Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics

Artificial intelligence has the potential to make us better people, providing expert-sourced guidance to help us through difficult conversations. But the technology can also generate suspicion, leading people to question the authenticity of these interactions. An electric discussion last week, featuring Jonathan Zittrain and Carissa Véliz, explored the impact of generative AI on human relationships. Navigating the various ways chatbots fill spaces between people, panelists considered AI in medicine, whether the platforms can be called empathetic, and their effectiveness in coaching and counseling roles. Read the full event write up here: https://lnkd.in/eWT7dPDa

Stay tuned for details about the winning projects from our successful instructional design hackathon today!

We are delighted to welcome our 2026-2027 Fellows-in-Residence and Civil Discourse Fellows! This group brings together exemplary scholars across philosophy, law, political science, and public policy to examine how communication, institutions, and technology shape social and political life. Read about each of them here: https://lnkd.in/egSwVT3E

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MAY 15! Do you want to engage in civil dialogues with students across the country? Are you eager to hear from people with different perspectives from your own? If so, the Intercollegiate Civil Disagreement Partnership Fellowship might be for you! The Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, in collaboration with five other institutions, is offering a year-long hybrid experience, beginning in the summer, that develops students' abilities to engage in and lead conversations about difficult, important topics across political difference at their respective universities and beyond. Harvard University undergraduates from all fields of study and political identities are encouraged to apply. Learn more about the program and apply here: https://lnkd.in/ePVEP5cB

What a wonderful experience to be in Harvard, hosted by the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics (thank you!)! It was amazing to catch up with Sushma R. and to exchange #books with the incredible Dr. Joy Buolamwini! One of the perks of academic life - meeting incredible people. #Prophecy

Join us this Monday, April 27 at 4:30pm EST to hear Carissa Véliz in person for a panel discussion with Jonathan Zittrain as they explore AI and human relationships. Free and open to the public, register below. Can't make it to Cambridge? Tune into the livestream on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/ewZr_7kg

Calling all undergraduates, graduate students and young scholars from any discipline in Boston area colleges and universities! Sign up to design a lesson plan or game that helps students engage with difficult, contested, or uncomfortable conversations. This full day instructional design "hackathon" will take place on May 1, 2026 in Cambridge, MA. Projects will be evaluated by our panel of judges, including Marta McAlister, Director of Gemini Education at Google; Jake Fay, Director of Education at the Constructive Dialogue Institute; and Eric Beerbohm, Alfred and Rebecca Lin Professor of Government Harvard University and the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics Faculty Director. https://lnkd.in/eWUDk3de

As generative AI systems increasingly shape how people learn, work, seek companionship, and experience solitude, we ask: what happens to human relationships when technologies can meet us in the very forms of interaction through which those relationships have traditionally been constituted? How might the availability of fluent, responsive, non-human interlocutors reshape the value we place on the effort, vulnerability, and reciprocity required by relationships with other humans—and, in turn, our understanding of the human condition itself? Join Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard University and Carissa Véliz of University of Oxford on Monday, April 27 at 4:30pm EST to explore this new territory. Moderated by Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics Faculty Director Eric Beerbohm. Free and open to the public, register below. Can't make it to Cambridge? Tune into the livestream on YouTube. https://lnkd.in/ewZr_7kg

Rule number one of Isaac Asimov’s “Three Rules of Robotics” states: A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm. A new study by Sarah Hubbard, David Kidd (our Chief Assessment Scientist), and Andrei Stupu, PhD, indicates that this rule may actually guide present day AI models in their ethical decision making. In a new article, “Crocodile Tears: Can the Ethical-Moral Intelligence of AI Models be Trusted?,” published in AI and Ethics, Hubbard et al. detail their testing of four AI models: GPT, DeepSeek, Llama, and Claude, on a range of ethical dilemmas. They compared the AI responses with human responses to determine the ethical-moral intelligence of AI. Their research uncovers some potentially troubling conclusions. Read more: https://lnkd.in/e_ZdtitK

In her new book, Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI, University of Oxford professor Carissa Véliz explains how putting too much stock in others’ predictions makes us vulnerable to charlatans, con artists, dubious technology, and self-deception. Join us in Cambridge on Monday, April 27 at 12pm EST for an Ethics Exchange event featuring Professor Véliz to learn how AI is more likely to increase risk than decrease it, and several other insights drawn from her research. Register here: https://lnkd.in/eNUkeuKg