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This event is a Core Conversation at the 2018 Pittsburgh Humanities Festival. See the full Core Conversation lineup here.

As machines take on roles that were once the sole province of humans, how they impact our lives will depend on their ability to make moral decisions and navigate the human social world. This talk explores the nature and ubiquity of moral decision making, why it is a challenge for machines, and why some concerns about AI systems making “life and death” decisions are overblown.

Alex John London is the Clara L. West Professor of Ethics and Philosophy and Director of the Center for Ethics and Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Professor London is an elected Fellow of the Hastings Center whose work focuses on ethical and policy issues surrounding the development and deployment of novel technologies in medicine, biotechnology and artificial intelligence, methodological issues in theoretical and practical ethics, and cross-national issues of justice and fairness. His papers have appeared in Science, Mind, JAMA, The Lancet, PLoS Medicine, IEEE Intelligent Systems, and numerous other journals and collections. He has served as an ethics expert in consultations with numerous national and international organizations including U.S. National Institutes of Health, the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, the World Health Organization, the World Medical Association, and the World Bank.

A production of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and The Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University.