Dear Colleagues,

It is my privilege to announce that the International Association for Computing and Philosophy’s executive board has selected Dr. Björn Lundgren for the 2022 Herbert A. Simon Award for Outstanding Research in Computing and Philosophy, which specifically recognizes scholars at an early stage of their academic career whose research is likely to reshape debates at the nexus of Computing and Philosophy.

Dr Lundgren is a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University (the Netherlands). He was awarded a Ph.D. from the Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden) in 2018. The year after he started working at the Institute for Futures Studies (Stockholm, Sweden), leading a project on ethical and societal aspects of the implementation of self-driving vehicles (with funding from the Swedish Transport Administration). During his time at IFFS, Lundgren also consulted for the University of Twente in two EU-projects (SHERPA and SIENNA), mostly working on ethical guidelines for AI and robotics. In 2020, Lundgren left IFFS for a postdoc at Umeå University (Sweden) in a project on AI, Democracy and Self-Determination. Lundgren is currently working in a research program on the Ethics of socially disruptive technologies (ESDiT). His main focus is on methods of ethics of technology in general, and socially disruptive technologies, in particular. This methodological focus can be found in many of his previous works, which ranges over topics such as information, information security, anonymity, privacy, the right to privacy, decision under risk and uncertainty, self-driving vehicles, and AI.

Dr. Lundgren will present the Simon Award Keynote Address at IACAP 2022, Santa Clara University, San Jose, CA. Please join us at IACAP 2022 to congratulate Dr. Lundgren on this well-deserved award. More information regarding the conference can be found here. https://www.iacap.org/iacap-2022-cfa/

best regards,
—
Dr Steve McKinlay
Executive Director, International Association for Computing and Philosophy

Dear Colleagues,

It is my privilege to announce that the International Association for Computing and Philosophy’s Executive Board has selected Shannon Vallor for the 2022 Covey Award recognizing senior scholars with a substantial record of innovative research in the field of computing and philosophy broadly conceived. The board recognised Professor Vallors significant contribution to our field, both in academic as well as public spheres over the last two decades.  

Shannon Vallor is the Baillie Gifford Professor in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence in the University of Edinburgh’s Department of Philosophy. She serves as Director of the Centre for Technomoral Futures in the Edinburgh Futures Institute and is a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute. Professor Vallor’s research explores how emerging technologies reshape human moral and intellectual character, and maps the ethical challenges and opportunities posed by new uses of data and artificial intelligence. Her work includes advising academia, government and industry on the ethical design and use of AI. Her current project examines responsibility gaps in the governance of autonomous systems, as part of the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems programme. She is the author of Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting (Oxford University Press, 2016) and editor of the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology (2022).She is the recipient of multiple awards for teaching, scholarship and public engagement, including the 2015 World Technology Award in Ethics.

Prof. Vallor will present the Covey Award Keynote address at the IACAP 2022 conference at Santa Clara University, San Jose, CA. USA, July 22-24, 2022.  See https://www.iacap.org/iacap-2022-cfa/ for more information. 

Please join us in congratulating Prof. Vallor on this well deserved award. 
best regards, 

Steve McKinlay
Executive Director, International Association for Computing and Philosophy

CEPE/IACAP Joint Conference 2021: The Philosophy and Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

Call for Abstracts

Conference: 5-9 July, 2021
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Abstracts due: October 1, 2020

Keynote Speakers: TBA

Advances in artificial intelligence, partly due to the availability of massive amounts of data, have recently stirred both public and academic debates about the opportunities, but also the risks posed by these developments. While debates around strong AI often appear to oscillate between utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares, developments in the context of so-called weak AI raise more mundane, yet more pressing ethical and philosophical questions. Automated decision-making, crime prediction, facial recognition, or deep fakes: technological advances and the increasing reliance on often opaque software systems raise thorny questions. The recent controversies around Covid-19 tracing or so-called immunity apps may serve as a telling example: from issues around surveillance and privacy over justice and discrimination to freedom and (relational) autonomy – the development and deployment of information and communication technologies poses numerous ethical, social, and political questions to be addressed from different philosophical perspectives.

