WIAS Visiting Researcher Seminar: “How to Think about AI agents”（3/12）
Details
AI agents increasingly make decisions and produce real-world consequences. This talk addresses how such systems should be conceptualized: as a genuinely new ontological or moral category, as quasi-human agents, or as entities embedded within extended chains of human responsibility. The talk argues that questions of categorization raise methodological as well as theoretical challenges, as simply asking people direct questions may not reflect how they think about increasingly diverse and common AI systems. Drawing on approaches in the cognitive anthropology of religion, the talk examines how to better understand how AI agents are categorized, and how responsibility is attributed to them, highlighting the need for combined philosophical and empirical approaches.
Speaker
DEROY, Ophelia,
Professor, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany
Date & Time
March 12, 2026 (Thu.) 1:30 -3:00 pm
Venue
Room #712, Building #52, Nishi-Waseda Campus, Waseda University
Language
English
Prospected Audience
Undergraduate, Graduate, Researchers, Faculty members, General audience
Organizer
WATANABE, Katsumi,
Professor, Faculty of Science and Engineering
Co-Organizer
Waseda Institute for Advanced Studies (WIAS)
