INSTITUTE FOR ETHICS IN AI - Key Persons
Bryce Goodman is affiliated with the Institute, the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities.
He has served as Chief Strategist for AI at the United States Department of Defense's Innovation Unit, Senior Contributing Scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund and Partner at The Cantellus Group. He is a graduate of Deep Springs College, the University of Oxford and Singularity University.
Research interests:
Bryce's research broadly seeks to understand, from a philosophical and policy perspective, what it is that AI can / should do, what it cannot / should not do, and how to tell the difference. He also develops AI for interspecies communication, ocean conservation and humanitarian assistance / disaster response. Other interests include Mahayana Buddhism, ethics of disinformation and the writings of John Gray.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor in Philosophy
- Postdoctoral Research Fellows
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow
David Storrs-Fox is an Early Career Research Fellow at the Institute and a Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College. He is also a Lecturer in Philosophy at St Catherine's College and a Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in Technology, Hamburg University of Technology.
David received his PhD in Philosophy from New York University, where he also worked as a Lecturer. He was previously at Oxford, where he received a BPhil in Philosophy and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Before coming to the Institute he was a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Research Interests:
David works in moral philosophy, metaphysics and the philosophy of action. The central idea of his recent work is that there is nothing whatsoever that agents in our world are infallibly able to do, no realm of actions insulated from the risk of failure. He argues that this idea has important ethical implications. His current research concerns the ethics of groups that are composed of both human and AI agents, with a focus on the abilities such groups have and the moral responsibility they might bear.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of AI and Society
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Job Titles:
- Finance
- Head of Administration
Head of Administration and Finance - Dr Rachael Sanders - in the Faculty of Philosophy, heads up the Faculty's professional services team and has oversight of all administrative activities within the wider Faculty.
Elise joined the Institute in October 2021 as a DPhil candidate in Population Health, a Clarendon Scholar, and a recipient of the Baillie Gifford-Institute for Ethics in AI Scholarship. She is also affiliated with Oxford's Ethox Centre and Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities.
Elise holds a Master of Public Administration with a concentration in digitalisation and big data from the Hertie School, a Master of Science with Distinction in Health and International Development from the London School of Economics, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Sociology from Stanford University. Her professional background spans the non-profit, public health, and private (think tank, consulting) sectors.
Research interests:
Elise's research centres around the societal impacts, policy implications, and fundamental rights challenges of emerging technologies within global health-including biometrics, artificial intelligence, mHealth applications, and distributed ledger technology. She will be continuing this work at Oxford where she will be studying the ethics of infectious disease surveillance technologies under the supervision of Prof. Nina Hallowell, Dr. Stephanie Johnson, and Dr. Federica Lucivero.
Imogen Rivers is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Ethics in AI and a David Karmel Scholar at Gray's Inn.
During the BPhil in Philosophy (Distinction, 2021-2023, St Cross College), which she completed under the auspices of the Ertegun Graduate Scholarship Programme, she specialised in AI ethics and legal philosophy (Supervisor: John Tasioulas). Prior to that, she completed the Master of Physics and Philosophy degree (First Class, 2017-2021, Balliol College) with a thesis on causation and responsibility in collective wrongdoing cases (Supervisor: Alex Kaiserman).
Her research on AI ethics in the law spans questions of ethics (e.g., how can we ensure that AI decision-making is accurate and fair?), responsibility (e.g., how should we allocate responsibility under international humanitarian law for wrongful harms caused by lethal autonomous weapons?) and rights (e.g., should certain autonomous robots have legal rights?). During the DPhil in Philosophy (2023-2025, St John's College), she will also be completing the Graduate Diploma in Law (2023-2025, Oxford Brookes) with a research focus studying the impacts of AI technology on IP law. In her free time, she enjoys running, birdwatching and gardening.
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Events Manager - Paul Evans - key contact for event logistics - aiethicsevents@philosophy.ox.ac.uk
Job Titles:
- Head of Technical AI Engagement at the Institute for Ethics
Vincent Conitzer is Head of Technical AI Engagement at the Institute for Ethics in AI, and Professor of Computer Science and Philosophy, at the University of Oxford. He is also Professor of Computer Science (with affiliate/courtesy appointments in Machine Learning, Philosophy, and the Tepper School of Business) at Carnegie Mellon University, where he directs the Foundations of Cooperative AI Lab (FOCAL). Previous to joining CMU, he was the Kimberly J. Jenkins Distinguished University Professor of New Technologies and Professor of Computer Science, Professor of Economics, and Professor of Philosophy at Duke University.
Conitzer has received the 2021 ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award, the Social Choice and Welfare Prize, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award, and an honorable mention for the ACM dissertation award. He has also been named a Guggenheim Fellow, a Sloan Fellow, a Kavli Fellow, a Bass Fellow, an ACM Fellow, a AAAI Fellow, and one of AI's Ten to Watch.
Research interests:
Much of Conitzer's work has focused on AI and game theory, for example designing algorithms for the optimal strategic placement of defensive resources. More recently, he has started to work on AI and ethics: how should we determine the objectives that AI systems pursue, when these objectives have complex effects on various stakeholders?