Unit for the Ethics of Technology
Centre for Applied Ethics
Unit for the Ethics of Technology
People
Head of Unit: Tanya de Villiers-Botha
Dr Tanya de Villiers-Botha is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Head of the Unit for the Ethics of Technology of the Centre for Applied Ethics. She holds an MA and DPhil in Philosophy from Stellenbosch University. Her research interests include philosophy of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and applied ethics, with specific focus on AI ethics.
Fabio Tollon | Research Associate
Dr Fabio Tollon is a philosopher of technology with interests in the ethics of AI, moral responsibility, and free will. He is a postdoctoral researcher part of the BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) program at the University of Edinburgh. He is also a research fellow at the unit for the ethics of technology at Stellenbosch university and a research associate at the Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research (CAIR) at the university of Pretoria. Fabio’s work has been published in journals such as Ethics and Information Technology, European Journal of Analytic Philosophy, and AI & Society.
Niël Conradie | Research Associate
niel.conradie@humtec.rwth-aachen.de
Dr Niël Conradie is a postdoctoral researcher working in the Applied Ethics Group of the Department of Society, Technology, and Human Factors at RWTH Aachen University, in Germany. He earned his PhD in philosophy in 2017, focussed on the intersection of responsibility and action theory, at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Before this he received his MA in philosophy and BA at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. His research interests encompass topics from Action Theory, Responsibility, Ethics of Technology, and AI Ethics.
Lize Alberts | Research Associate
Lize Alberts is a doctoral candidate in Computer Science at the University of Oxford in the Human Centred Computing group. Her work is funded by a graduate scholarship from the Responsible Technology Institute. Her research centres on improving how automated systems treat people in interactions, particularly ones that behave as social actors. Her work involves exploring what it means to treat users in ways that are respectful and supportive of their autonomy, as well as identifying dark patterns in interfaces that utilise social cues to manipulate user behaviour.
Lize has an MA by Thesis degree in Philosophy from Stellenbosch University, focusing on embodied cognition and computational linguistics. Her master’s thesis combines a theoretical review of work in cognitive science and philosophy of mind/language with a review of current technical approaches in natural language processing (NLP), to distinguish between different senses of language ‘understanding’. She also holds a BA Honours degree in Philosophy from Stellenbosch University, and her dissertation was published in a peer-reviewed journal. Preceding that, she graduated top of her class with a BA in Humanities, obtaining double the required credits with four majors (Philosophy, English, Social Anthropology, History of Art) at North-West University, Pochefstroom.
Lize is a founding member of the Responsible Technology Institute’s Student Network based at the University of Oxford, and is currently working as a student researcher at Google, London.
Nate Walker | Research Associate
nathan_walker@mail.harvard.edu
Dr Nathan C. Walker is the president of 1791 Delegates, a nonprofit organization named after the year the U.S. Bill of Rights was ratified. He is an award-winning instructor of First Amendment and human rights law at Rutgers University, where he teaches AI Ethics & Law as an Honors College faculty fellow. He is also an Expert AI Trainer for OpenAI’s Human Data Team, providing expertise in First Amendment and human rights law to ensure the safety and accuracy of frontier models.
Currently, Nate is a contributing researcher to the Munich Declaration of AI & Human Rights and a research fellow at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, affiliated with the Centre for Applied Ethics and the School for Data Science and Computational Thinking. He has previously served as a visiting academic at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford and as a resident research fellow in law and religion at Harvard University.
He is the author of five books on law, education, and religion, and has presented his research at the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the U.S. Senate. In November 2016, Publishers Weekly listed his book Cultivating Empathy as one of “six books for a post-election spiritual detox.”
Nate has three learning disabilities and earned his doctorate in First Amendment law from Columbia University, where he also completed two master’s degrees in higher education administration with a focus on finance and education technology. An ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, Reverend Nate holds a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary.
Born in Munich, Germany, and raised in the Lake Tahoe area of Northern Nevada, U.S., Nate enjoys learning American Sign Language. He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with his husband, Vikram Paralkar. Learn more at https://sites.rutgers.edu/walker/
Filippos Stamatiou | Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr Filippos Stamatiou works at the intersection of Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, and Cognitive Science. He aims to understand how we can use machines to create better lives for humans. He is interested in Ethics of AI, Moral Responsibility, Luck, and Philosophy of Action.
Filippos is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Philosophy, Stellenbosch University. Previously he was a Research Associate at the University of Copenhagen. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Copenhagen, an MA in Cognition & Communication, and a BA in Economics
