TDLC scientists Drs. Andrea Chiba, Janet Wiles, Pat Churchland and Terry Sejnowski were awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to create a cross-discipinary network of scientists and ethicists to consider the ethical use of a select set of emerging technologies for application to the science of learning, education, rehabilitation, medicine, and augmented humans.

In March 2016, they held an international symposium, TOMORROW’S WORLD: The Ethical Use of Emerging Technologies Symposium, to bring technologists, scientists, ethicists, and policymakers together to explore the most pressing issues with respect to use of these technologies for learning, rehabilitation, and teaching. The workshop was co-sponsored by the Australian Research Council, and the Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. The event was facilitated by Roger Bingham, Director of the UCSD Science Collaboratory and the Science Network, an online science agora.

The symposium started with a welcoming dinner on the 19th, and opened on the second day with keynote talks. The rest of the workshop consisted of breaking into small working groups to address specific questions, holding sessions to aimed at providing cross-disciplinary training in science and ethics, and a forum to share the results of the working groups and address the next steps. Click here to view the event program.

Symposium organizers and their focus areas:

Roger Bingham             Public Science Forums and Media (UC San Diego)
Dr. Andrea Chiba           Behavioral Neuroscience (UC San Diego)
Dr. Janet Wiles           Complex and Intelligent Systems (University of Queensland)
Dr. Patricia Churchland Philosophy of Science and Neuroethics (UC San Diego)
Dr. Terry Sejnowski       Computational Neuroscience (Salk Institute for Biological Sciences and UC San Diego)

To continue the conversation, TDLC is holding another workshop in San Diego on November 10-11, 2016 that will feature a public forum co-sponsored by the International Society for Neuroethics as a satellite event of the Annual Meeting Of the Society for Neuroscience and a workshop at UC San Diego.

Keep your eyes out for more information about this event!

Support for the TOMORROW’S WORLD: The Ethical Use of Emerging Technologies workshop was provided by the National Science Foundation, the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center, the Australian Research Council, and the Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.