Philosophy of AI Presentation Series 2025

Hybrid presentation series with the aim of popularizing the most recent topics of discussion in the philosophy of AI, to the use and interests of experts across all disciplines that has something to say about digital innovation.

The theme of this series of presentations is to present various debates in the philosophy of AI. The talks will be offered by experts coming from several disciplines around AI and digital innovation, and the aim of the series is generally to foster cross-pollination and interaction between different fields. This includes (not exhaustively) philosophy, engineering, information systems, informatics, law, political sciences, sociology.

The conference is funded by the DSI Ethics Community and hosted in the Digital Library Space.

1. Session

March 18,  3:00 – 4:30 pm,

Online

https://uzh.zoom.us/j/67456274806?pwd=fOZJb9QpzwzdPI1IsUZJaxKbybpI7V.1

Speaker: Christoph Burtscher (Visiting fellow at Henley Business School , PhD at Universität Innsbruck)

Legitimacy of Non-Complaint IT Use

My legitimacy paper is influenced by my research area of non-compliant IT use (or some would call it shadow IT or cyberslacking). Based on mainly management but also some IS literature, I used an organizing and then broad-theorizing review approach to analyze the available literature and synthesize the understanding of legitimacy resulting in a thematic map through thematic analysis. In the theorizing review, I applied a praxeological neo-sociotechnical system lens to transfer the legitimacy phenomenon to the IS discipline, specifically to non-compliant IT use, developing a technology legitimacy framework with boundary conditions, legitimacy propositions, and a model.

The Meaningfulness Gaps in AI Ethics

As AI systems increasingly take over tasks once performed by humans, a new kind of question is coming into focus: What does this shift mean for living a meaningful life? While much of the discussion in AI ethics has focused on individual well-being and moral concerns, the issue of meaningfulness—or “meaning in life,” as some prefer to call it—has only recently begun to attract serious attention. So far, many contributions express skepticism and raise a range of concerns regarding the use of AI. A substantial portion of these concerns can be grouped under what this paper refers to as the “meaningfulness gap.” Although this gap is frequently acknowledged, the literature still lacks a clear and systematic framework for analyzing it. This talk aims to address that gap by presenting a guide for understanding the various forms of meaningfulness gaps that may emerge when AI replaces human roles. These gaps can be categorized, among other things, by where they occur, what they involve, how significant they are, and how they should be evaluated. Along the way, the talk also offers reflections on the severity of certain meaningfulness gaps and provides some initial suggestions for how they might be addressed. The talk concludes by summarizing the proposed guide and responding to common objections with clarifying remarks.