ Brilliant Women in AI & Ethics
Pelumi Obasaju At Oxford University’s first women’s college, Lady Margaret Hall, some of the most eminent women working in AI ethics gathered from all over the world. September 16th 2019 saw the materialisation of the first ‘100+ Brilliant Women in AI & Ethics’ conference; inspired by a list put together by Mia Dand in autumn…
Dynamics of interdisciplinary and inter-publics engagements
The Researcher Awareness team of the Human Brain Project (HBP) convened a session titled ‘Dynamics of interdisciplinary and inter-publics engagements’ at the 2019 Science in Public conference which took place on 10-12 July in Manchester, UK. The theme for this year’s interdisciplinary conference was ‘the global and the local’. The aim was to increase engagement…
Ethics Dialogues summer reading list
It’s that time of year again when many of us are taking time off for summer holidays and drawing up our summer reading lists. At Ethics Dialogues we have started to put together our summer reading list covering some of the areas we are currently busy with including brain research initiatives, data governance and ethics…
Building Trustworthy AI
‘How to build trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI)’ was an overarching question for the first European AI Alliance Assembly that took place in Brussels on 26th June 2019. The highlights of the event were the launch of the piloting process of Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI and presentation of the Policy and Investment Recommendations for Trustworthy…
Preparing for Global Public Engagement with Neuroethics
Why and how should we engage the public with neuroscience? What are the common global questions for the public engagement in neuroethics and what are national and regional differences? These were some of the questions addressed at the Global Neuroethics engagement workshop that took place 19-21 May in Uppsala, Sweden. This workshop brought together more…
The underdog in the AI ethical and legal debate: human autonomy
Rowena Rodrigues and Anaïs Rességuier, Trilateral Research Advances in AI will have serious and lasting consequences for human autonomy. Does the increasing autonomy of machines necessarily imply a decreasing human autonomy? The human and the ‘system’ In a Pew Research Center report on “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humans” (2018), Thomas Schneider, head of…
Beyond box-ticking: towards ethics dialogues
‘Beyond Research Ethics: Dialogues in Neuro-ICT Research’ is the title of a recent article (Stahl et al 2019) published by the members of Ethics Support team of the Human Brain Project (HBP). This article outlines a dialogical approach that the Ethics Support team applies in its work in the HBP. This approach offers an alternative…
Explainability and Counterfactuals: Algorithmic Decisions and the Individual
Tonii Leach How do AI algorithms make decisions? Why might we need to understand this, and to what extent do we need to understand this? How can we conceptualise ‘explainable’ AI? And when we ask for an explanation, what is it that we really want to know? On the 27th of February Dr Brent Mittelstadt…
Responsible Dual Use in Neuroscience and Neurotechnology
Neurotechnology as many other powerful technologies can potentially be ‘dual use’ technology, namely it can be used for beneficial as well as harmful purposes. How can we ensure that neuroscience and technology developed for civilian applications is not misused towards malicious ends? What can researchers, engineers, policy-makers and other stakeholders do to safeguard responsible use…