The Ethics of A.I. Companions

AI companions have become increasingly popular. A recent study estimates that around 70% of teens in the US has tried an AI companions in the past year. But is their impact on our lives overall positive? Can they provide true friendship or fulfill any of our social needs? With their popularity on the rise, what are the social and political implications they carry?

Come discuss these and other questions with us at the Centre for Ethics. Registration is free and everyone is welcome! Speakers Yiran Hua, Michael Inzlicht and Paul Bloom will discuss ethical questions surrounding AI companions.

About the Speakers:

Paul Bloom, Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto

• Paul Bloom studies how children and adults make sense of the world, with special focus on pleasure, morality, religion, fiction, and art. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. He is past-president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and co-editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He has written for scientific journals such as Nature and Science, and for popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly. He is the author of seven books, including his latest Psych: The Story of the Human Mind.

Yiran Hua, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Philosophy, Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto

• Yiran works on ethics and aesthetics. Before coming to Toronto, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good. She received her doctorate from Brown University, and her BA from UNC-Chapel Hill. When doing philosophy, Yiran thinks about intimacy, love and beauty, and social/political relationships. She also has research interests in tech ethics, feminist philosophy, and Chinese philosophy. When not doing philosophy, Yiran is a creative writer.

Michael Inzlicht, Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto

• Professor Inzlicht uses methods borrowed from social psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience to understand the nature of the mental effort we use to reach our goals and the nature of leisure activities we do for fun. His research includes projects on self-control, motivation, and empathy (work) as well as projects on digital device use, social media, and recreational cannabis use (play). His lab is committed to open and transparent science, which includes publicly posting data and materials, often preregistering studies, and regularly running replication studies.

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This is a panel discussion with audience Q&A presented by the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics that is free to attend and open to the public. Please register in advance here to attend.

About the Centre for Ethics (http://ethics.utoronto.ca):

The Centre for Ethics is an interdisciplinary centre aimed at advancing research and teaching in the field of ethics, broadly defined. The Centre seeks to bring together the theoretical and practical knowledge of diverse scholars, students, public servants and social leaders in order to increase understanding of the ethical dimensions of individual, social, and political life.

In pursuit of its interdisciplinary mission, the Centre fosters lines of inquiry such as (1) foundations of ethics, which encompasses the history of ethics and core concepts in the philosophical study of ethics; (2) ethics in action, which relates theory to practice in key domains of social life, including bioethics, business ethics, and ethics in the public sphere; and (3) ethics in translation, which draws upon the rich multiculturalism of the City of Toronto and addresses the ethics of multicultural societies, ethical discourse across religious and cultural boundaries, and the ethics of international society.

The Ethics of A.I. Lab at the Centre For Ethics recently appeared on a list of 10 organizations leading the way in ethical A.I.: https://ocean.sagepub.com/blog/10-organizations-leading-the-way-in-ethical-ai