The Grefenstette Center for Ethics in Science, Technology, and Law at Duquesne University hosted its annual Tech Ethics Symposium on October 28, 2022 under the theme, “How Can Algorithms Be Ethical? Finding Solutions Through Dialogue.” This conference featured a wide variety of perspectives on science, technology, ethics, policy, business, and religion, featuring a keynote conversation between Alondra Nelson, Deputy Assistant to the President, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Bishop Paul Tighe, Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education. Other speakers included Duquesne’s President Ken Gormley; Anima Anandkumar, Director of Machine Learning at NVIDIA; Irina Raicu, Director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Center; and Abhishek Gupta, the Founder at the Montreal AI Ethics Institute.
The symposium also featured 32 undergraduate and graduate student posters with over 200 people attending in person and hundreds more virtually! The conference was the culminating event of 3 days of discussions on the future of technology ethics at Duquesne, including a discussion on the future of a Catholic tech ethics with Bishop Tighe on Thursday, and a discussion on the future of Pittsburgh tech ethics with faculty from CMU and University of Pittsburgh on Wednesday.
The Grefenstette Center will offer a variety of exciting programs and courses in the Spring of 2023, including a lecture by Noreen Herzfeld on February 7, a tech ethics hackathon for students in March, and a student research competition in April!
Founded in 2019 with an initial gift from the Henry L. Hillman Foundation, Duquesne University’s interdisciplinary Grefenstette Center takes an unflinching look at the ethical intersections between science and technology in the modern world, offering a variety of programs, courses and partnerships for students and researchers at Duquesne and throughout the Pittsburgh area. In 2022, John P. Slattery was named the inaugural director of the center.
