John MacIntyre is Visiting Professor of Artificial Intelligence at a number of universities around the world and was a senior leader at the University of Sunderland, from where he retired as Pro Vice Chancellor in 2023 after 30 years in Higher Education. He has published over 200 papers on applied artificial intelligence, engineering, computer science, management and leadership, and has supervised 12 PhDs and numerous postgraduate research masters projects. He was a Governor at East Durham College for eight years, and has served on numerous regional and national charities and other representative bodies, including several years as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the National Association of College and University Entrepreurs (NACUE) which promotes entrepreneurship including curriculum development and mentoring in both FE and HE institutions across the UK and in Europe. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Neural Computing & Applications, one of the world's leading peer-reviewed journals in applied artificial intelligence, a role he has held since 1996, and is co-Editor-in-Chief for AI and Ethics, a peer-reviewed journal he established with his long-standing colleague Professor Larry Medsker of Geoge Washington University in the USA in 2020. AI and Ethics has rapidly become recognised as a leading publication for peer-review work on the ethical issues emerging from the developments in artificial intelligence and related technologies. John is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce (FRSA), a Member of the British Computer Society (MBCS), a member of the International Neural Network Society (MINNS), and a Chartered Engineeer (CEng).

Description:
This workshop will explore the ethical issues emerging from the boom in the development and use of AI tools, including Generative AI models such as ChatGPT. Many questions arise from the race to commercialise AI applications, some of which have been shown to be flawed and potentially harmful. The development of legal and regulatory frameworks lag way behind the pace of technological advances in Large Language Models and other Generative AI tools, leaving gaps which are being exploited by commercial developers for profit - but at what cost to society?