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.
19 August 2024
Professor Sandra Wachter highlights the regulatory loopholes in EU AI legislation and proposes how these can be closed to address key ethical issues around the development of AI.
7 August 2024
Leading experts in regulation and ethics at the Oxford Internet Institute, part of the University of Oxford, have identified a new type of harm created by LLMs which they believe poses long-term risks to democratic societies and needs to be addressed
1 August 2024
Researchers from the University of Oxford have identified analyses of patent-filing trends as a viable way to understand the wildlife trade’s future direction. They say that patent data can help identify future commercial trends.
Huffington Post, 27 September 2024
Mariarosaria Taddeo explains why the hacking in Lebanon is a bad precedent, both for states and citizens. "Technology is both a target and a vector for attacks," she says.
The Guardian, 25 September 2024
Many fear the arrival of tech giants such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google in the state of Querétaro will place too much of a strain on scarce water and electricity resources.
Freakonomics, 11 September 2024
Young people have been reporting a sharp rise in anxiety and depression. This maps neatly onto the global rise of the smartphone. Some researchers are convinced that one is causing the other. But how strong is the evidence?
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
Professor of Data Ethics and Policy, Director of Research
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.
