Thinking about the social value of your science? Anxious that your work should make the world a better place? Keen to understand how your ideas, combined with a practical understanding of policy, might shape a future you’d look forward to? This Friday Forum reflects upon Imperial’s strapline ‘Science for Humanity’ and gives you an opportunity to put your research into a framework for the future.
For this Friday Forum the Good Science Project is delighted to collaborate with the Centre for Environmental Policy and the Imperial Policy Forum. Together we plan an afternoon of science imagination and robust future-shaping.
The Friday Forum consists of two parts. Part One is our customary panel discussion, running from 13:00-14:00. In Part Two, running from 14:15 – 16:00, we work in groups, exploring how we can use policy, and our own values, to bring about alternative futures. Expect to work with Imperial senior faculty, with peers and other experts, and with ideas drawn from your own research.
Lunch and coffee will be served from 12:15 onwards.
Panel discussion (13:00-14:00)
- Dr Owen Jackson, director of the Imperial Policy Forum.
- Professor Gary Kass, Visiting Professor, Centre for Environmental Policy.
- Dr Natasha McCarthy, associate director, policy, Royal Academy of Engineering.
- Alyssa Gilbert, Director of Innovation at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment.
Afternoon Workshop (14:00-16:00)
Futures for discussion:
1. Health and robotics
2. Science and AI
3. Climate change
4. Biofuels
5. Bio-inspired technology
6. The brain sciences
Our discussion facilitators include:
- Professor Sam Cooper, Dyson School of Design Engineering.
- Alyssa Gilbert, Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment.
- Professor Jason Hallett, Head of Department, Chemical Engineering.
- Professor Omar Matar, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering (tbc).
This Friday Forum is timely, for this September we saw a remarkable expression of concern about the power of science. The Pope, in Paris, discussed how ‘every science risks losing its proper meaning when pursued without ethics’. Earlier in the month, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, told CBS News, after publishing a forthright blog on AI acceleration: ‘It doesn’t mean we need to panic today. It doesn’t mean we need to shut it all down, but it is a warning sign that we need to slow down.” And at the UN, Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, said “If AI is to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone,”. If AI is indeed almost the most contentious area of science at present, history shows that all of science requires moral foresight and a lively imagination.
This event is one of the Friday Forums, presented by the Good Science Project, which is a VPRE-led ethics initiative funded by Research England. Friday Forums are a series of events where staff from across the campus can come together for a brief but considered discussion of an ethical issue. All College members are invited: these are good opportunities to meet colleagues and to gain new perspectives. There is ample time for audience Q&A. Come along expecting to be involved in lively imagination to help shape humanity.