Between hope and hype - ethical aspects of generative AI

Generative AI (ChatGPT, Midjourney, etc.) has exploded into the world and suddenly, both - doom scenarios as well as utopian visions - are being hotly discussed in talk shows, on the news and at dinner tables. While ethicists are delighted that the implications of wider AI use have found their way into wider public debate, these discussions should benefit from longstanding work on the ethical and social aspects of AI. Ethics and other related fields have long discussed ways to use and integrate AI into individual lifeworlds and society responsively. This talk offers an overview of ethical issues and discusses advantages, risks and ways forward in using AI for individual and social good.

Bio

Alena Buyx is Professor of Ethics in Medicine and Health Technologies and Director of the Institute of History and Ethics in Medicine at the Technical University of Munich. She has previously held appointments at the University of Kiel, University of Münster, Harvard University, and University College London; and she was Assistant Director of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, London.

Professor Buyx is a medical doctor with postgraduate degrees in philosophy and sociology. Her research spans the whole field of biomedical and public health ethics, with a particular focus on ethics of medical innovation and health technologies, research ethics, questions of solidarity and justice in contexts such as public health and health care provision, and novel participatory approaches in biomedicine and beyond. She has expertise in theoretical ethical analysis as well as in empirical, mixed-methods approaches and policy development. She is keen on interdisciplinary approaches and collaborates regularly with clinical colleagues as well as with public health professionals, political and social scientists, philosophers, lawyers or health economists.

As a PI, Professor Buyx has been awarded over 3.9 million Euros over the last five years for dedicated ethics research (EU, DFG, BMBF etc.). Her work is published in high-ranking journals, such as Science, BMJ, GiM or Bioethics. She is an award-winning teacher of medical and life science students, early career researchers, clinicians and health professionals. In addition to research and teaching, Professor Buyx is active in the political and regulatory aspects of biomedical ethics, sitting on a number of high-level national and international ethics bodies concerned with policy development and implementation, and consulting for various international research consortia and policy initiatives. She has been a member of the German Ethics Council since 2016 and has been the chair since 2020. In 2020 she was elected to the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina as a member of the Epistemology Section. In 2021, she was awarded the German National Prize and the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Medal of the TUM; since 2022, she has been a bearer of the Bavarian Constitutional Order.