Posted: 20/06/17
The Ethics and Privacy Working Group of ADAPT recently hosted another international academic speaker as part of their ongoing series of free public lectures. U.S. philosopher Professor Shannon Vallor gave her lecture at the Trinity Long Room Hub on Monday June 19th where she spoke about the topic of her recent book Technology and the Virtues, discussing how increasingly rapid technological advances are reshaping human behaviours, practices, and character.
“There are huge ethical challenges posed by technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, and new media for our personal habits and our social practices. Think of automating judicial and medical decisions, or the problems of “fake news” and voter manipulation on social media. These are important issues that have enormous consequences and we should be thinking about them as a society,” said Professor Vallor.
Vallor’s discussion focused on the technomoral virtues that humans will need to cultivate in order to effectively interact with technologies that are quickly becoming more realistic and more impactful. She described these virtues as those qualities of moral and civic character which are most essential to human flourishing in the digital age.
Professor Shannon Vallor is the William J. Rewark, S.J. Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley, and Former President of the international Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT). Her research explores the philosophical territory defined by three intersecting domains: the philosophy and ethics of emerging technologies, the philosophy of science, and phenomenology. Her current research focuses on the impact of emerging technologies, particularly those involving automation, on the moral and intellectual habits, skills and virtues of human beings – our character.
The full lecture can now be viewed here.
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