Recently, a number of studies have shown that chatbots are outperforming healthcare professionals when it comes to empathy (Ayers et al., 2023; Lenharo, 2024). This is remarkable for at least two reasons. First, insofar as empathy is broadly recognized as a core value of good healthcare (Kim et al., 2004). Second, because empathy has typically been considered an essentially human quality, whereby the promise of technology in healthcare, including most recently AI, has been to free up healthcare professionals to do what they are good at: providing empathetic care (Topol, 2019).

Psychiatry includes the assessment and diagnosis of illness and disorder within a largely interpersonal communicative structure involving physicians and patients. In such contexts, AI can help to spot patterns and generate predictions, e.g. using ‘big data’ analysis via statistical learning-based models. In these ways, AI can help to automate more routine steps, improve efficiency, mitigate clinician bias, offer predictive potential, including through analysis of neuroscientific data.

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, to whom it occurred to say this is mine, and found people sufficiently simple to believe him was the true founder of civil society.” This iconic saying of Jean-Jacques Rousseau does not address the foundation of civil society as a celebrated event in the speculative history of the humankind. For Rousseau, it is rather a catastrophic turn in that it has sown the seeds of inequality among human beings. The question whether the commons that came to be partitioned among humans led to a better societal life remains unresolved.

This paper introduces a novel theoretical approach to understanding artefact functions by advocating for a "normative functions" account, inspired by the literature on conceptual functions in philosophy. Normative functions of concepts are, roughly, things that they allow us to do that matter normatively (for example, things in virtue of which we have normative reasons to have these concepts).

If the challenges AI introduces to the classroom are to be addressed adequately, and educational care deployed effectively in the process, a considerable burden of responsibility and additional work is likely to be placed upon the teachers. However, teachers are already overburdened in their professional capacities (Stacey et al. 2023); adding to their workload could have negative effect not only on their performance but also on the performance of the whole educational system (Creagh et al. 2023). What is more, AI might come to disrupt education not only in terms of workplace efficiency.

Anxiety has become a defining feature of our time. Rapid technological change, growing migration flows, war, and pandemics are all feeding into a growing feeling of uncertainty, insecurity, and powerlessness. This paper investigates a new but rapidly spreading form of anxiety: ecological anxiety. 

In the field of digital ethics, the question has been asked regularly whether digital ethics is unique in the kinds of ethical issues it raises, moral principles it requires or methods or approaches it is in need of. A debate on this issue took place between 1985 and 2002, and has been titled the uniqueness debate within digital ethics (or computer ethics, at the time). Various authors, such as Deborah Jpohnson, Walter Maner, Krystyna Gorniak-Kocikowska and Luciano Floridi, made arguments in favor of uniqueness.

This presentation is situated within the MyDigiTwin (MDT) consortium, a research project aiming to create a Digital Twin (DT), where Dutch citizens, including patients, can compare their health data (e.g., heart rate, weight, exercise) to existing big datasets. The platform will implement Artificial Intelligence (AI) models to predict a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD).

“Youper: an empathetic, safe, and clinically validated chatbot for mental healthcare.” (Youper, n.d.) This slogan is used for the marketing campaign of therapy bot Youper, a chatbot that mimics psychotherapy, or at least uses methods of therapeutic practices to improve users’ mental health (Fulmer et al., 2018). Other examples are Woebot (Woebot, n.d.) and Wysa (Wysa, n.d.). Most therapy bots are based on the theory and practice of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Marketing campaigns of these therapy bots mention that they have “empathy”.

Bioethics traditionally focuses on normative questions related to medical practice. The inquiry involves the moral permissibility of using new technologies for medical purpose and also existing medical technologies for non-medical purpose. While these inquiries probe into the ethical issues raised by the medical technologies, they take a rather reactive attitude towards the application of technologies.

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have demonstrated significant promise in the field of medicine. From disease diagnosis to personalized treatment plans, AI has the potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry. However, as with any emerging technology, there are questions about how to quantify the benefits and trade-offs of AI in medicine. One of the biggest challenges in assessing the benefits of AI in medicine is determining how to measure “uncertainty”. Biomedical and computer engineering define and measure uncertainty differently.

