Join us for a talk by Larissa Bolte on February 5, 2025, at 12:45–1:45 p.m. titled “Sustainable AI: A Structural Turn.” The webinar, which you can register for now, will be held over Zoom.

Abstract

The topic of Sustainable AI has garnered more and more attention from researchers and the general public in the last few years. With this increased attention comes the realization that AI is not only a tool that can be leveraged for sustainability; there is also an environmental and social cost attached to AI, meaning there needs also be consideration of the sustainability of AI itself. The fact that Sustainable AI covers both benefits and harms puts it on the map for the philosophical discipline of ethics. This talk explores how Sustainable AI has been approached as an ethical issue. In particular, it distinguishes three distinct and consecutive approaches to AI ethics and argues that Sustainable AI forms part of the still emerging third one, a structural approach. Incidentally, this structural approach moves AI ethics, sometimes but not always, into the direction of a political philosophy.