The “Technology and Ethics in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI): An Interdisciplinary Dialogue” Symposium took place at the International Meeting Room of SUSTech last weekend. The seminar was co-organized by Shenzhen Computational Intelligence Key Laboratory, SUSTech’s Robotic and Artificial Intelligence Research Center, and SUSTech Humanities Center, which invited 18 important scholars as guest speakers. Nine of them are AI experts in China while the other nine are well-known social scientists.

With Humanities Center Chen Yuehong serving as host, President Chen Shiyi, Research Office Director Zhao Yusheng, and Director of Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSED) Yao Xin attended the seminar.

Yao Xin delivered the opening speech. After welcoming the all the guests, he hoped that this seminar would be a good opportunity to discuss how AI has been challenging and trespassing ethical boundaries and what we should do about it.

Chen Yuehong emphasized that integrating artificial intelligence with the academic disciplines associated with the humanities and social sciences is an important task to achieve interdisciplinary research outcomes, an academic trend that China must strive to catch up. As a response, he helped open the Computational Humanities Research Center within the Robotic and Artificial Intelligence Research Center. The Computational Humanities Research Center will host a seminar in its own right next year.

16 scholars then made engaging presentations on the integration of AI and humanities. They approached the topic from different fields, such as computer science, robotics, biology, finance, literature, linguistics, ethics, health, medicine, and science and fantasy. These scholars reached the consensus that AI is a double-edged sword, where the key issue is using artificial intelligence in the right way. The consensus agreed that they need to keep a close eye on how AI pushes ethical and legal boundaries while utilizing the power and value in humanities to guide AI to the right track.

President Chen appreciated all the guests’ support for SUSTech, spoke highly of the high-quality reports they presented, and offered his opinions on AI and humanities. He believed that ethical and technological boundaries would prevent any part of society or the world from taking over human beings. He hoped that we could reach an ultimate and constant balance in which people could fully utilize advanced technologies without being controlled or replaced by them.

Many rounds of heated discussion took place throughout the two-day seminar. All scholars and guest present exchanged surprising findings, which they believed were hard to achieve at non-interdisciplinary seminars.