Abby Jaques

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.