Applied Ethics Commons^™

Operational Responsibility In Ai Governance: A User-Centric Liability Framework, Zhengyang Chen

Faculty Publications

Who bears responsibility when artificial intelligence systems cause harm? This question has become central to AI ethics and governance. Most existing approaches focus on developers, yet this faces serious practical and theoretical problems. Drawing on tort law, agency law, and philosophy of technology, this paper argues that AI should be understood as an instrument whose outputs remain the responsibility of human operators rather than developers. We call this 'user-centric governance.' Placing accountability with deployers promotes public trust by creating clear lines of responsibility, a concern that governance approaches have often overlooked. It preserves democratic accountability by keeping human actors answerable …

Statistical Inference Is Not Moral Reasoning: The Case Against Ai On Hospital Ethics Boards, Elan J. Haronian

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

As generative AI becomes more integrated in healthcare, it seems inevitable that AI will eventually be used on hospital ethics committees. However, before implementation, their roles need careful consideration. Although AI promises to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and reduce human workloads, there are important ways in which it is limited, especially when human emotion and connection are crucial, as in clinical ethics boards.

In this paper, I highlight several problems preventing AI from being useful on hospital ethics boards. These include issues of opaque reasoning (the “black box” problem), liability, transparency, privacy, and consent. While there are proposed frameworks for …

To Print A Remake: An Analysis Of Hollywood Remakes And Their Cultural Value, Connor F. Seaton

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In recent years, audiences and movie critics have expressed concern that Hollywood’s growing reliance on remakes, sequels, franchises, and similar adaptations has led to a broader worry that originality is fading from modern cinema and that the industry is instead focused on using adaptations to maximize profits. Although adaptation is often seen as a commercially driven framework for reproducing existing intellectual property in a new media format, this thesis argues that it should be recognized as an autonomous cultural category with its own artistic, historical, and social significance and merit. By analyzing adaptation scholarship and reviewing its complex historical development, …

Teaching Cybersecurity And Ai Across Borders: From Foundations To Ethics, George Antoniou

Faculty and Staff Publications & Presentations

This presentation examines how interdisciplinary course design in AI and cybersecurity can expand undergraduate research while directly supporting career readiness. At Lynn University, the Foundations of Cybersecurity & AI course was updated to serve as the entry point for both Cybersecurity and Data Analytics majors. The course integrates case studies, digital forensics and cloud security labs, and applied exercises with AI-enabled defense-in-depth strategies. Students build core technical competencies while engaging in course-based research that mirrors industry practice. As part of a Fulbright grant, a complementary course, AI & Ethics, was developed for the University of Tirana. Proposed as a mandatory …

Improving Universities Through The Use Of Ai & Transformative Technology: A Case Study Analysis At The University Of South Carolina, Cameron A. Caulk

Senior Theses

This thesis aims to give university leaders a practical guide to implementing AI, using lessons learned from the University of South Carolina’s experience as a case study. The project started with a review of literature and industry practices for the Finance & Administration division, which led to key deliverables like AI usage guidelines, DoIT’s position paper on AI systems, and the ParkUSC parking app. One ongoing project, Project Shuttlecock, even sets the stage for future AI initiatives at the university.

AI holds immense promise, but universities often hesitate due to concerns about ethics, costs, and the learning curve for staff …

Ethical Work Cultures & Ai, Andrew Brei

Presentations - 2025

With the help of moral theories, several case studies, and insights from the world of behavioral ethics, my project aims to provide engineering professionals with the means to deal properly with moral issues that commonly arise in their chosen fields.

The Present And Future Of Ai: Ethical Issues And Research Opportunities, Ankita Srivastava, Marco Marabelli, Danielle Blanch-Hartigan, Jeffrey Moriarty, Evan Carey

Computer Information Systems Faculty Publications

Healthcare is currently a fast-changing industry with AI and generative AI (GenAI) playing a prominent role in the transformation of clinical as well as managerial practices. Clinical practices involve AI to diagnose diseases and develop new drugs and compounds, while managerial practices concern AI-supporting processes such as billing patients and insurance companies, handling electronic medical records, and supporting remote connections with patients, increasingly using virtual and augmented reality. Yet, all these opportunities offered by AI come with challenges involving potential ethical issues, such as discrimination, bias, lack of accessibility, and privacy issues. In March 2024, we organized a panel with …

The Present And Future Of Ai: Ethical Issues And Research Opportunities, Ankita Srivastava, Marco Marabelli, Danielle Blanch-Hartigan, Jeffrey Moriarty, Evan Carey

