Earlier this month, we celebrated five years of incredible research at the Centre for Technomoral Futures with our PhD Showcase. Coming from a multitude of backgrounds, this extraordinary group of PhD Fellows shared their ideas through poster presentations and lightning talks.

Miyazaki’s lament that “we humans are losing faith in ourselves” has gone largely unnoticed, but stands to be a most salient message. Beyond what generative AI is in itself as a technology, what does this technology say about us? How is generative AI an example of us losing our faith in ourselves, and what can we do about it?

For centuries, the capacity for complex moral reasoning has been thought of as uniquely human. As artificial intelligence grows increasingly sophisticated, a new set of questions emerges…

We are excited to announce that Dr Emily Sullivan, an expert at the intersection of the philosophy of science and machine learning, will be joining the University of Edinburgh in August 2025 as Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy of Technology.

This workshop brought CTMF staff together with researchers from the University's Vet School, Roslin Institute, and Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Systems to explore how data ethics applies across their disciplines.

Examining the ethical implications of natural language processing. The Edinburgh Futures Institute’s Centre for Technomoral Futures and the School of Informatics are delighted to invite applications for this funded PhD studentship, to begin in the academic year 2025/2026.

2023-2024 was a year of extraordinary activity for the Centre, with an array of events, seminars, and research that continues to shape the Centre’s mission to unify technical and moral knowledge that directly serves the goals of sustainable, just and ethical innovation.

In this blog post, Professor Burkhard Schafer shares his experiences of a session he recently led with a group of pupils at Balerno High School in Edinburgh to explore the intersection of robotics, AI, and ethics.

We are delighted to announce that Professor Shannon Vallor has been awarded the Chancellor’s Award for Research.

In this blog post, hear from Dr Lucy Havens on the importance of the distinction between overt and covert bias, and the societal implications of current approaches to measuring biases in ML/AI models focusing primarily on overt bias.

Dr Anissa Tanweer and Dr Audrey Borowski will join the CTMF Research Community during the 2024-2025 year, as part of the Edinburgh Futures Institutes Visiting Fellowship Programme!

Can AI-driven systems be deployed within religious communities for pastoral care on all levels? If so, what is the role of human ministers in pastoral care in the age of AI? Hear from Dr Ximian Xu on Companionable AI in Christian Pastoral Care in this blog post.

Hear James Garforth, Benedetta Catanzariti and Meenakshi Mani reflect on their experience collaborating across social science and computer science to design and teach the new EFI 'Translational Data and AI Ethics' intensive course.

On 22 February 2024, EFI hosted a staff-student workshop on the implications of generative AI systems like ChatGPT for the university, organised by EFI and the University’s AI & Data Ethics Advisory Board. Read the report here!

On the 3rd June 2024, Professor Vallor’s new book ‘The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking’ was released with Oxford University Press!

‘New Perspectives on AI Futures’ was a workshop series held in spring 2023, funded by the Alan Turing Institute and led by Dr Atoosa Kasirzadeh, Chancellor’s Fellow and Research Lead at the CTMF. Read the report here!

On the 8th November 2023, Professor Vallor testified to the United States’ Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee on the philosophy AI and how we can use historical knowledge and experiences to shape our future.

As the Centre’s third year comes to a close, we stand on the brink of an exciting new phase of maturity. Thanks to our remarkable early growth, in spite of the pandemic’s challenges, the Centre is about to meet all of its initial milestones.

The Nuffield Foundation has appointed three new members to the Oversight Board of the Ada Lovelace Institute, founded in 2018 with a mission to make data and AI work for people and society.

Chancellor’s Fellow Dr. Atoosa Kasirzadeh joined the Centre for Technomoral Futures as Research Lead in January 2022.