Institute for Ethics in AI Fourth Annual Lecture
We are delighted to announce the fourth Annual Lecture of the Institute for Ethics in AI, featuring Professor Jessica Riskin from Stanford University. This event promises to be an engaging and thought-provoking event.
Annual Lecture:
- Date: 12 June 2025
- Time: 5 pm to 6:30 pm
- Location: Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub, Jesus College, Market Street, Oxford
Title:
The Onion Axiom: A History of the Outside-In Approach to Artificial (and Natural) Intelligence.
Abstract:
Ever since the founding moments of artificial intelligence in the mid-twentieth century, the principal researchers and writers on the subject – from Alan Turing, and Norbert Weiner to Rodney Brooks, Daniel Dennett, and many others – have adopted the behaviourist assumption that intelligence is nothing more than its appearance. That if you could peel away all the layers of the onion, at the core you would find nothing but emptiness: there’s no one in there. This lecture will explore the implications of the onion axiom for the history of AI and consider how this history might inform our efforts to grapple with the runaway technology today.
Panel Discussion (Day two):
- Date: 13 June 2025
- Time: 10 am to noon
- Location: Reuben College Lecture Theatre, Parks Road, Oxford
On the second day, join us for a 2-hour panel discussion where distinguished commentators from various disciplines will provide their perspectives on Professor Riskin's lecture. This will be followed by a Q&A session with the audience, offering a unique opportunity for in-depth dialogue and engagement.
The Institute for Ethics in AI will bring together world-leading philosophers and other experts in the humanities with the technical developers and users of AI in academia, business and government. The ethics and governance of AI is an exceptionally vibrant area of research at Oxford and the Institute is an opportunity to take a bold leap forward from this platform.
Every day brings more examples of the ethical challenges posed by AI, from face recognition to voter profiling, brain-machine interfaces to weaponised drones, and the ongoing discourse about how AI will impact employment on a global scale. This is urgent and important work that we intend to promote internationally as well as embedding in our own research and teaching here at Oxford.
Prof Jessica Riskin (Stanford University)
Jessica Riskin is Frances and Charles Field Professor of History at Stanford University where she teaches modern European history and the history of science. Her work examines the changing nature of scientific explanation, the relations of science, culture and politics, and the history of theories of life and mind. Her books include The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick (2016), which was awarded the 2021 Patrick Suppes Prize in the History of Science from the American Philosophical Society, and Science in the Age of Sensibility (2002), which received the American Historical Association's J. Russell Major prize for best book in French history. She is a regular contributor to various publications including Aeon, the Los Angeles Review of Books and the New York Review of Books.