Information is the fundamental component of the technological advances that characterise our time. Increasing technological interactions between people, organisations, and artefacts generate, transmit, and process immense quantities of data about the social and physical world at an unprecedented rate and scale.
We are investigating the conceptual aspects of such radical transformations of reality brought about by this information revolution.
With new technologies shaping and being shaped by society, it’s important that we encourage beneficial developments whilst not losing sight of the essential rights and values upon which democratic societies are built.
Professor Sandra Wachter
Professor of Technology and Regulation
New technologies shape, and are shaped by, society. In choosing how to govern emerging technologies, we must encourage beneficial developments while not losing sight of the essential rights and values upon which democratic societies are built. International debate on the legal and ethical governance of AI and other emerging technologies increasingly recognises the need for an interdisciplinary approach, most commonly thought to require expertise in law, ethics, and computer science or machine learning at a minimum.
Within GET we investigate how to design, deploy, and govern the new technologies that pose novel challenges across law, philosophy, computer science, and related disciplines. Our research projects include issues such as data protection and inferential analytics, algorithmic bias, fairness, diversity and non-discrimination as well as explainable and accountable AI. These are areas where interdisciplinary thinking is pivotal.
This project, led by OII researchers including a legal scholar, ethicist, and machine learning specialist, takes a holistic and multi-disciplinary approach to governance to investigate what:
So far, articles from this project have been published in a diverse set of journals, including Nature Machine Learning, Columbia Business Law Review, and International Data Privacy Law.
Based on a case-study analysis of bias in the Chicago Crime Prediction Algorithm, this project explores the extent to which evidence of algorithmic bias can be used to guide policy responses to the societal disparities replicated in these tools.
This project will evaluate the effectiveness of accountability tools addressing explainability, bias, and fairness in AI. A ‘trustworthiness auditing meta-toolkit’ will be developed and validated via case studies in healthcare and open science.
This project transforms the concept of counterfactual explanations into a practically useful tool for explaining automated black-box decisions.
12 March 2024
Oxford Internet Institute researchers are studying how to make Large Language Models (LLMs) more diverse by broadening the human feedback that informs them.
11 March 2024
New research finds prepayment cards provided to UK asylum seekers are having highly detrimental impacts on their wellbeing.
8 March 2024
As we mark International Women’s Day, Professor Ekaterina Hertog, spoke to us about AI, the automation in the home and the impact of such technologies on women in the workplace and wider society.
TechCrunch, 09 March 2024
Claire Leibowicz is the head of the AI and media integrity program at the Partnership on AI (PAI), the industry group backed by Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft and others committed to the “responsible” deployment of AI tech.
TechCrunch, 09 March 2024
Interview with Professor Sandra Wachter as part of TechCrunch Women in AI Profile series.
Business Insider, 02 March 2024
Smart vending machines were found to be using facial recognition technology on a college campus.
Former Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information
Luciano Floridi‘s research areas are the philosophy of Information, information and computer ethics, and the philosophy of technology.
Professor Luciano Floridi is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the OII, as well as the Director of the Digital Ethics Lab. He is also Distinguished Research Fellow of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics of the Faculty of Philosophy, and Research Associate and Fellow in Information Policy of the Department of Computer Science.
His research concerns primarily Information and Computer Ethics (aka Digital Ethics), the Philosophy of Information, and the Philosophy of Technology. Other research interests include Epistemology, Philosophy of Logic, and the History and Philosophy of Scepticism. He has published over 50 papers in these areas, in many anthologies and peer-reviewed journals. His works have been translated into many languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
His books include a series of books on the foundations of the philosophy of information published by Oxford University Press, most recently including ‘The Logic of Information’ (2019). At the OII, he has worked on a number of projects, including a John Fell Fund supported investigation into the ethics of biomedical big data. He teaches on the ‘The Philosophy and Ethics of Information’ course, as part of the OII’s MSc in the Social Science of the Internet.
Professor of Technology and Regulation
Professor Sandra Wachter is Professor of Technology and Regulation focusing on law and ethics of AI, Big Data, and robotics as well as Internet regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford
Director of Research, Associate Professor, Senior Research Fellow
Professor Brent Mittelstadt is a data ethicist and philosopher specializing in AI ethics, professional ethics, and technology law and policy. He is the founder/coordinator of the Governance of Emerging Technologies (GET) programme.
Professor of Digital Ethics and Defence Technologies, DPhil Programme Director (ICSS)
Mariarosaria Taddeo is Professor of Digital Ethics and Defence Technologies and Programme Director of the DPhil in Information, Communication and the Social Sciences at the OII.
