Bitesize ethics summer 2025
The Ethics of AI: Key Questions for Our Changing World
Date: 25/06/2025
Tutor: Hazem Zohny
Description: As artificial intelligence systems become more capable and widespread, they raise a range of ethical questions that are increasingly relevant to everyday life. In this introductory session, we’ll explore how AI is reshaping work, decision-making, and human relationships—from concerns about bias and accountability to more neglected questions about the future of labour, emotional reliance on digital systems, and the role of AI in shaping moral and cultural life. We’ll also consider the broader implications of advanced AI development, including the possibility of large-scale risks. No prior knowledge of technology or ethics is required—just an interest in understanding the challenges and choices we face as intelligent systems become more integrated into society.
The Ethics of Human-AI relationships
Date: 02/07/2025
Tutor: Madeline G. Reinecke
Description: As AI systems increasingly take on social roles (e.g., in education, therapy, and even romance), we face new questions about the boundaries and legitimacy of human-AI relationships. Drawing on research in psychology, philosophy, and computer science, we’ll explore the psychological and ethical nuances that emerge in our relationships with machines—and consider how these relationships may reshape our expectations and attachments toward one another.
The Ethics of Privacy
Date: 09/07/2025
Tutor: Helena Ward
Description: TBC
All Play and No Work? AI and Existential Unemployment
Date: 16/07/2025
Tutor: Gary O'Brien
Description: Recent developments in large language models and image generation software raise the possibility that AI systems might one day replace humans in some of the intrinsically valuable work through which humans find meaning in their lives – work like scientific and philosophical research and the creation of art. If AIs can do this work more efficiently than humans, this might make human performance of these activities pointless. This represents a threat to human wellbeing which is distinct from, and harder to solve, than the automation of merely instrumentally valuable activities. In this talk we outline the problem, assess its seriousness, and investigate possible solutions. We consider the argument that AI could reduce our incentives to perform such work, and this might result in a great deskilling of humanity. Furthermore, even if humans continue to do such work, the mere existence of AI systems would undermine its meaning and value. We will critique Danaher’s (2019a) and Suits’ (1978) arguments that we should embrace the total automation of work and retreat to a ‘utopia of games’ and instead, argue that the threat to meaning and value posed by AI gives us a prima facie reason to slow down its development.
Teaching Ethics to Machines
Date: 23/07/2025
Tutor: Jen Semler
Description: AI is playing an increasing role in our lives. AI systems are becoming capable of performing a wide range of tasks, and developers hope to further integrate AI into our everyday lives at both the individual level and the societal level. Many of the tasks we might want AI to perform will be morally laden, from driving our cars, to deciding how resources are allocated, to sending our emails. It seems important, then, to equip AI systems with certain moral capacities. But this thought raises two key questions:
1. Can we teach ethics to machines?
2. Should we teach ethics to machines?
In this class, we will outline and discuss the challenges associated with building machines that can do ethics, as well as different ways in which we might integrate moral capacities into AI. Finally, we will consider arguments for and against the need to do so.
The Ethics of Smart Phones
Date: 30/07/2025
Tutor: Emma Dore-Horgan
Description: Smartphones have greatly changed our social, communications and information landscape. We not only use these devices for making and taking voice calls and sending electronic messages, but also as media players, as scheduling assistants and as handheld personal computers equipped with always-on internet access. Smartphones have also promoted new habits and preferences. Reports suggest, for instance, that people spend, on average, 4 hours and 37 minutes on their phone each day, with U.S. adults checking their phones once every four minutes.
The spectacular rise of smartphones and their effect on our social and communications landscape raises a host of ethical questions. Are we better or worse off because of smartphones? In what ways is our privacy threatened when we use smartphones and what should be done to protect our privacy? Do we have a moral right against the ‘hyperdistracting’ design features of social media and smartphones? What are our interactional duties and responsibilities in this phone-based world? This session will introduce and explore these complex issues.
Sustainable AI: Balancing Innovation with Environmental Responsibility
Date: 06/08/2025
Tutor: Sanja Scepanovic
Description: This talk defines what it means for AI to be environmentally and socially sustainable. It highlights the ecological footprint of today's generative and agent-based models—spanning energy use, CO₂ emissions, and water consumption for data center cooling. The talk also explores emerging mitigation strategies (e.g., efficient model architectures, green operations), and critically examines the tradeoffs between sustainability, model performance, and broader AI governance goals.
Automated Moral Reasoning
Date: 13/08/2025
Tutor: Vincent Conitzer
Description: TBC
The Shape of the Moral Landscape: Reflections on AI and Human Life
Date: 20/08/2025
Tutor: Hazem Zohny
Description: This final session draws together the questions raised throughout the series—about privacy, labour, relationships, moral agency, and the systems we’re building—into a broader reflection on what AI ethics is really asking us to consider. Rather than adding new issues, we’ll step back to examine how these concerns connect, where they leave us morally unsettled, and what they imply about the future we’re shaping. We’ll also explore how to think clearly about ethics in the face of radical uncertainty, complexity, and rapid technological change.