The International Society of Ethics and Information Technology (INSEIT.net) and the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP.org) are delighted to announce that submissions are now being accepted for their joint CEPE/IACAP conference on July 5-9, 2021, hosted by the Department of Informatics, Universität Hamburg, Germany. The meeting is organized by the Research Group for Ethics in Information Technology (http://uhh.de/inf-eit), chaired by Prof. Dr. Judith Simon (http://uhh.de/inf-simon). The philosophy and ethics of artificial intelligence will serve as a guiding theme for the CEPE/IACAP Joint Conference 2021. While submissions to this broad topic are encouraged, other topics within the field of philosophy of computing and computer ethics are also very welcome.

We invite submissions of extended abstracts for individual papers and proposals for symposia.

Submission:

Extended abstracts and proposals for symposia shall be submitted via https://www.conferences.uni-hamburg.de/e/cepe-iacap2021 by October 1, 2020.

Individual Papers: Submissions should

• be prepared for blind review;
• provide an extended abstract of 1000-1500 words;
• provide a short abstract of 150-200 words suitable for inclusion in the conference program.

Symposia/Panels: Proposals should indicate

• the title of the proposed symposium;
• a description of the topic (500-800 words);
• the list of participants;
• the number of slots required. A regular slot for symposia is 90 minutes. In exceptional cases, two slots may be available for a symposium.

Important Dates:

Extended abstract and symposia proposals due: October 1, 2020

Reviews due: November 15, 2020

Paper and symposia acceptance/rejection: November 30, 2020

Final full paper due: May 1, 2021

Conference: July 5-9, 2021

Full Papers:

Upon acceptance of the extended abstracts, full papers of 5000-7000 words are invited for submission. A selection of these submitted papers will be invited for joint submission to a journal, possibly to be published in a special issue (depending on the acceptance of SI proposals). Submission of full papers is not mandatory unless (a) you want to participate in the best paper award (see below) or (b) you want your paper to be considered for submission to relevant journals.

Best Paper Award:

There will be two best paper awards: one for all submissions and one specifically for graduate students. The graduate students, of course, are also eligible for the general best paper award. Please indicate in your submission that you are a graduate student to qualify for the student best paper award.

Mentoring Program:

There will be a dedicated mentoring session in the program where graduate students or junior faculty members can meet with mentors to discuss their research. If you are interested in such a mentoring program as a) a mentor or b) a mentee, please indicate this in your proposal. The availability of mentors as well as the matching between mentors and mentees will be decided upon after the review process has been finalised.

Program Committee: TBA

Fees:

Further details on the conference registration and payment options will be provided later on. While having to cover the costs for the conference, we will try to keep the fees as low as possible. Students and members of INSEIT and IACAP will receive a reduced registration fee.

Website:

All further information will be provided through the conference website at http://uhh.de/inf-cepe-iacap2021.

E-mail:

You can contact us by email at cepe-iacap2021@informatik.uni-hamburg.de.

Best wishes,
The Organizing Committee

The International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP) announces that submissions are now being accepted for the IACAP 2019: Distributed Computing and Epistemic Logic Track, June 5, to be held at and sponsored by the Institute of Mathematics, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). This special track is being organized by,

Alexandru Baltag: ILLC Amsterdam, The Netherlands
(http://www.illc.uva.nl/People/show_person.php?Person_id=Baltag+A.B.)

Sergio Rajsbaum: Institute of Mathematics, UNAM.
(http://www.matem.unam.mx/~rajsbaum/)

This year the IACAP Annual Meeting will include a special, one-day track on research related to computing and epistemic logic, with special interest in concurrency; computing systems where multiple sequential computers or microprocessors interact. Knowledge-theoretic tools have been applied to theoretical and practical problems in distributed and multi-agent system, both to design solutions and to prove impossibility results. They and have turned out to have interesting connections with topology. From the computability perspective, fault-tolerant distributed systems are of a very different nature than Turing machines. We are looking to have interesting discussions, presentations, and foster further collaborations on these topics. The track will include introductory talks to the exciting new interconnections between computing, logic and philosophy. We invite submissions of extended abstracts for this track.