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Healthcare is currently a fast-changing industry with AI and generative AI (GenAI) playing a prominent role in the transformation of clinical as well as managerial practices. Clinical practices involve AI to diagnose diseases and develop new drugs and compounds, while managerial practices concern AI-supporting processes such as billing patients and insurance companies, handling electronic medical records, and supporting remote connections with patients, increasingly using virtual and augmented reality. Yet, all these opportunities offered by AI come with challenges involving potential ethical issues, such as discrimination, bias, lack of accessibility, and privacy issues. In March 2024, we organized a panel with …

What's The Art In Artificial Intelligence?, Emily Verla Bovino

Open Educational Resources

This workbook learns from Black and Indigenous artists working with Artificial Intelligence to confront issues of ethics and aesthetics in its technologies. It features guided learning activities with links to publicly available video lectures and online articles, and includes options for experiential learning through both a tutorial in Midjourney and a visit to the public art collection at York College in Jamaica, Queens. Featured artists include: American Artist, Rizvana Bradley, Beth Coleman, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Suzanne Kite, Sondra Perry, Mimi Onuoha and Alisha B. Wormsley. Works by Martin Puryear and Maren Hassinger are explored in the Midjourney exercise.

About …

Playing The Digital Dialectic Game: Writing Pedagogy With Generative Ai, Rebekah Shultz Colby

University Writing Program: Faculty Scholarship

This article explores teaching writing with generative AI as critical play where students and teachers engage in an ethically dialectical and aleatory game with generative AI. I qualitatively surveyed 24 writing teachers about how they teach writing with generative AI as well as its advantages and disadvantages. I discovered that teachers used generative AI to teach about the ethics of generative AI's design and rhetorical use to avoid plagiarism. Teachers also critically played with generative AI to teach the writing process of invention, drafting, revision, and editing. Specifically, the critical, dialectical interplay of human and machine invents in aleatory and …

Artificial Intelligence In Health Care: Business Opportunities And Ethical Challenges, Ankita Srivastava,, Marco Marabelli, Jeffrey Moriarty

Ethics Publication

Artificial intelligence (AI), and in particular generative AI (GAI), are making incredible progress toward automation. The pervasive and invasive nature of these technologies are affecting every industry, and health care is no exception. This paper summarizes insights derived from a panel that the Hoffman Center for Business Ethics and the Center for Health and Business at Bentley University hosted in March 2024. The panel invited three qualified health care professionals: Evan Carey, Susan Persky and John Torous. The panelists are all active in multiple aspects of AI in health care but represent a focus on the key areas of policy …

Artificial Intelligence In Health Care: Business Opportunities And Ethical Challenges, Ankita Srivastava, Marco Marabelli, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI), and in particular generative AI (GAI), are making incredible progress toward automation. The pervasive and invasive nature of these technologies are affecting every industry, and health care is no exception. This paper summarizes insights derived from a panel that the Hoffman Center for Business Ethics and the Center for Health and Business at Bentley University hosted in March 2024. The panel invited three qualified health care professionals: Evan Carey, Susan Persky and John Torous. The panelists are all active in multiple aspects of AI in health care but represent a focus on the key areas of policy …

Artificial Intelligence In Health Care: Business Opportunities And Ethical Challenges, Ankita Srivastava, Marco Marabelli, Jeffrey Moriarty

Computer Information Systems Faculty Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI), and in particular generative AI (GAI), are making incredible progress toward automation. The pervasive and invasive nature of these technologies are affecting every industry, and health care is no exception. This paper summarizes insights derived from a panel that the Hoffman Center for Business Ethics and the Center for Health and Business at Bentley University hosted in March 2024. The panel invited three qualified health care professionals: Evan Carey, Susan Persky and John Torous. The panelists are all active in multiple aspects of AI in health care but represent a focus on the key areas of policy …

High Tech Touts, Sherman J. Clark

Articles

This essay has three interrelated aims. First, it articulates a set of capacities I call virtues of attention—capacities for intuitive discernment, good judgment about what is worth sustained focus, and the ability to engage deeply with worthwhile things. These are eudaimonist virtues in that they help us live well, not merely act rightly. Second, the essay explores what I call poisonous persuasion: the idea that rhetorical appeals, especially those used in marketing, may not only succeed by appealing to certain desires or habits of mind but may also deepen and entrench them. Third, I bring these insights together to examine …

Transparency And Authority Concerns With Using Ai To Make Ethical Recommendations In Clinical Settings, Jeffrey Byrnes, Michael Robinson

