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groups, everything is designed with that co-operation in mind. What I had been saying needed to exist was being created and I wanted to be part of it.
“How can we move away from an antagonistic approach, to create something which isn’t a battle between technology and ethics, a clash of incompatible approaches and methods – but something truly collaborative?
“This is a real opportunity to fuse technology and moral intelligence from the ground up.”
Vallor adds that Scotland’s long and strong history in common- sense philosophy, as well as Edinburgh’s modern power in AI and informatics, was also a big
draw, saying: “The opportunity to work in a university that had the tech capability was really important to me.”
Seckl admits such collaborative approaches were not always the university way – but he says now there is no going back.
He says: “Universities were a bit like Medieval monasteries, with professors and students in splendid isolation in their ivory towers.
“I exaggerate for effect, but there was a sense that universities were not part of the mainstream world. Now we work in partnership with businesses of all shapes and sizes – from Royal Bank of Scotland, Legal & General, Hewlett Packard and Baillie Gifford, to tiny start- ups – and with a whole range of public sector bodies and trade
We want to use data to totally rethink society–tohelpcreateasocietythat isfairerandmoreequitable,
more balanced and more accessible
associations. This is not just about the university any more.
“In the Bayes Centre [the first DDI hub to open its doors], academics and public and private sector stakeholders work together in the same space. Students oscillate between science and the problems of industry.
“This is a new concept of what
a university is and we are already beginning to see this holistic approach work. It’s a real change in university thinking.”
In this context, what is the scale of the ambition for the University of Edinburgh and the DDI programme?
“Rather immodestly, we said we wanted to be the Data Capital of Europe.
“I’d like to go further; I want us to be one of the world’s leading centres,” says Prof Seckl.
“We want to use data to totally rethink society – to help create
a society that is fairer and more equitable, more balanced and more accessible – to deliver better outcomes in a complex world.
I see the DDI programme at the forefront of how we reset things. “The world will not go back to
how it was after the pandemic – and we want to be a powerhouse of the new thinking.”
‘Technology and AI are human all the way down’
Professor Shannon Vallor explains why she wants to fuse the best of hi-tech advances and ethics to create “a future worth wanting”
We must avoid technological determinism – the idea that technology leads and society merely follows.
That’s a lie, and a convenient evasion of responsibility for those building their values into these technologies.
Technology and Artificial Intelligence are human all the way down – built to promote, optimise or systematise,
to create power and realise specific values in the world. Humans are the creators
of this technology and we need to ensure that human accountability isn’t lost.
My work at the Centre for Technomoral Futures (part of Edinburgh Futures Institute) starts with the premise that technology and morality, or technology and ethics, are intimately related.
That’s because all technologies reflect and enable human powers, choices and values.
So we have to reject the artificial, damaging split between technology and society. Doing technology right is no different to doing society right. Technology does not live outside our social world; it’s interwoven.
I want to figure out, using a blend of data-driven and
humanistic tools, what
are the forms of expertise, technological and moral,
that can design and manage systems and ways of living that work better for people, to build better futures.
It’s not the tools themselves that can build those better futures, it’s people and the moral and social intelligence they use.
To help achieve that, we need to reunite forms of expertise currently cleaved off from each other in universities and
It’s not the tools themselves that can build better futures, it’s people and the moral and social intelligence they use
encouraged to develop in a relationship of antagonism.
At present, we see ethicists telling technologists where they have gone wrong, or technologists telling ethicists
that they are deluded or irrelevant.
How can we intervene earlier, create something which isn’t
a battle between technology and ethics but something truly collaborative?
I want to take energy and desire out there and give them a path to action at the Centre – to provide for people with a desire to use their technical and moral intelligence together, and bring them into their work more.
How can we use data and AI in socially and politically
constructive ways to build systems and institutions that actually support people?
The digital environments we have built are not conducive
to the kind of community, democratic structures and types of leadership most of
us want for our futures. We have to address their systemic harms, such as disinformation on a huge scale, which corrodes the social virtue of honesty as respect for truth.
What digital environments, platforms, processes and systems do we need to enable a future worth wanting, where we can flourish together?
Humanity needs to make progress in step with technological progress – and the clock is ticking ever faster – to make those transformational changes to the way technology and other elements of society interact.
Science and technology should be unleashing human opportunities at every turn
to allow us to be sustainable and flourishing. Yet for many people on this planet, their opportunities to create new and better ways of life are shrinking thanks to political and environmental destruction. That’s a fundamental crisis.
We have to move quickly
to use our technological and moral intelligence to remove obstacles to a sustainable and flourishing future. The window of opportunity is here, but will not be open indefinitely. Professor Shannon Vallor is Baillie Gifford Chair of Ethics in Data and AI at the University of Edinburgh
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