Annual Tech Ethics Symposium & Student Poster Contest

2022 Theme: How Can Algorithms Be Ethical? Finding Solutions through Dialogue

Each Fall, the Grefenstette Center hosts a one-day conference on a particular aspect of tech ethics. The most recent symposium was held on October 28, 2022 and featured a wide range of excellent speakers, highlighted by a conversation between Dr. Alondra Nelson, Deputy Assistant to the President, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Bishop Paul Tighe, Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education.

The symposium also includes a graduate and undergraduate student poster competition each year, with prizes for the top two posters in each student category! 

Browse the details of the 2022 symposium and poster contest below, and stay tuned for news about the upcoming 2023 symposium!

Watch all the Symposium sessions.

Symposium Sessions

  • Moderated by John P. Slattery, Director of the Grefenstette Center
  • Alondra Nelson, Deputy Assistant to the President, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
  • Bishop Paul Tighe, Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education
  • Moderated by David Wasieleski, Albert Paul Viragh Professor of Business Ethics in the Palumbo-Donahue School of Business at Duquesne University
  • Nathan Colaner, Senior Instructor and Director of Business Analytics, and Managing Director, Initiative in Ethics and Transformative Technologies, Seattle University
  • Anima Anandkumar, Director of Machine Learning, NVIDIA; Bren Professor of Computing, Caltech
  • Moderated by Paul Scherz, Associate Professor of Moral Theology and Ethics in the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America
  • Irina Raicu, Director of the Internet Ethics Program, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University
  • Philip Butler, Assistant Professor of Theology and Black Posthuman Artificial Intelligence Systems, Partner Director of AI Institute, Iliff School of Theology  
  • Moderated by Florence Chee, Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Program Director of the Center for Digital Ethics and Policy at Loyola University Chicago
  • Abhishek Gupta, Founder and Principal Researcher at the Montreal AI Ethics Institute
  • Beth Schwanke, Executive director of the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security
  • Moderated by John P. Slattery, Director of the Grefenstette Center

Student Poster Contest Winners

Grand Prize: Alicia DeVos - Toward User-Driven Algorithm Auditing: Investigating Users' Strategies for Uncovering Harmful Algorithmic Behavior

Honorable Mention: David Gray Widder - Practitioner Perspectives on AI Ethics

Grand Prize: Aine Heron, Tamara Sioui, Maria Intong, and Rachel Burkholder - Bridging the Digital Divide

Honorable Mention: Caitlyn Brannon - Clinical Ethics Seen with Machine Learning in Healthcare

Rachel Alexander and Alicia D'Acunto - Robot Assisted Surgery

Mia Bartoles - Ethical Considerations of Patient Portals

Bridget Bruni - How Can Algorithms Be Ethical?

Blake Bucenec - Social Media, or Social Experiment?

Abigail Bull and Maggie Brown - Is Your Phone Listening?

Giulia Adele Dinicola and Scott Helstad - Moral Application of SNAP-II and SNAPPE-II in Neonatal Intensive Care Units

Rebecca Donnelly - Facial Recognition Systems

Johnathan Dragisich and Preston Muha - The Ethics Behind Self Driven Vehicles

Celia Dugger and Cassandra Waskiewicz - Can automatic speech recognition software be an ethically effective resource for individuals learning a second language?

Megan Elliott and Lauren Wagner - The Ethical Implications of AI in the Workplace

Chloe Eubank and Paige Salmon - Impact of AI Applications on the Attitudes of Acute, Chronic, and Healthy Patients

Lydia Freidhoff - The Ethical Challenges of Utilizing Artificial Intelligence in Patient Care

Eliyahu Gasson - Ethical Use of Algorithms in Journalism

Lucas Guernon - Can Artificial Intelligence Operate Free of Bias?

Mary Kate Kahl - Artificial Intelligence and Minimum Wage Jobs

Tori Kenny-Gates - Conscious Clicking - "Our Loss of Privacy"

Liu Leqi, Charvi Rastogi, Kenneth Holstein, and Hoda Heidari - A Unifying Framework for Combining Complementary Strengths of Humans and ML toward Better Predictive Decision-Making

Abbey Massage and Lauren Palfey - Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

Paphawarin Pannga and Morgan Doolittle - How Will AI Change SLP Services and Practice?

Antonya Prior - Alexa, What are you doing?

Grace Raup - Ethical Algorithmic Decision-Making in Health Care

Jamie Riggs - Should We Let Artificial Intelligence Take the Wheel?

Penelope Schreffler and Mara Dimond - The Benefits of Artificial Intelligence in Speech Language Pathology

Kristina Seeton - Popular Social Media Platform, TikTok, Uses Data Mining and Algorithms to Document Information on Users

Jennifer Steele and Shelly Schlabach - MediMusic and AI in Music Therapy

Adam Trainer - Uncovering the Emotional and Semantic Anatomy of Suicide Notes Using Cognitive and Artificial Neural Networks

Madison Walker - How Tiktok Impacts Users: A Review Of Ethics And Algorithmic Social Media

John Witt - Predictive Algorithms as Psychology: The Need for Information Regulation