The Arthur F. and Barbara Gianelli Annual Lecture in the Philosophy of Science is dedicated to promoting and advancing the creative synthesis of current scientific knowledge and the Catholic intellectual tradition. Throughout his academic career, Arthur F. Gianelli, Ph.D., inspired both his students and colleagues with his intellectual curiosity, professional and personal integrity, and fearless faith. This lecture series carries on Dr. Gianelli’s work by providing a forum in which prominent voices address the challenges of current scientific knowledge to religious faith and humanistic values.
Contact
Teresa Delgado, Ph.D., Dean and Professor of Theology and Religious Studies
St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
718-990-6068
delgadot@stjohns.edu
The Arthur F. and Barbara Gianelli Annual Lecture 2025
Paper co-authored by Seth Lazar (ANU) and Ned Howells-Whitaker (Pittsburgh)
Seth Lazar, D.Phil., Professor of Philosophy, Australian National University
Abstract:
Rapid progress in artificial intelligence (AI) research means that highly capable AI agents are on the horizon. They are so capable, in fact, that once-speculative questions about the possibility of AI agents having moral and political status must now be addressed with some urgency.
Many think our answers to these questions will turn on whether such agents will be sentient; however, we argue that even nonsentient agents could potentially satisfy one prominent and plausible criterion for political personhood—John Rawls’ “Political Conception of the Person” (PCP). We argue that the PCP does not—and should not—presuppose sentience. We also argue that in the near term it will indeed be possible to design AI agents that are persons according to the PCP.
We consider two possible upshots. One takes the conclusion as a reductio: the PCP should be either revised or rejected so that near-term nonsentient AI agents are definitively excluded from political status.
The other acknowledges that AI agents that satisfy the PCP would be a significant change in the moral landscape—demanding not so much an expansion of the moral circle as drawing a new moral Venn diagram. We show that egalitarian political philosophy, which has hitherto benefited from humanity’s relative uniformity, would have to be rethought for societies that include both natural and radically different AI persons.
Seth Lazar, D.Phil. is a Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University, a Distinguished Research Fellow of the University of Oxford Institute for Ethics in AI, a fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a Senior AI Advisor to the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. He founded the Machine Intelligence and Normative Theory (MINT) Lab, where he leads research projects in the normative philosophy of computing and AI safety. He has worked and published widely on the ethics of war, risk, and AI. His book, Connected by Code: How AI Structures, and Governs, the Ways We Relate, based on his 2023 Tanner Lecture on AI and Human Values, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
Dr. Lazar earned his B.A. (First Class Honours) in English Language and Literature at Wadham College, Oxford University, and his M.Phil. and D.Phil. in Politics (Political Theory) at Oxford University.
Queens Campus
Thursday, April 24
D’Angelo Center, Room 206
1:50 p.m. (Common Hour)
For additional information, please call 718-990-6378.