Talk 1: Rethinking Research Ethics in the Age of Generative AI

Abstract: This seminar delves into ethical and conceptual issues surrounding Generative AI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), in the context of research misconduct—data fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. We will examine how the traditional definitions and guidelines, such as the Federal Research Misconduct Policy's framing of plagiarism as the appropriation of another person's work, become  problematic when generative algorithms are involved in producing both course-required and scholarly content.

Speaker Bio: Thomas Powers is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Legal Studies Program at the University of Delaware. He is also the founding director of the Center for Science, Ethics, and Public Policy. Dr. Powers specializes in the ethics of emerging technologies.

Talk 2: Learning Before Teaching: Against AI Old Fartism

Every generation has its old farts: books will rot our memories; no one with a slide-rule will know their thirteen times table, and spelling is dead if students use word processors. Sometimes the old farts are right – for me, 7 x 13 = 10 x 7 plus 3 x 7, and who cares? Other times they are wrong – my spelling was even worse before the immediate feedback of autocorrect. In either case, students who learn to use all available resources effectively, including AI, will be at a big advantage. Our duty as teachers, therefore, is to support students in that process, resisting the temptation to limit learning to tools that happened to be available ‘in my young day.’

Speaker Bio: A former veterinary surgeon, Dr. Greene completed master’s degrees in philosophy at the Universities of Hull and Bristol in the U.K., then his Ph.D. at Stanford University. After a Greenwall Fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, he has been in the Philosophy Department at the University of Delaware since 2004.