COMPAS: Conversations on Morality, Politics, and Society

Language shapes how we interact with and think about AI. Aaron Yarmel, Nanna Inie, and Webb Keane discuss how we talk to and about AI, and how that impacts the way we live our lives and treat those around us.

This year’s COMPAS series is focused on Humanity in the Age of AI. It aims to bring a wide range of voices into conversation, and to think with clarity, curiosity, and rigor about the puzzles of flourishing alongside AI. 

Panelists: 

Nanna Inie

Webb Keane 

Aaron Yarmel

Articles and Resources: 

• De-anthropomorphizing “AI”: From wishful mnemonics to accurate nomenclature by Nanna Inie, Peter Zukerman, & Emily M. Bender
• Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination by Webb Keane
• Use of a Robotic Seal as a Therapeutic Tool to Improve Dementia Symptoms: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial
• The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor by George Lakoff
• Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines by Sherry Turkle 
• Catharsis theory 

This episode was produced by Jennifer McCord and Carrie Welsh. Music comes from Blue Dot Sessions. 

COMPAS is a project of the Center for Ethics and Human Values at The Ohio State University.

AI Transparency: In the process of making this episode, we used an AI chatbot to add to a list of potential panelists, and the episode transcript was generated using an AI transcription tool.