This paper proposes a new normative framework to think about Big Tech reform. Focusing on the case of digital communication, I argue that rethinking the corporate purpose of social media companies is a distinctive entry point to the debate on how to render the powers of tech corporations democratically legitimate. I contend that we need to strive for a reform that redefines the corporate purpose of social media companies. In this view, their purpose should be to create and maintain a free, egalitarian, and democratic public sphere rather than profit seeking.

Technological artefacts have become “world objects” – they affect the world as a whole. This becomes increasingly evident considering the imprint of their development and use on our global natural environment. The growing awareness of the entanglement of humans, their practices, and their technological artefacts with their natural environments goes along with growing uncertainty. The rising number of experiences with the catastrophic consequences of climate change and environmental crises are increasingly shaking many people’s belief in a stable course of life and of the future.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (e.g., machine learning, generative AI) have led to an increased interest in its application in educational settings. AI companies hope to revolutionise teaching and learning by tailoring material to the individual needs of students, automating parts of teachers’ jobs, or analyse educational data to optimise the delivery of content. The main goal of this presentation is to consider the role of imaginaries in shaping concrete practices and understandings of educational AI. 

The theme of technological breakdown, error, failure, or malfunction has, in a certain way, always been present in the history of the philosophy of technology. From Heidegger’s hammer to contemporary discussion of algorithmic bias, technological failure has been seen as revealing of something, as a means to obtain knowledge about technology or the world. For example, Verbeek (2004, p.

Large language models utilized for basic talk therapy, often referred to as mental health chatbots, are frequently personalized based on user interactions or other input. While personalization could improve the patient’s experience, it could also pose a risk to their autonomy through, for example, the inappropriate use of personalized nudges.

In this paper, I draw on pragmatist philosophy to assess the impact of educational AI (AIED) on the democratic dimension of education. AIED is expected to facilitate teaching and learning by personalizing content to the needs of students, automating parts of teachers’ jobs, and monitoring students’ performance and behavior, among others. However, I argue that we should pay close attention to AIED’s impact on the social development of students and the civic values and attitudes it is going to promote.

A high-level virtue ethics approach to situations of deep uncertainty would complement and/or contrast with consequentialist and deontological approaches to uncertainty. Such an account would satisfy the following criteria: (1) it provides normative guidance that allows individuals and societies to cope with deep uncertainty ethically and sustainably in the presence of strong emotions of fear, apprehension, and anxiety; (2) it allows for responsiveness to unexpected situations (“black swans” (Taleb 2007)); and (3) it is realistically accessible to ordinary people. 

Digital platforms increasingly mediate social, economic, and other forms of human interactions, which puts them in a position to influence the power dynamics and moral values that shape these interactions. This paper focuses on the platform and sharing economy – an economic model, in which digital platforms facilitate social and economic interactions. Its two central models, mainstream and cooperative platforms, offer similar applications and services. However, they fundamentally differ in aspects such as ownership and governance structures, economic models, and technical designs.

This contribution will explore the methodological significance of value experiences for the ethics of human interactions with nature. I begin by detailing how environmentally disruptive technologies often pose “techno-environmental dilemmas.” For example, offshore windfarms enable us to mitigate global environmental harm. Simultaneously, they disrupt the environments in which they are built, negatively impacting human and nonhuman lives. How should we decide what to do in the face of these environmental dilemmas?

This contribution will provide a novel method for value deliberation on technologies, grounded in art and emotions. Philosophy tends to see itself as a rational discipline, emphasizing logical argumentation and seeing emotions as belonging to the realm of irrationality and subjectivity. This view of emotions has been challenged by philosophers and psychologists who emphasize the cognitive dimension of emotions. Emotions can then play an important epistemological role, providing us with insights into the evaluative dimension of our lived experience.

In this contribution, I explore why and how value experiences are relevant to Design for Values. In a value experience, something seems to the experiencer to be valuable (or disvaluable). Design for Values is a design approach that aims at systematically integrating value of moral importance in (technological) design.