Time
Monday, November 24, 16:00–16:30
Title
The AI Mirror: Through the Looking Glass
Abstract
This talk will explore the increasingly evident potential of LLM-based chatbots to damage human cognitive and psychological integrity, resulting in harms ranging from cognitive deskilling to delusions, psychological breakdowns and suicides. The talk will examine the LLM mechanisms driving these phenomena and their likely causes, as well as the insufficiency of the technical means AI companies have proposed to address them. I will argue that stronger medicine is needed, in order to ensure that today’s AI tools do not result in our cognitive and psychological dispossession.
About Shannon
Prof. Shannon Vallor is the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) at the University of Edinburgh, where she is also appointed in Philosophy. She is Director of the Centre for Technomoral Futures in EFI, and co-Director of the BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) programme, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Professor Vallor’s research explores how new technologies, especially AI, robotics, and data science, reshape human moral character, habits, and practices. Her work includes advising policymakers and industry on the ethical design and use of AI. She is a standing member of the One Hundred Year Study of Artificial Intelligence (AI100) and a member of the Oversight Board of the Ada Lovelace Institute. Professor Vallor received the 2015 World Technology Award in Ethics from the World Technology Network and the 2022 Covey Award from the International Association of Computing and Philosophy. She is a former Visiting Researcher and AI Ethicist at Google. In addition to her many articles and published educational modules on the ethics of data, robotics, and artificial intelligence, she is the author of the book Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting (Oxford University Press, 2016) and The AI Mirror: Reclaiming Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking (Oxford University Press, 2024).