Abby Jaques / Political Theory Workshop

Abby completed her Ph.D. in philosophy at MIT, then remained there as a postdoctoral associate in philosophy and the Ethics of AI Project Lead for the MIT Quest for Intelligence. Her research is in moral and political philosophy and the philosophy of action, with a current emphasis on questions about our relationship to technology. In her dissertation she developed a new theory of the nature of intentional action, and explored its moral, political and epistemological upshots; she's now extending the view to help us understand artificial agents, and what happens to our own agency when we engage with them. She has also recently developed a new, practice-focused method of ethics pedagogy for engineers, and contributed to a series of grant-funded efforts aimed at democratizing AI through formal and informal education. Mainly, she hopes to help us figure out what to do about AI before AI decides for itself. Abby's interdisciplinary ethics fellowship is in partnership with Apple University.

The Political Theory Workshop offers faculty and other scholars an opportunity to present "in progress" or recently completed work to a diverse audience from political science, philosophy, law, and other social sciences and humanities. Workshop papers come from all areas of political theory, including normative and positive theory, legal theory, and the history of political thought. Papers are circulated ten days before the seminar. Participants are expected to read the paper before the workshop. Each session begins with comments and questions on the paper by a discussant, a brief response from the author, followed by a general discussion.