About

Based at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), San Luis Obispo, the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group is a non-partisan organization focused on the risk, ethical, and social impact of emerging sciences and technologies.

Events

7 November 2022: We will be participating in an expert meeting of Schmidt Futures' AI2050 initiative in Portola Valley, CA.

23 February 2023: We will be participating in the US National Space Council's meeting of the Users' Advisory Group in Washington DC, followed by a meeting at the White House.

30-31 March 2023: We will be organizing an expert workshop on outer space cybersecurity at Stanford University.

20 April 2023: Prof. John Sullins (Sonoma State Univ.) will give a university lecture here on experiments with inner dialogue for social robotics, or "the conscience of the machine."

3 May 2023: We will be giving a talk on emerging threats at the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.

10 May 2023: We will be giving a talk on technology ethics for the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Executive Education in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

23 May 2023: We will be giving a talk on outer space ethics, incl. security concerns, at Vandenberg Space Force Base, CA.

13-14 July 2023: We will be organizing an expert workshop at Cal Poly on the ethical/social impacts of AI kitchens and robot cooks.

The Latest News

28 August 2023
Northwestern University
Ethical Framework Aims to Reduce Bias in Data-Driven Policing

21 August 2023
The Spoon
I Attended a Workshop on the Impact of AI on The Food World. Here’s What We Discussed

18 August 2023
Science
Cyberattack Shutters Major NSF-Funded Telescopes for More Than 2 Weeks

3 July 2023
The Spoon
Researchers at Cal Poly Are Studying The Social Impact of AI & Robotics on the World of Food

30 June 2023
War on the Rocks
Rise of the Machines or Just a Routine Test?

22 May 2023
Drone Wars
Report: "Cyborg Dawn? Human-Machine Fusion and the Future of Warfighting"

17 May 2023
Popular Science
Trump Shares AI-Altered Fake Clip of Anderson Cooper

5 May 2023
Prindle Post
The Garden of Simulated Delights

24 April 2023
Inside Edition
NYPD Announces the Addition of Security Robots and Robo-Dogs to Its Force, Testing the Ethics of Policing

9 April 2023
Brain in a Vat (podcast)
Dystopian Technology

30-31 March 2023
Hoover Institution
Outer Space Cybersecurity: Novel Scenarios
An expert workshop at Stanford

16 December 2022
The White House
Vice President Harris Announces Selections to the National Space Council’s Users Advisory Group

12 December 2022
Marketplace
Real-World RoboCop: The Ethics of Using Robots to Apply Lethal Force

8 December 2022
Prindle Post
Driving with the Machine: Self-Driving Cars, Responsibility, and Moral Luck

3 October 2022
Cal Poly
Cal Poly Wins $700,000 Federal Grant to Study the Social Impacts of AI Kitchens and Robot Cooks

12 September 2022
Cal Poly
Cal Poly Wins First-Ever Grant on Space Cybersecurity from US National Science Foundation

8 September 2022
The Prindle Post
Were Parts of Your Mind Made in a Factory?

15 July 2022
Northwestern University
CASMI Hosts Workshop on Data-Driven Policing

7 July 2022
United Nations, Office of Disarmament Affairs
Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Education: 10th Biennial Report of the Secretary General

1 July 2022
CNN
AI Made These Stunning Images. Here's Why Experts Are Worried

More news here.

Selected Publications

•   Paper: Deepfake Pornography and the Ethics of Non-Veridical Representations, in Philosophy & Technology

•   Report: A Machine Learning Evaluation Framework for Place-based Algorithmic Patrol Management

•   Report: Evaluating Metrics for Impact Quantification

•   Report: AI-Assisted Authorship: How to Assign Credit in Synthetic Scholarship

•   Chapter: Does Just War Theory Extend to the Space Frontier?, in Military Space Ethics

•   Paper: Rule by Automation: How Automated Decision Systems Promote Freedom and Equality, in Moral Philosophy and Politics

•   Chapter: Outer Space as a New Frontier for Technology Ethics, in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology

•   Paper: Big Brother Goes to School: Best Practices for Campus Surveillance Technologies During the COVID-19 Pandemic, in Techné (Society of Philosophy and Technology)

•   Report: Artificial Intelligence Ethics and Predictive Policing: A Roadmap for Research, funded by the US National Science Foundation

•   Book: Robot Ethics 2.0: From Autonomous Cars to Artificial Intelligence, with Oxford University Press

•   Report: UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) Traffic Management: Recommendations for Seamless Integration, with WhiteFox Defense Technologies

•   Report: Ethics of Hacking Back: 6 Arguments from Armed Conflict to Zombies, funded by the US National Science Foundation

•   Report: Autonomous Vehicles, Ethics & Law: Toward an Overlapping Consensus, with New America Foundation

•   Chapter: Why Ethics Matter for Autonomous Cars, in a Daimler and Benz Foundation book

•   Report: Enhanced Warfighters: Ethics, Risk, and Policy, funded by The Greenwall Foundation

•   Book: Robot Ethics: The Social and Ethical Implications of Robotics, with MIT Press

•   Book: What Is Nanotechnology and Why Does It Matter?: From Science to Ethics, with Wiley-Blackwell

•   Report: Ethics of Human Enhancement: 25 Questions & Answers, funded by the US National Science Foundation

•   Report: Autonomous Military Robotics: Risk, Ethics, and Design, funded by the US Office of Naval Research

More publications here.