Date: October 28th

Format: In-person
Duration: 09h30-12h30 and 14h00-17h00 (lunch included)
Location: INESC TEC, Auditorium A (INESC TEC, Campus FEUP, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias 4200-465 Porto, Portugal)

What You Will Learn

- Understand main ethical theories, AI ethics frameworks and principles
- Identify ethical issues in AI research and development projects
- Propose practical measures to support ethical reflection and responsible design of AI systems
- Analyse ethical tensions and trade-offs between competing ethics requirements

Who This Course Is For

- Early-career professors and researchers
- PhD students in computer science, artificial intelligence, and/or digital technologies

Programme

Module 1 – Foundations of AI Ethics (3h)
After a brief introduction on “what is ethics”, a practical warm-up exercise will involve group work on ethical dilemmas. Then a lecture will introduce main ethical theories and the principles of AI ethics.- Introduction to ethics and ethical reasoning.- Main ethical theories and frameworks.- Ethical dilemmas in digital technologies.- Ethical principles for trustworthy AI.

Module 2 –AI Ethics in Practice (3h)
Can one reconcile safety with privacy or human autonomy? What if the imperatives of explainable AI and non-discrimination clash? The AIOLIA workflow allows to identify and address such ethics tensions during AI system design. We will offer several training exercises based on real-life scenarios. To find engineering trade-offs, we introduce a portfolio of operational measures that implement AI ethics principles in practice. Researchers and engineers will be tasked with selecting and prioritizing measures by applying the portfolio in each scenario. The training will end with a general discussion highlighting many possible approaches to translating high-level AI ethics principles in practice.- Identification of ethical issues in AI-related projects.- Operational measures for implementing AI ethics in practice.- Technical and organizational approaches to AI governance.- Contextual trade-offs around ethics issues in AI system design.- Practical case studies and application exercises.

Meet the trainers

Alexei Grinbaum is senior research scientist at CEA-Saclay with a background in quantum information theory. He writes on ethical questions of emerging technologies, including robotics and AI. Grinbaum is the chair of the CEA Operational Digital Ethics Committee and member of the French National Digital Ethics Committee (CCNEN). He coordinates EU project AIOLIA on ethics of AI in human cognition and behaviour. He also contributes to other EU projects on AI ethics focusing on professional training for students and engineers, and serves as ethics expert to the European Commission. His books include "Mécanique des étreintes" (2014), "Les robots et le mal" (2019), and "Parole de machines" (2023).

Alexandra Prégent is a postdoc at CEA-Saclay working with Alexei Grinbaum on the AIOLIA project. Her work spans the fields of AI ethics, social epistemology, information ethics, and privacy, and mainly addresses issues in normative and practical ethics of new and emergent technologies, specifically the ones at play in human-computer interactions and in the development of emotional AI.

Laurynas Adomaitis is an AI Ethics and Governance Researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, specialising in bridging the gap between ethics and engineering practice. Previously, Laurynas was a postdoctoral researcher at CEA-Saclay, working in multiple EU Horizon projects. Laurynas has taught AI and Data Ethics at leading engineering faculties (SupOptique, CentraleSupélec) and business schools (emlyon) in Paris. He also has industry experience as an Innovation Manager at Nord Security, a cybersec unicorn from Vilnius. He defended his PhD in Philosophy cum laude at Scuola Normale Superiore in 2020.