Whether you believe self-driving cars will one day reach a full autonomy level or not, they still raise important ethical questions in terms of responsibility and privacy, as well as the particular vision they imply for the future of our societies. Some of these issues have been tackled by researchers, with most impactful works coming from the MIT Social Media Labs. In particular, the Moral Machine experiment succeeded in reaching a wide global audience.

However, the whole approach upon which this reflection is based, as well as the reasons for its success, are highly questionable and deeply incompatible with a moral investigation. By exposing the theoretical foundations behind this approach and explaining the extent to which it is tragically symptomatic of the way AI ethics is widely approached today, this talk aims to draw attention to the great danger represented by the theories of computational social choices for democracies.

About the speaker
Hubert Etienne is a philosopher specialised in AI ethics completing his PhD degree at Ecole Normale Supérieure and Sorbonne Universités.
He is an associate researcher at Facebook AI Research. He also teaches AI ethics to graduate students at ESCP Europe.
Personal website: www.hubert-etienne.com

Lunch will be provided from 12.15pm