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

In response to recent proposals to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to automate ethics consultations in healthcare, we raise two main problems for the prospect of having healthcare professionals rely on AI-driven programs to provide ethical guidance in clinical matters. The first cause for concern is that, because these programs would effectively function like black boxes, this approach seems to preclude the kind of transparency that would allow clinical staff to explain and justify treatment decisions to patients, fellow caregivers, and those tasked with providing oversight. The other main problem is that the kind of authority that would need to be …

Ethical Responsibility In The Design Of Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Systems, David K. Mcgraw

International Journal on Responsibility

This article aims to provide an overview of the ethical questions surrounding the responsibilities of designers of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. First, the author delves into the philosophical underpinnings of this responsibility, examining various ethical theories to grasp the moral obligations individuals have towards others and society. The author contends that designers of technology bear the responsibility of considering the broader societal implications of their creations. Subsequently, the author scrutinizes the fundamental question of whether AI systems present unique ethical concerns compared to conventional technologies, pinpointing factors such as complexity, opacity, autonomy, unpredictability, uncertainty, and the potential for significant social …

Tradeoffs Of Generalization, Kyra M. Abrams, Peter T. Darch

I-GUIDE Forum

Models used in geospatial data science are often built and optimized for a specific local context, such as a particular location at a point in time. However, upon publication, these models may be generalized beyond this context, reused in research simulating or predicting other times and places. Without sufficient information or documentation, bias embedded in these models can in turn result in bias in the reuser’s research outputs. Drawing on a long-term qualitative case study of aging dams researchers and developers of models used by these researchers, we find significant documentation gaps. We combine a literature-based genealogy with interviews with …

Quantifying Ethics And Trust In Human-Ai Collaboration, Oliver Lane, Kevin Klave

College of Engineering Summer Undergraduate Research Program

As AI Chatbots continue to evolve in both prevalence and capability, their role in education is becoming increasingly prominent. With chatbots like ChatGPT becoming commonplace in higher education, there is an evident need to understand the ethics and trust dynamics of human-AI collaboration. This research contributes to the ongoing discussion on AI in education, highlighting the importance of trust when utilizing AI in academic settings. By conducting an empirical analysis, this research seeks to quantify trust in human-AI collaboration in higher education with the aim of offering actionable items for higher education institutions to follow to promote ethical and responsible …

Module: Ai And Value-Neutrality, Jonathan Auyer Ph.D., Department Of Philosophy

Artificial Intelligence, 2024-25

Artificial Intelligence is on the tips of everyone’s tongues these days – What exactly is it? What will can it be used for? What will it be used for in the future? What problems will it create or solve or exacerbate? This learning module aims to look at a specific facet of AI — the issue of value-neutrality — by having students look inward at capabilities necessary for human flourishing and then ask whether AI can cultivate (or inhibit) those capabilities. This will lead to a discussion of what values underlie AI and what this says about whether or not …

Using Ai In Higher Ed: Is It Cheating?, David Levy Associate Professor & Chair Of Philosophy

Artificial Intelligence, 2024-25

Students generate a course-based or college-wide policy regarding the use of Generative AI, based on assigned readings, discussion, practice using the tools on writing assignments.

Hello, World., Elliot Cetinski, Evan Chartock, Olivia Cross, Kiran Drew, Kaya Eller, Ben Little, Joey Nolan, Spencer Toth, Sophie Wahl-Taylor, Sadie Walker, Destiny Young, Annie Zulick

Theater and Dance Presentations

This project works to theatrically represent the current state of Artificial Intelligence (AI), as well as its benefits and drawbacks, in the style of the Living Newspaper. Originating from a Great Depression-era job program, the Living Newspaper sought to take headlines and present them onstage for a poignant and contemporary social critique. This work does the same, melding different angles of the AI debate into a single production that emphasizes the rapidly progressing state of modern AI technology and the need for humans to consider the impacts such technologies will have. Furthermore, it asks the audience to question their position …

Judging Our New Judges: Why We Must Remove Artificial Intelligence From Our Courtrooms Now, Kieran Duffy Newcomb

Honors Theses and Capstones

In this paper, I explore some of the ways in which artificial intelligence might enhance the sentencing process through recidivism prediction technology. Notably, this technology can increase the accuracy of risk predictions and the speed with which sentencing decisions are reached. I then show, however, that the recidivism prediction technology is likely to turn into what data scientist Cathy O’Neil calls a Weapon of Math Destruction. The potential harmfulness of this technology is due not to the inherent nature of the technology, but the symbiotic relationship it will have with our already harmful criminal justice system. I argue that the …

