IEAI Postdocs Give Doctoral Course on AI Ethics, Moral Psychology & LLMs

On October 23rd, Dr. Auxane Boch and Dr. Franziska Poszler led the doctoral seminar titled “Introduction to Ethics of AI”, as part of the transferable skills training for doctoral candidates at the Technical University of Munich. This seminar introduced its 11 participants to key ethical challenges and opportunities associated with artificial intelligence (AI). Existing guidelines and practical recommendations for the responsible design and use of AI systems were presented, with a particular focus on diversity and fairness in AI programming, the psychological impact of AI systems and strategies for embedding ethical principles into AI systems.

In the morning session, Dr. Boch introduced AI ethics, covering theoretical foundations and thinking, cultural considerations and the imperative of diversity and inclusion. Dr. Poszler illustrated how ethical principles could be operationalized and integrated into the decision-making of AI systems, drawing on the use case of autonomous vehicles and the results from the ANDRE project.

In the afternoon session, Dr. Boch gave an introduction to the ethical, psychological and cultural impacts of AI systems, equipping students to critically assess how technologies like LLMs, social agents and immersive media shape human experience and society. She shared insights from the PSAIS and alignAI projects and reflected on which values we should consider to integrate into technology. Dr. Poszler followed with an in-depth exploration of the use cases focusing on LLM-based chatbots as moral dialog partners. She shared insights from the MoralPLai project’s research and showcased a video excerpt from its final output – the performance of the play The Third Voice.

The seminar combined lecture-style sessions with interactive activities such as group work, use-case discussions and brainstorming exercises to explore how the topic of AI ethics connects and can be applied within the doctoral students’ own research projects.

Read more about the Transferable Skills Training offered by the TUM Graduate School: https://www.gs.tum.de/en/gs/qualification-career/transferable-skills-training/.