By MTA (external) 2026-10-06
“One way of setting about our task of building a ‘thinking machine’ would be to take a man as a whole and to try to replace all the parts of him by machinery. He would include television cameras, microphones, loudspeakers, wheels and ‘handling servo–mechanisms’ as well as some sort of ‘electronic brain’. … In order the machine should have a chance of finding things out for itself it should be allowed to roam the countryside, and the danger to the ordinary citizen would be serious.” Today it seems that the danger Turing mentions might be even more serious for women than for men. A very recent article in The Guardian reports on sex dolls equipped with AI, and describes how some owners mutilate them in the cruellest possible ways, often “killing” them. As the article notes, research on this phenomenon remains inconclusive: “We currently lack robust longitudinal data to definitively prove whether such doll use is protective or, conversely, is a behavioural stepping stone that increases real–world offending risk. I think we urgently need research on this question as more and more technologies enter the market to simulate human sexuality.”
Program
Attendance in person requires registration on the MTA event page; seats are limited.
The conference will be held in a hybrid format. If you are unable to attend in person, you can join the event via Zoom. Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 885 3797 5328 Passcode: 982546
Title: „Towards a Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence” (conference).
Date and location: Tuesday, October 6., 2026., 13.00-19.00, MTA Székház, Nagyterem.
13:00-13:15: Welcoming address given by Mihály Pósfai,
President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
13:15-13:20: Introductory talk by Kristóf Nyíri
13:20-13:45: John Haldane, “Towards a Philosophy of Culture”
13:45-14:10: Valéria Csépe, “Cognitive Offloading: How to Preserve Human Reasoning in an AI-dominated World?”
14:10-14:35: Eörs Szathmáry, “How AI is Becoming More Biological”
14:35-15:00: Csaba Pléh, “Relationships between Human and Machine Based Solutions: Remarks of an Outsider”
15:00-15:25: András Falus, “Philosophical-Psychological Perspectives on Medical AI”
15:25-15:35: Break
15:35-15:40: Stuart Russell, “Provably Beneficial AI: Open Problems” (video presentation)
15:40-16:05: Xu Wen “Between Dao and Machine: Towards a Chinese Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence. Rethinking Agency, Harmony, and Human Responsibility in the Age of AI”
16:05-16:30: James E. Katz, “Saying Thanks to No One: Buber, Kant, and the Case for Apparatgeist”
16:30-16:55: Barry Smith , “AI Washing”
16:55-17:10: Attila Orbán, “Memory, Tradition and Artificial Intelligence: Towards an Ontology of Cultural Continuity” 17:10-17:25: Gabriella Manzenreiter, “From Creation to Co-Creation: Philosophical Perspectives on Human and Machine Creativity”
17:25-17:35: George Pór, “Can AI Herald a Good Society?”
17:35-17:45: Neville Li, “The New Tower of Babel: The Modern Attempt to Reach unto Heaven through the AI Boom”
17:45-18:10: Balázs Szegedy, “On the Mathematics of AI and Its Philosophical Implications”
18:10-18:30: Zoltán Tanács, “How Politics Should Cope with AI”
18:30-19:00: Concluding discussion