Keynote #1 Tuesday: Miriam Fernandez

TBA

Keynote #2 Wednesday: Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem

Title of talk: The Future of AI Ethics

Abstract: AI ethics has evolved through various phases over the past decade, and currently is at risk of simply disappearing off the radar in debates on ‘responsible AI’. I offer an interpretation of AI ethics to turn this situation around. 

Until about 2020, AI ethics was portrayed as a principle-driven ethics, which resulted in reams of documents containing abstract principles and little or no information on how to action these principles. The realisation around 2021, that, given their abstract nature, most of these documents were basically impactless, led to a kind of ‘technical turn’ in AI ethics, where the call was to move from the ‘what’ (principles) to the ‘how’ of AI ethics. This turn culminated, among other things, in the change in responsible AI narratives from ethics to safety, and from harm to risk. This is worrying for reasons to do with the so-called ‘AI power paradox’.

I argue that in fact, AI practitioners and policy-makers should be focused on the ‘why’ of AI ethics, which implies interpreting AI ethics as a dynamic reasoning system focused on building resilience against potential harm from engagement with AI technology, and therefore, ultimately focused on determining the conditions for establishing societies that can thrive in their engagement with AI technology, rather than being focused on regulating the technology. 

Bio: Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem is a philosopher of science and technology, an AI ethics policy advisor, and a machine ethics researcher. Currently, she is the Head of the Department of Philosophy, University of Pretoria, and leads the AI ethics group at the South African Centre for AI Research (CAIR). She is the current Chairperson of the UNESCO World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST). Emma joined the WEF’s Global Future Council on Autonomous Systems in 2025. She is a member of the Global Academic Network, Centre for AI and Digital Policy, Washington DC, and has worked on AI governance projects with the African Union Development Agency and the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights. She was a member of the UN Secretary General’s AI Advisory Body 2023-2024. Emma led the UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group that prepared the draft of the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI and contributed to development of its implementation instruments. Emma continues to work with UNESCO as a member of UNESCO’ AI Ethics without Borders and Women4EthicalAI initiatives. She is a member of various international AI ethics advisory boards ranging from academia (e.g., the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Programme Human Sciences), the inter-governmental sector (e.g., as expert advisory board member for the Global Commission on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain), to the private sector (e.g., SAP SE). She is an associate editor for the Journal of Science and Engineering Ethics, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of AI Law and Regulation and the Cambridge Forum on AI: Law and Governance.