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“Value alignment”—the challenge of ensuring that the outputs of artificial intelligence and other machine systems reflect and respect human values—has emerged as an urgent concern as computational technologies increasingly encroach upon central domains of human decision-making. Existing strategies for alignment fail to account for the phenomenon of “hard choices”—cases that are distinct from uncertainty, incompleteness, or indeterminacy. Instead, they operate on the assumption that, when faced with a choice between A and B, a system must either select A, select B, or arbitrarily choose between them.
Human life, however, does not conform to such tidy structures. If value alignment is to be meaningfully achieved, a different approach to AI design is required—one that accommodates the reality of hard choices. In this talk, Professor Chang presents an alternative framework for AI design that enables systems to recognise hard choices and incorporates human input in a novel and essential way. Progress toward the development of such systems—both symbolic and large language model–based—is already underway.
The Myint Zan Law and Philosophy Lecture is an annual lecture made possible by the generosity of the donor, Professor Myint Zan. Each lecture is presented by an outstanding and distinguished scholar working in law, philosophy, or at their intersection, and helps build valuable bridges across the university and beyond the academy to address fundamental challenges facing humankind.
A reception will follow in the foyer after Professor Chang's lecture. Please indicate your dietary restrictions in the registration form.
About the Speaker
Ruth Chang is Chair and Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow at University College, Oxford. Prior to this, she was Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She has also held visiting positions at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at the University of Chicago Law School.
Before her academic career in philosophy, she worked as a law associate on a pro bono death penalty case, as well as on several product liability and medical malpractice cases. She holds a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and an A.B. from Dartmouth College.
Her current research focuses on the nature of normativity, the structure of values and reasons, practical reason, agency, rationality, population ethics, love, commitment, decision-making, and the self.
Personal webpage: www.ruthchang.net
About the Donor
Professor Myint Zan is an ANU alumnus (Master of International Law, 1984). From 1990 to 2016 he taught law and law-related subjects at Universities in Malaysia, Australia, the South Pacific and the United States. The subjects he taught include international law, administrative law, human rights law, aspects of Southeast Asian and South Pacific Law. From 2006 to 2016, he taught Jurisprudence (Legal Philosophy) at the Faculty of Law, Multimedia University, Malacca, Malaysia.
He has contributed funds to ANU, University of Michigan Law School (another of his alma maters) and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Abramson Cancer Center (the alma mater of his late medical doctor parents: contributions are to the fields of orthopaedics and oncology).
At ANU, he established in perpetuity the Myint Zan prize in Law Studies/International Law for undergraduate students at the College of Law, and the Myint Zan prize in Philosophy of Science for undergraduate students at the School of Philosophy.
Between 2019 and 2023, five post-doctoral scholars visited the ANU School of Philosophy on a Myint Zan Philosophy Fellowship.
He also established the Myint Zan Fellowship in the Master of Asian and Pacific Studies at ANU for the years 2023 to 2026. He established the Myint Zan Law and Philosophy Lecture at the ANU School of Philosophy for a period of five years in 2021. The inaugural Myint Zan Law and Philosophy Lecture was delivered by Judge Hilary Charlesworth of the International Court of Justice in August 2023.
Location
Speakers
- Professor Ruth Chang (University of Oxford)
Contact
- Nic Southwood