Is Your Computer Lying? Ai And Deception, Noreen L. Herzfeld

Reuter Professorship of Science and Religion Publications

Recent developments in AI, especially the spectacular success of Large Language models, have instigated renewed questioning of what remains distinctively human. As AI stands poised to take over more and more human tasks, what is left that distinguishes humans? One way we might identify a humanlike intelligence would be when we detect it telling lies. Yet AIs lack both the intention and the motivation to truly tell lies, instead producing merely bullshit. With neither emotions, embodiment, nor the social awareness that leads to a theory of mind, AIs lack the internal referents on which to judge truth or falsity. When …

Lip(S) Service: A Socioethical Overview Of Social Media Platforms’ Censorship Policies Regarding Consensual Sexual Content, Sage Futrell

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

The regulation of sexual exploitation on social media is a pressing issue that has been addressed by government legislation. However, laws such as FOSTA-SESTA has inadvertently restricted consensual expressions of sexuality as well. In four social media case studies, this paper investigates the ways in which marginalized groups have been impacted by changing censorship guidelines on social media, and how content moderation methods can be inclusive of these groups. I emphasize the qualitative perspectives of sex workers and queer creators in these case studies, in addition to my own experiences as a content moderation and social media management intern for …

Proposing A Measure Of Ethicality For Humans And Ai, Alejandro Jorge Napolitano Jawerbaum

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Smarter people or intelligent machines are able to make more accurate inferences about their environment and other agents more efficiently than less intelligent agents. Formally: ‘Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments.’ (Legg, 2008)

In this dissertation we extend this definition to include ethical behaviour and we will offer a mathematical formalism and a way to estimate how ethical an action is or will be, both for a human and for a computer, by calculating the expected values of random variables. Formally, we propose the following measure of ethicality, which is computable, or …

Balanced Blended Space: Foundational Human–Ai Dialogues In A Symmetry-Based Mediation Framework, David Smith

Publications and Research

This working paper documents the early development of the Balanced Blended Space (BBS) framework through a series of iterative interactions between a cognitive agent (human researcher) and a computational agent (AI system) conducted in 2023. The work is motivated by the need for a universal theoretical model capable of describing the integration of physical, virtual, and conceptual spaces, particularly in response to increasing fragmentation across contemporary communication systems.

BBS is proposed as a symmetry-based mediation framework in which relationships between domains—such as physical and virtual space, cognition and computation, and multiple sensory modalities—are treated as structurally equivalent and mappable. Central …

Ai Art: Artists’ Best Friend Or Mortal Enemy?, Ethan Gabrys

Tredway Library Prize for First-Year Research

This paper analyzes the impacts and implications of generative AI software on art and examines the ethics of using such tools. Through the argument that careless use of these tools presents a danger to the art world as they risk devaluing human expression, Gabrys states that “as what it means to be human changes with each generation, new artists express sentiment through their art. Art has the ability to tell us about the human experience.” He concludes that the use of AI tools takes the skill and sentiment of human artists out of the equation, begging the question: if the …

Algorithmic Bias: Causes And Effects On Marginalized Communities, Katrina M. Baha

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Individuals from marginalized backgrounds face different healthcare outcomes due to algorithmic bias in the technological healthcare industry. Algorithmic biases, which are the biases that arise from the set of steps used to solve or analyze a problem, are evident when people from marginalized communities use healthcare technology. For example, many pulse oximeters, which are the medical devices used to measure oxygen saturation in the blood, are not able to accurately read people who have darker skin tones. Thus, people with darker skin tones are not able to receive proper health care due to their pulse oximetry data being inaccurate. This …

Murder On The Vr Express: Studying The Impact Of Thought Experiments At A Distance In Virtual Reality, Andrew Kissel, Krzysztof J. Rechowicz, John B. Shull

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Hypothetical thought experiments allow researchers to gain insights into widespread moral intuitions and provide opportunities for individuals to explore their moral commitments. Previous thought experiment studies in virtual reality (VR) required participants to come to an on-site laboratory, which possibly restricted the study population, introduced an observer effect, and made internal reflection on the participants’ part more difficult. These shortcomings are particularly crucial today, as results from such studies are increasingly impacting the development of artificial intelligence systems, self-driving cars, and other technologies. This paper explores the viability of deploying thought experiments in commercially available in-home VR headsets. We conducted …

Computer Ethics In Curriculum, Tiya Williams

Publications and Research

Ethics specifically in Computer Curriculum is a growing problem that has yet to be widely addressed. Although, start of computer ethics being taught has been traced back to the early 1940’s it has not been standardized or implemented in all computer curriculum. The objective of this research is to diagnose the reasons why ethics is so crucial in computer curriculum at all levels. I used surveys to investigate whether students were taught ethics in their computer curriculum. I also conducted surveys for professors at universities and colleges if they were taught ethics while obtaining their degree, as well as if …