AI ETHICS LAB
UC Davis Department of Philosophy
The AI Ethics Lab is an instructor-led, undergraduate-centered research lab directed by Assistant Professor Qiannan Li of the UC Davis Department of Philosophy. It is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the Ethics–AI–HPC: Multidisciplinary Research and Education initiative, and by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the UC Davis Center for Artificial Intelligence and Experimental Futures. The lab brings together undergraduates from all majors to research artificial intelligence, ethics, and what it means to live a good life in a technological world.
Our projects focus on AI systems that people have started to rely on in personal parts of their lives. These include companions for older adults, griefbots that imitate people who have died, chatbots people ask for advice, persuasive AI in medical decisions, and language models that reproduce social biases. We ask what these systems owe the people who use them, what goods they can and cannot provide, and who is responsible when they cause harm.
We treat philosophy as an active, collaborative practice. Students work in small groups with close mentorship from Professor Li. They read the relevant literature, come up with their own questions, develop arguments, and write them up as papers. Some groups also run surveys or work with computer scientists. The goal is for students to become independent philosophical researchers who contribute to philosophical discussion and bring ethical questions back into their own fields, whether technical, scientific, social, or creative.