Beyond AI 2012 hosted these keynote speakers:

Hamid Ekbia (Indiana University) – „Heteronomous Humans and Autonomous Artifacts: The Paradox of AI“

Søren Holm (University of Manchester) – „Going to the Dark Side – the Misuses of AI Promises in Persuasive Health Technologies“

David Roden (Open University) – „Is a Singularitarian Ethics Impossible?“

Julian Savulescu (University of Oxford) – „Moral AI: What kind of morality should AI have?“

Kevin Warwick (University of Reading) – „The Disappearing Human-Machine Divide“

Hamid Ekbia is Associate Professor of Information Science and Cognitive Science at Indiana University, where he directs the Center for Research on Mediated Interaction. He is the author of Artificial Dreams: The Quest for Non-Biological Intelligence (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Søren Holm is a bioethicist and philosopher of medicine. He holds a chair in bioethics at the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy, part of the School of Law at the University of Manchester in Great Britain and a chair in medical ethics at the University of Oslo. He also serves as editor of the journal Clinical Ethics. Holm holds a medical degree, a philosophy degree, a masters degree in health care ethics from the University of Manchester and two doctoral degrees in medical ethics from the University of Copenhagen. Holm and John Harris co-authored a seminal paper in Nature (1999) that challenged the value of the precautionary principle in modern scientific research.

David Roden teaches at the Open University Department of Philosophy and is a long-time member of its Mind, Meaning and Rationality Research Group. His published work has addressed the relationship between deconstruction and analytic philosophy, philosophical naturalism, the metaphysics of sound and posthumanism. He has contributed a chapter to the forthcoming Springer Frontiers volume The Singularity Hypothesis: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment and is currently completing a monograph Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human to be published by Acumen in 2013.

Julian Savulescu is Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics and is Director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. He also directs to the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics and the Institute for Science and Ethics. He is Editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics. He is author of over 200 publications and is a recognised world leader in the field of practical ethics. In 2009, he received the Monash Distinguished Alumnus Award for outstanding achievement and is Sir Louis Matheson Distinguished Visiting Professor. He also won the ‚Thinkers‘ category of The Australian’s Top 100 Emerging Leaders awards. He has made numerous appearances on television, radio and in print media, including on Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope and various news broadcasts. His most recent book Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement, co-authored with Ingmar Persson was published by Oxford University Press in July 2012.

Kevin Warwick is Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, England, where he carries out research in artificial intelligence, control, robotics and cyborgs. As well as publishing over 500 research papers, Kevin’s experiments into implant technology led to him being featured as the cover story on the US magazine, ‘Wired’. Kevin has been awarded higher doctorates (DSc) both by Imperial College and the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, and received Honorary Doctorates from Aston University, Coventry University, Bradford University, Robert Gordon University, University of Bedfordshire and Portsmouth University. He was presented with The Future of Health Technology Award in MIT, was made an Honorary Member of the Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, and has received The IEE Senior Achievement Medal, the Mountbatten Medal and in 2011 the Ellison-Cliffe Medal from the Royal Society of Medicine. In 2000 Kevin presented the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, entitled “The Rise of the Robots”. Kevin’s present research involves the invention of an intelligent deep brain stimulator to counteract the effects of Parkinson Disease tremors.