PhD position in Moral Philosophy, Conceptual Engineering, and Ethics of Emerging Technologies

Official university vacancy imported from University of Groningen. Details are presented for discovery and may change. Confirm the latest requirements and apply on the official source.

The Department of Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy at the University of Groningen is inviting applications for a fully-funded PhD position. Candidates are encouraged to submit their own research proposal that engages with questions in moral philosophy, conceptual engineering, and ethics of emerging technologies. Proposals may, for example, address themes such as conceptual ethics, meaningful human control, responsibility and control gaps, value-sensitive design, and the ethics of autonomous and AI-driven systems, as well as related questions.

What are you going to do?

Possible topics for your proposal include, though are certainly not limited to:

• How do emerging technologies challenge our moral, legal, and political concepts, and how should those concepts be revised in response?
• What makes human control over autonomous or AI-driven systems genuinely meaningful, and how should this shape their design?
• How should we understand and respond to gaps in responsibility or control created by autonomous systems?
• How can autonomous systems in public contexts be designed and governed in ways that are democratically legitimate?
• When, if ever, is it morally justified for predictive systems used by public authorities to expose some citizens to greater risks of investigation or sanction?
• Under what conditions should universities use generative AI, and how does this affect power relations in institutional contexts?

We look forward to receiving innovative and thought-provoking research proposals that engage with these questions or related topics at the intersection of these areas.