Cansu Canca

Cansu is a philosopher and the founder+director of the AI Ethics Lab, where she leads teams of computer scientists, philosophers, and legal scholars to provide ethics analysis and guidance to researchers and practitioners. She is also an AI Ethics and Governance Expert consultant for the United Nations, working with UNICRI Centre for AI & Robotics and the Interpol in building a “Toolkit for Responsible AI Innovation in Law Enforcement”. Cansu has a Ph.D. in philosophy specializing in applied ethics. She primarily works on ethics of technology, having previously worked on ethics and health. She serves as an ethics expert in various ethics, advisory, and editorial boards.

Prior to the AI Ethics Lab, she was on the full-time faculty at the University of Hong Kong, and an ethics researcher at the Harvard Law School, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, National University of Singapore, Osaka University, and the World Health Organization. She was listed among the “30 Influential Women Advancing AI in Boston” and the “100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics”. She is also the first technology and AI ethicist in Turkey.

Selected Talks:

Applying Ethics to AI Technologies | MIT Sloan Business School | January 2020 & 2021 & 2022

Ethics of AI Research: Implementation & Implications | PRIM&R 2021 Advancing Ethical Research Conference | Online, November 2021

Sparks Forum! | CERN | Geneva, September 2021

Ethical & Legal Considerations for Research Involving AI | U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services | Online, July 2021

AI Ethics & Governance | Iron Mountain, Executive Exchange | Online, June 2021

Leveraging New Technologies for Peace | UN Innovation Cell & Antalya Diplomacy Forum | Online, May 2021

Creating Ethical Online Content | Nanyang Technical University (Singapore) | Online, November 2020

The Role of AI in Post-Pandemic Era | Harvard Global Health Institute + MIT Critical Data + Novartis Foundation | Online, July 2020

Artificial Intelligence & Human Subject Protection | CITI Program | Online, May 2020

How to Solve AI’s Ethical Puzzles | TEDxCambridge | Boston, November 2019

A Practical Guide to Integrating AI Ethics | MIT Technology Review | Singapore, November 2019

IRBs for AI: An Unintelligent Choice | University of Oxford, Future of Humanity Institute | Oxford, November 2019

AI, Ethics, and Public Safety | U.S. Department of Justice | Memphis, September 2019

Law, Ethics, and AI | Harvard Law School | Cambridge, April 2019

Integrating Ethics into AI Research & Development | Harvard Business School | Boston, February 2019

Selected Writings:

Did You Find It on the Internet? Ethical Complexities of Search Engine Rankings | Perspectives on Digital Humanism, 2021

Operationalizing AI Ethics Principles | Communications of the ACM, 2020

AI and Ethics in Human Subject Research | CITI Program, 2020

Why ‘Mandatory Privacy-Preserving Digital Contact Tracing’ is the Ethical Measure against COVID-19 | Medium, 2020

Human Rights & AI Ethics – Why Ethics Cannot be Replaced by the UDHR | United Nations University, Centre for Policy Research, 2019

A New Model for AI Ethics in R&D | Forbes AI, 2019

A User-Focused Transdisciplinary Research Agenda for AI-Enabled Health Tech Governance | Harvard University Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, 2019

Machine Learning as the Enemy of Science? Not Really. | Harvard Law School, Bill of Health, 2018

Voice Assistants, Health, and Ethical Design | Harvard Law School, Bill of Health, 2017