Philosophy of AI

AI&Humanity-Lab

I’m the founder and director of AI&Humanity-Lab at HKU, funded by a major grant from HKU: AI&Humanity-Lab. AI&Humanity-Lab@HKU conducts research on the ways in which AI interacts with and transforms humanity. Our projects are interdisciplinary with a basis in philosophy.

I’m on the steering committee for the Institute of Data Science at HKU. Here I discuss my work in that context.

MA in AI, Ethics and Society

I’m the program director of a new MA program at the University of Hong Kong: AI, Ethics and Society. More information about the program can be found here: https://www.maaies.arts.hku.hk/

Work on Philosophy of AI

Books

  • Rachel Sterken and I are editors of a forthcoming Open Access volume on OUP: Communicating with AI: Philosophical Perspectives. This is the first major volume with philosophical perspectives on how humans can communicate with an AI, e.g., ChatGPT. Table of Contents can be found here.

  • My first book on the philosophy of AI was co-authored with Josh Dever: Making AI Intelligible: Philosophical Perspectives.

  • My second book on the philosophy of AI, also co-authored with Josh Dever, is now forthcoming: Going Whole Hog: A Philosophical Defense of AI Cognition.

Papers

Selected talks

  • June–July 2025, University of London, Paris Campus: AI and De-Anthropomorphized Philosophy

  • March 2025, East China Normal University: How AI Can Transform Philosophy

  • March 2025, Fudan University, Shanghai:

    • A Bad Question: “Can AIs be Conscious?”

    • Introspective Machines

  • Fall 2024, Beijing Normal University, Lecture Series:

    • AI and Embodiment

    • AI and the De-anthropomorphizing of Philosophy

    • AI and Theory Building

    • The Mind of AI: Engineering Empathy

    • AI, Externalism and Theory Neutrality

  • September 2024, University of Munich: The Mind of AI: Engineering Empathy

  • June 2024, Barcelona/Sitges Conference on Conceptual Engineering: The Philosophy of AI and Conceptual Engineering: Some Puzzles

  • March 2024, American Philosophical Association: AI Alignment and Safety

  • June 2023, SAS London – ChatGPT Has Beliefs: Methodology and Arguments (with Josh Dever), ChatGPT and Other Creative Rivals

  • May 2023, Institute of Philosophy: AI Agency

  • May 2023, The Problems of Philosophy in Virtual Reality, Stockholm: Can AI Transform Philosophy? On Technophilosophy and Conceptual Engineering

  • May 2023, Stockholm: Conceptual Engineering and the Philosophy of AI

  • May 2023, PHILANG, Lodz: Conceptual Engineering and the Philosophy of AI

  • May 2023, Wuhan University: Conceptual Engineering and the Philosophy of AI

  • April 2023, Institute of Data Science Interdisciplinary Speaker Series, HKU: The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence: What it is, why it matters, and how it can influence the development of AI

Multimedia