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Connecting Faith-Oriented Tech Professionals and Corporate Ethics Offices

14 Jan, 2021

Frank Torres, Director of Public Policy in Microsoft’s Office of Responsible AI

2021 Faith@Work ERG Conference to feature Panels and a Workshop on Connecting Faith Values and Corporate Ethics around AI

Members of Faith ERGs are among corporate employees most likely to desire strong business ethics and good outcomes for society in their work.  AI and Faith, a Seattle-based nonprofit, has organized a special Ethics Track in Day 3 of the 2nd National Faith@Work ERG Conference on February 11 from 11-2 EST to discuss how people of faith can engage their employer’s business ethics safely and effectively, using as an example ethical issues about artificial intelligence.

The rapid deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) across American businesses is inspiring a  growing discussion of ethical practices to manage AI’s risks and benefits. Corporations and universities across the world are creating offices and institutes specifically to address this.

Many of these AI-driven ethical issues grow out of questions which the world’s faiths have grappled with for millennia, such as fairness and equality, freedom of choice, the source of human rights and liberties, and the purpose of work.  But most corporate ethics offices and academic programs have no direct connection to faith perspectives on AI ethics, even as they struggle for influence themselves. Employees who are people of faith in companies deploying AI products have a lot to add to this ethics debate if they can do so safely and effectively.

The Ethics Track will help employees of companies using AI-powered technologies explore how to integrate their faith values with ethical issues in their work in three 30-minute panels, a Q&A Response Session, and a one-hour workshop.   The panels and Q&A will discuss what’s faith got to do with AI, how to constructively engage your company’s ethics process, and how to work cross faith on these issues.  The workshop will show how to move from a faith belief to a practical ethical position on real-world problems.  Faculty include such key thinkers as:

  • Frank C. Torres, a senior Microsoft ethics and policy leader;
  • – Brian Green, Director of Tech Ethics at Silicon Valley’s oldest ethics institution;
  • Rear Admiral (ret) Margaret Kibben, Chaplain of the US House of Representatives;
  • – Yaqub Chaudhary, a UK physicist and leading Islamic scholar and writer on AI ethics;
  • – Patricia Shaw, a leading Christian UK attorney in AI ethics policy efforts; and
  • – Michael Quinn, computer scientist and author of Ethics for the Information Age.

AI and Faith has over 60 sophisticated AI professionals, ethicists, theologians and philosophers in five countries working cross faith to produce highly relevant faith perspectives on AI ethics.

Register at 2nd National Faith@Work ERG Conference (vconferenceonline.com) (hurry! early bird rate expires Jan 21).

Contact:  Board Chair David Brenner, dmbrenner@aiandfaith.org for more information.

AI and Faith Website: AIandfaith.orgERG conference article in January Newsletter