God, Golem, and Gadget Worshippers: Meaning of Life in the Digital Age
Prof. Dr. Mathias Risse (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA)
About the lecture
Meaning of life and technology are not often discussed together. But the observation that meaning is concerned with one’s place in the world creates an instant (if perhaps surprising) connection to technology. After all, one main theme in the philosophy of technology is that we always relate to the world in technologically mediated ways. But that also means technology might play the wrong kind of role in what meaning a person’s life has, especially in digital lifeworlds with the dominant role that technology plays there. This talk explores what it means for technology to play this wrong kind of role in our quest for significance, and how to counterbalance it.
About the speaker
Mathias Risse is Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy and Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. His work primarily addresses questions of global justice ranging from human rights, inequality, taxation, trade and immigration to climate change, obligations to future generations and the future of technology, especially also the impact of artificial intelligence on a range of normative issues.
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This semester's edition of Taming the Machines sheds ligth on the ethical, political, legal, and societal dimensions of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
With AI technologies applied in markets, industry, law enforcement, but also office spaces, classrooms, and homes, it has become undoubtable that AI successfully seeped into the centres of our lifeworld. Amidst this sprawling digitisation, we might want to hit the pause button and take stock: to reflect on future AI, and accordingly upon how the foundations of human life – in all of its stages and all of its contexts – are in the process of being dramatically altered.
Despite an observable trend of AI further entrenching past injustices, endangering civil and human rights, and aggravating environmental and ecological challenges, the course of events also entails huge potentials. It might appear as a rare stroke of fortune that we are aware of the unfolding of a paradigm shift around us, leaving us with the possibility for steering our digital society in the direction of a better world.
Hence, this lecture series brings together perspectives from ethics, politics, law, geography, and media studies to assess the potential for preserving and developing human values in the design, dissemination, and application of AI technologies. How does AI challenge our most fundamental social, political, and economic institutions? How can we bolster (or even improve) them in times of technological disruption? What regulations are needed to render AI environments fairer and more transparent? What needs to be done to make them more sustainable? In what sense could (and even should) we hold AI accountable?
To explore these and other related questions, this public lecture series invites distinguished international researchers to present and discuss their work. To get the latest updates and details how to attend the lectures, please visit http://uhh.de/inf-eit.
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