Important Dates:

Paper Presentations (Extended Abstracts):

Submission: March 24, 2019

Notification of Acceptance: May 4, 2019

Confirmed participants:

Alexandru Baltag, ILLC Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Armando Castañeda, Instituto de Matematicas, UNAM, Mexico
David Fernández-Duque, Universiteit Gent, Belgium
Sergio Rajsbaum, Instituto de Matemáticas, UNAM, Mexico
Aldo Iván Ramírez-Abarca, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Sonja Smets, ILLC Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Ana Lucia Vargas-Sandoval, ILLC Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Fernando Velázquez-Quesada, Amsterdam University, The Netherlands

Paper submissions should be provided at:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iacap2019

Submissions for paper presentation should:

1. Explicitly indicate (in the title or as the first sentence of the abstract) that it is a submission for the Distributed Computing and Epistemic Logic Track;
2. Be prepared for blind review;
3. Provide an extended abstract of 800-1200 words; and,
4. Provide a short abstract of 150-250 words suitable for inclusion in a program.

Dear Colleagues,

It is my privilege to announce that the International Association for Computing and Philosophy’s Executive Board has selected Deborah G. Johnson for the Covey Award recognizing senior scholars with a substantial record of innovative research in the field of computing and philosophy broadly conceived.

Deborah G. Johnson recently retired as the Anne Shirley Carter Olsson Professor of Applied Ethics in the STS Program within the Department of Engineering and Society. She continues to hold that title with emeritus status and she continues to be active in research and occasional teaching.

During her career, Johnson has taught engineering students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Virginia. Her teaching and her research have been broadly focused on Computer/Information Technology Ethics, Engineering Ethics, STS Theory and Policy Implications, and most recently she has been writing about Ethics, AI, and Robots.

Johnson published one of the first textbooks on computer ethics in 1985. The book was revised three times and translated into multiple languages. Drawing on her training in philosophy and ethics, she has published on a wide range of topics all directly or indirectly having to do with ethical, social, and policy implications of technology, especially information technology. Her publications include 7 books and over 80 pieces in journals, books, and other venues.

Johnson’s research has repeatedly received support from the National Science Foundation. Most recently she received awards focused on Surveillance and Transparency as Sociotechnical Systems of Accountability and a project on Ethics for Developing Technologies: An Analysis of Artificial Agents. She is currently working with a team of researchers at the University of Bergen who have funding from the Norwegian Research Council to explore the social implications of visual surveillance technologies in the news media.

Active in professional organizations, Johnson has served as President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology, President of the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology (INSEIT), Treasurer of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computers and Society, Chair of the American Philosophical Association Committee on Computers and Philosophy, and a member of the Executive Board of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics.

In 2009 Johnson received the Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Linköping University in Linköping, Sweden. In 2004 Johnson received the John Barwise Prize from the American Philosophical Association for contributions to computing and philosophy; in 2001 she received the Sterling Olmsted Award from the Liberal Education Division of the American Society for Engineering Education; and in 2000 she received the Making a Difference award from the ACM Special Interest Group on Computers and Society (SIGCAS).

Due to a scheduling conflict, the Covey Award will be presented to Professor Johnson in absentia with her letter of acceptance preceding Dr. Edward N. Zalta’s Keynote Address. Please join us at IACAP 2018, June 21-23, Warsaw to extend Professor Johnson congratulations on this well-deserved award for her outstanding contributions to computing and philosophy.

http://www.iacap.org/iacap-2018/

Best,

Don Berkich
IACAP President

Dear Colleagues,

Due to numerous requests, the executive board of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy has authorized an extension of the deadline for paper submissions from February 15th to March 15th for its June 21-23 meeting in Warsaw. The program committee will aim for an April 15th notification deadline.

Blind reviews will commence promptly for papers submitted by February 15th, observing the initial notification deadline of March 15th.

