UPCOMING EVENTS

Ethics for AIs and for the Rest of Us

Tuesday, November 11th, 7:00PM-9:00PM CST

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BIO:
Our speaker this month is Dr. Benjamin Kuipers. Benjamin Kuipers is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan. He was previously an endowed Professor in Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, where he served as Department Chair. He received his B.A. from Swarthmore College, his Ph.D. from MIT, and he is a Fellow of AAAI, IEEE, and AAAS. His research in artificial intelligence and robotics has focused on the representation, learning, and use of foundational domains of knowledge, including knowledge of space, dynamical change, objects, and actions. He is currently investigating ethics as a foundational domain of knowledge for robots and other AIs that may act as members of human society.

TALK SUMMARY:
We worry about existential threats to our society, and perhaps to humanity as a whole, during these times of turbulent technological and political change. Can we address these concerns through a deeper understanding of ethics, treating it as a foundational domain of commonsense knowledge and drawing on the computational tools that the field of AI has developed?

Ethics can be viewed as a body of knowledge, belonging to a specific society, that the society uses to teach its individual members how to behave, to help the society survive and thrive. In this view, ethical knowledge is part of the “genotype” for societal evolution, where the interactions among individuals are the “phenotypes” that contribute to positive or negative evolutionary outcomes for the society.

We consider, first, how ethical principles help individuals respond to moral dilemmas, and how disturbing outcomes should alert agents to think outside of a particular box. Second, we consider at the macro-scale how ethics can contribute to the success of a society, and how ethical failure can contribute to its downfall.

At the end, we consider that the survival and thriving of our society depends on the ethical behavior of other types of agents, as well as of humans and AIs.

HOW TO ATTEND:
Capital Factory is located at 701 Brazos Street, on the 1st floor of the Omni Hotel. We are in the Apollo meeting room. To locate Apollo, locate Capital Factory's main event room off the Omni lobby, Voltron, Suite 150. Once inside, there should be someone at the desk to direct you to our meetup, but, if no one is there, proceed to the left past the kitchen and down the hallway, Apollo is right around the corner. You may also message us on this event or message us at our Bluesky account, @effaustin@bsky.social, our Mastodon account, @effaustin@mastodon.social, or our Twitter account, @EFFaustin, if you are having trouble finding us. Please note that the room will be locked and EFF-Austin will not have access until 10-15 minutes before 7:00pm CST. We will try to have someone in the Omni lobby earlier than that in front of the Voltron doors to greet you if you arrive early, but otherwise just wait in the lobby until you are let in.

Talk will be livestreamed at both our Youtube channel (

, direct feed of the Zoom room) and at Capital Factory's Youtube channel (

, feed of the physical room at Capital Factory) and will later be archived at

. Questions for the speaker from virtual attendees may be submitted via the Youtube livestream chat, our Bluesky account, @effaustin@bsky.social, our Mastodon account, @effaustin@mastodon.social, or our Twitter account, @EFFaustin.

Parking for the Omni Garage can be validated at the Capital Factory front desk inside room Voltron, Suite 150, reducing the cost to $8. If no one is at the desk, check with EFF-Austin meetup organizers, we can provide you with one. Attendees must park after 5pm and leave before 10pm to receive the discount, otherwise they will be charged full price, which is $3.25 for every 30 minutes. Affordable street park is also available nearby. Details: https://capitalfactory.com/parking/

AFTER PARTY:
Join us for the discussion from 7:00PM-9:00PM, followed by drinks and camaraderie from 9:00PM-10:00PM in the Omni Hotel lobby.

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