Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence

Recent striking success in Artificial Intelligence have made the public believe that in a not so far future machines could be even more intelligent than human beings.

The actual and possible developments of Artificial Intelligence open up a series of striking, deep and pressing questions such as:
– Can a computer ever think in the way a human being does?
– Can a computer have a mind and conscious experiences, such as thoughts, desires, and emotions?
– What is artificial intelligence? Is it the same as human intelligence? Are they even comparable or are they something essentially different?
– Can a machine be morally responsible for its actions? Can a machine be good or evil? What other moral considerations are related to AI?

With the goal of enhancing their scientific and educational collaborations around those important topics, the Swiss AI Lab IDSIA USI-SUPSI and the USI Master in Philosophy Program are organising in Lugano on May 21-22 2021 an international meeting on current trends and perspectives in the Philosophy of AI.

Invited speakers include:
Hajo Greif (Warsaw University of Technology)
Jobst Landgrebe (Cognotekt GmbH, Cologne)
Vincent C. Müller (Eindhoven University of Technology & Alan Turing Institute)
J. Kevin O’Regan (CNRS & Institut Paris Descartes de Neurosciences et Cognition)
Barry Smith (University at Buffalo)
Karina Vold (University of Toronto)
Carlos Zednik (Eindhoven University of Technology)

Details about the program will be available here.

In addition to the invited speakers, other researchers in the field, including students, are invited to present the results of their work. For further details see here.
More broadly, the meeting aims at bringing together philosophers, computer scientists, engineers but also people from outside academia, and to provide a venue for discussing the philosophical, ethical and societal implications of the recent technological advances in AI.

The meeting is organised by Damiano Costa (ISFI / Master in Philosophy-USI),  Alessandro Facchini (IDSIA USI-SUPSI) and Barry Smith  (University at Buffalo).

Attendance is free. There is no compulsory registration; however, for organisational reasons, for those who wish to attend the meeting should write to alessandro.facchini@idsia.ch, who can also answer any further questions.