For revised submission guidelines and the updated CFP, please see

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iacap2018

Best Wishes,

Don Berkich
IACAP President

Dear Colleagues,

It is my privilege to announce that the International Association for Computing and Philosophy’s executive board has selected Dr. Thomas C. King for the 2018 Herbert A. Simon Award for Outstanding Research in Computing and Philosophy, which specifically recognizes scholars at an early stage of their academic career whose research is likely to reshape debates at the nexus of Computing and Philosophy.

Dr. King is a postdoctoral Artificial Intelligence (AI) researcher at the University of Oxford working on the Ethical and Social Implications of AI (ESIAI) project in the Digital Ethics Lab (Oxford Internet Institute).

Dr. King’s research focuses on the ethical and social implications of AI and Machine Learning. His current research focuses on, from a technical (analytically and empirically) and societal perspective, AI’s potential use as an essential causal or instrumental factor in crime, in what sense AI-Crime is a novel phenomenon, and the technical and legal mitigating, redressing, and disincentivising policies available to relevant stakeholders. Dr. King’s background is in AI and Computer Science, particularly logic-based AI, having previously investigated Deontic and Institutional Logic, which are formalisations of norms, and related ethical or legal concepts. In short, Dr. King’s research takes an AI and computational perspective to investigate the ethical and social implications of AI, and AI-techniques for ethics and law.

Dr. King holds a PhD in AI from the Technical University of Delft specialising in non-monotonic Deontic Logic, the logic of social institutions, and AI governance. In his PhD, he investigated formal logic for capturing the legality of rule change within legal systems and compliance of laws within multi-level and cross-national contexts. Case studies included past judgements on data privacy in EU directives and European human rights law, and tensions between UK and EU law on rule changes. From formalisation, investigation focussed on automation for governing autonomous AI systems towards goals across systems and systems-of-systems, considering heterogeneity between agents and systems.

Dr. King will present the Simon Award Keynote Address at IACAP 2018, June 21-23, Warsaw. See http://www.iacap.org/iacap-2018/ for conference information and submission guidelines.

Please join us at IACAP 2018 to congratulate Dr. King on this well-deserved award.

Best Wishes,

Don Berkich
IACAP President

International Association for Computing and Philosophy – Annual Meeting

June 21-23, 2018, Warsaw, Poland

CFP

The International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP) is delighted to announce that submissions are now being accepted for its 2018 annual meeting June 21-23, to be held at the Staszic Palace, Warsaw, the seat of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The meeting is being organized by Marcin Milkowski (the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences); keynote speakers include Ned Block (NYU) and Ed Zalta (Stanford).

Please note that IACAP 2018 is scheduled to dovetail with the 22nd meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, June 26-29, Kraków, which Professor Milkowski is co-organizing (http://theassc.org/assc-22/).

The International Association for Computing and Philosophy promotes philosophical dialogue and interdisciplinary research on all aspects of the computational and informational turn. Coming to these issues from a rich variety of disciplines, IACAP’s members have a tradition of helping to shape philosophical and ethical debates about the nature, development, application, and limits of computation, information technologies, and artificial intelligence.

IACAP’s 2017 meeting will gather philosophers, ethicists, logicians, roboticists, computer scientists, and cognitive scientists to explore topics including,

Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Life
Automated Warfare
Cognitive Science, Computation, and Cognition
Computational Modeling in Science and Social Science
Computer-Mediated Communication
Ethical Problems and Societal Impact of Computation and Information
Ethics and Epistemology of Big Data
History of Computing
Information Culture and Society
Metaphysics and Epistemology of Computation
Philosophy of Computer Science
Philosophy of Information
Philosophy of Information Technology
Philosophy of Mind
Robotics
Virtual Reality
… and related issues

We invite submissions of papers and proposals for symposia.

Important Dates:

Symposia:

Submission: January 15, 2018
Notification of Acceptance: February 1, 2018

Papers:

Submission: February 15, 2018
Notification of Acceptance: March 15, 2018

Paper and symposia submissions should be provided at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iacap2018

Paper submissions should:

• Be prepared for blind review;
• Be between 3000 and 6000 words; and,
• Provide an abstract of 150-250 words.

