21 January 2025
The Oxford-Berlin Workshop on AI Ethics 2025 is scheduled to take place in Oxford this January. The event will gather scholars and professionals for a comprehensive discourse on various topics. The workshop will be hosted by Dr Caroline Green (Oxford) and Dr Luise Muller (Freie Universität Berlin).
Each speaker will have 10 minutes to present their paper, followed by 20 minutes dedicated to questions and discussion.
We are delighted to share the biographies of some of the speakers for the workshop on 21 January:
Shira Ahissar (LSE) presenting Freedom of Information Choice in the Age of Recommender Systems at 10.30am
Shira Ahissar is a PhD student in LSE’s Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method. Prior to that, she completed a direct-to-MA degree at the Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Programme for Outstanding Students at Tel Aviv University. She completed courses in philosophy, literature, psychology, and computer science and an MA in philosophy. In her spare time, she also conducts research for Tachlith, a non-partisan NGO for policy-oriented research in Tel Aviv, and as a parliamentary researcher with the Labour Party. Her main areas of interest include democratic theory, specifically the epistemic aspects of democracy, digital ethics, and social choice theory.
Miriam Gorr (Tu Dresden) presenting The Moral Significance of AI Interests at 11am
Miriam Gorr is interested in the conditions under which humans have moral obligations towards AI systems. In her thesis, she defends an interest-based approach to moral status, according to which an AI system should be the direct object of moral concern if, and only if, it has interests. This account draws on influential views in animal and environmental ethics and makes them applicable to AI. She started her PhD on a Schaufler Kolleg scholarship at the TU Dresden and has recently joined the Centre for Philosophy and AI Research (PAIR) at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
Jennifer Munt presenting Trusting Myself and Strangers: A Normative Approach to Trust in AI at 1.30pm
Jennifer Munt is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the Australian National University. She works on the epistemology of trust and trustworthiness, with a focus on what it means for individuals, institutions, and AI to trust and be trustworthy. She holds a BA (Hons) in philosophy and political science and an MA (Research) in formal epistemology.
Timo Speith presenting Autonomy in AI-Driven Decision Support Systems at 2pm
Timo Speith is a fixed-term lecturer at the chair for Philosophy, Computer Science, and Artificial Intelligence at Bayreuth University, Germany. He studied philosophy (B.A.) and computer science (M.Sc.) at Saarland University, Germany, where he also did his doctoral studies in philosophy (Dr. Phil.). His current research focuses on the ethics of already available (non-sci-fi) AI systems, with a particular focus on explainable AI (XAI). Timo is also interested in ancient philosophy and the philosophy of science.
Manon Revel and Theophile Peignauld presenting AI-facilitated Collective Judgment at 2.30pm
Manon Revel is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Meta's Fundamental AI Research Lab and a Research Affiliate at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. She is a social choice theorist (an applied mathematician who models decision-making using probability and statistics) researching governance mechanisms designed to promote the robust representation of a plurality of perspectives in LLMs, recommender systems, and democratic institutions. She earned her PhD in Social and Engineering Systems and Statistics from MIT, with a thesis developing mathematical models of the interplay between diversity and expertise in representative governance. She led the research portfolio on AI and Democracy at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and was a Democracy Doctoral Fellow in political philosophy at the Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center for Democratic Innovations. Her professional experience includes roles at Palantir, the Responsible AI Institute the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Bell Labs.
Théophile Pénigaud is an associate research scholar at Yale University. A philosopher by training and a former student of the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, he specialises in political theory, with an emphasis on democratic theory and political epistemology. His research at Yale with Hélène Landemore focuses on democratic innovations and deliberative democracy.
Konstanze Moeller-Jansen presenting The Politics of Algorithmic Decision Systems at 3.15pm
Konstanze Möller-Jansen holds a B.Sc. in Business and Economics from the TU Dresden and Ca' Foscari Venezia. Subsequently, she studied Philosophy at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Freie Universität Berlin. She is a PhD researcher at the TU Dresden, Chair of Practical Philosophy and CeTI (Centre for Tactile Internet), where she is working on an interdisciplinary project called "Democratising the Internet of Skills." She is currently working on her dissertation, which focuses on the impact of algorithmic decision-making systems on the political freedom of individuals.
Read the full agenda of the 21 January workshop for further details.