Proposals for symposia should indicate:

• The title of the proposed symposium;
• A description of the topic and of its relevance for the IACAP membership;
• A list the participants (indicating particularly those who have confirmed their participation); and,
• The number of hours required.

Program Committee:

Patrick Allo
Brian Ballsun-Stanton
Paul Bello
Don Berkich
Selmer Bringsjord
Elizabeth Buchanan
Charles Ess
Luciano Floridi
Nir Fresco
Frances Grodzinsky
John Licato
Patrick Lin
Steve Mckinlay
Marcin Milkowski
Keith Miller
James H. Moor
Gualtiero Piccinini
Thomas Powers
Giuseppe Primiero
Miguel Angel Sicart
Judith Simon
Johnny Søraker
John Sullins
Mariarosaria Taddeo
Herman Tavani
Orlin Vakarelov
Shannon Vallor
Wendell Wallach
Marty Wolf

Dear Colleagues,

After many discussions about how best to respond to the selective Muslim travel ban in the U.S.–about which please see http://www.iacap.org/the-muslim-travel-ban-and-iacap-2017/–IACAP’s executive board has among other things opted to create a special track at IACAP 2017 (Stanford University, June 26-28) on Information Technology and Democracy, viz., the corrupting or preserving roles IT has played and could play, and the roles IT ought to play.

Submissions for the Information Technology and Democracy track in the form of extended abstracts (800+ words) should be submitted by March 15th via https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iacap2017. Decisions will be made by April 15th.

Topics might include, but certainly are not limited to,

1. The fabrication and dissemination of “fake news”:

• Fabrications created/disseminated through social media and blogs.
• News-like advertising.
• Conflict of interest in advertising and editorial processes.
• The obligations of social media companies.

2. The creation of “alternative facts” in a “post-truth” world:

• ‘Truth’ and the authoritarian uses of IT.
• Exploiting confirmation bias.
• Creating readily manipulable online communities.
• The epistemic obligations of citizens.

3. The role of IT in evidence-gathering and verification:

• Manipulating photographic and video evidence.
• IT methods of creating and preserving trust.
• Protecting and disseminating scientific data.
• System hacking, leaks, and the obligations of whistle-blowers.

4. Trolling:

• Trolling vs. engaging in online discussion.
• Anonymity and sowing distrust.
• Political and corporate online astro-turfing.
• Protecting and promoting online democratic deliberation.

5. Democratic processes:

• Poll-monitoring.
• Digital voter verification.
• Trust in voting mechanisms.
• Online plebiscites.

6. Technology, protest, and political resistance:

• Online civil disobedience.
• Creating and coordinating protest movements.
• Democratic controls on Big Data in massive digital surveillance.
• Digital footprints and citizen vulnerability.

Dear Colleagues,

In light of the deplorable Muslim travel ban and the inspiring petitions to boycott conferences held in the States in response, IACAP’s executive board has been weighing our alternatives as we prepare for the 2017 meeting at Stanford University. Given the timing and the work that has already gone into preparing for the conference, we have decided to move forward with the conference as planned, with the final submissions deadline of February 15th fast approaching.

In doing so we seek neither to carry on as if business were as usual–it decidedly is not–nor in the slightest way to repudiate or ride roughshod over the concerns of those who choose to honor the boycott–with whom, frankly, we entirely agree.

We will do the best we can under the circumstances. To wit, we plan to

1. Develop a special track on the role of information technology in protecting and corrupting democracy (an announcement and call for extended abstracts forthcoming shortly);
2. Arrange for remote presentations from those affected by the travel ban, facilities permitting;
3. Live stream the conference for the same, again facilities permitting; and,
4. Take up a resolution at the conference business meeting–open to all members–whether to move future North American IACAP meetings to Canadian and Mexican venues, at least for the time being.

Respectfully Yours,

IACAP’s Executive Board

Don Berkich, President
Steve McKinlay, Executive Director
John Licato, Membership and Promotions Coordinator
Tom Powers, Director for Minds and Machines S.I.G.
Rosaria Taddeo, Member at Large and Past President
Giuseppe Primiero, Member at Large
Judith Simon, Member at Large