DoctoralStudentship - The Ethics of AI: Challenges and Opportunities

The Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, invites applications for a three-year doctoral studentship, which will lead to a DPhil (PhD) in Information, Communication and the Social Sciences at the University of Oxford, beginning in the academic year 2018-19.

Introduction

Applications are invited for athree-year doctoralstudentship, supported by funding donated by Google.The studentship willcommence in October 2018.Eligible candidates (see below for non UK or EU candidates) will need to qualify for UK or EU fee status and be ordinarily resident in the UK or EU.

The successful candidate will investigate the ethical aspects, requirements, and desiderata underpinning the design and development of AI and develop original and innovative research to foster value-based and ethicallysoundsolutions to the problems posed by AI.

The student will be supervised by Prof. Luciano Floridiand Dr Mariarosaria Taddeo, and will be a member of, and collaborate with, the OII’s Digital Ethics Lab (DELab).

The student will be located at the Oxford Internet Institute in Oxford although some travelling is envisaged to conduct fieldwork with AI companies and participate in national and international research meetings.

Candidate Requirements

Applicants should have a master-level degree in a relevant area, or plan to have completed a master-level degree prior to October2018. Previous academic preparation may be in philosophy, ethics, policy and law, computer science, social science, or other relevant areas.

Candidates will be judged according to how well they meet the following criteria:

  1. Academic ability. Applicants are normally expected to be predicted or have achieved a first-class or strong upper second-class undergraduate degree (or equivalent international qualifications), as a minimum, in any subject. It is expected that all applicants will hold a master or other advanced degree, normally passed with a mark of at least 67% (or a grade point average GPA of at least 3.5 out of 4.0), or an equivalent level of distinction.
  2. Academic references. Two letters that support intellectual ability, academic achievement, aptitude and potential for research investigation.
  3. Written work produced by the student. Applicants should provide one relevant academic essay or other writing sample (in English) from their most recent qualification of 2,000 words, or a 2,000-word extract of a longer work. This will be assessed for evidence that demonstrates the aptitude and potential for research investigation. Applicants who have not previously written on areas closely related to the proposed research topic may provide written work on any topic that best demonstrates their abilities.
  4. Personal Statement and Research proposal. The statement and proposal should be submitted as a single, combined document with a clear subheading for each. A convincing personal statement (statement of purpose) should explan the reasons for applying to the programme and highligh relevant academic and professional experience.
  5. A coherent thesis proposal of up to 2,500 words is required.This will be assessed with respect toits internalcoherence, the relevance of the chosen topic to the research conducted by the department, the research area of the studentship, the appropriateness of the methods and research design as related to the research question(s), and the overall quality of the project proposed.The proposal should be submitted in English only.
  6. Performance at interview. Candidates who have been shortlisted based on the quality of the application will be interviewed one to two months after the application deadline. Interviews will include questions about academic background, research plan, and career plans.

For full details of all requirements, please see

How to apply

The award pays all tuition and college feesand an annual maintenance grant of £9000(2018–19). International students who would be classed as overseas for fee purposes will need to pay the difference between the home/EU fee rate and the overseas rate.

The usual University of Oxford eligibility rules apply to these studentships. Please see ( for more information.

The closing date for applications is19th January 2018, although we strongly recommend submitting all your materials a week or two early since applications missing any part of the required materials (including letters of reference) cannot be considered. Interviews will be held in either February or March 2018. Informal inquiries should be made toLaura Maynard, Oxford Internet Institute ().

For further details on how to apply please visit the Oxford Internet Institute website at (

You will need to apply for both the programmeand this studentship via the main University online graduate application form, and pay an application fee. The application form, all supporting materials required for the programme (including references) and payment must be submitted by the appropriate studentship deadline.

On the application form, in the section headed ‘Departmental Studentship Applications’, you must indicate that you are applying for a studentship and enter the reference code for this studentship 18OII02WEB.

About the Institution

The University

Welcome to the University of Oxford. We aim to lead the world in research and education for the benefit of society both in the UK and globally. Oxford’s researchers engage with academic, commercial and cultural partners across the world to stimulate high-quality research and enable innovation through a broad range of social, policy and economic impacts.

We believe our strengths lie both in empowering individuals and teams to address fundamental questions of global significance, while providing all our staff with a welcoming and inclusive workplace that enables everyone to develop and do their best work. Recognising that diversity is our strength, vital for innovation and creativity, we aspire to build a truly diverse community, which values and respects every individual’s unique contribution.

While we have long traditions of scholarship, we are also forward-looking, creative and cutting-edge. Oxford is one of Europe's most entrepreneurial universities. Income from external research contracts in 2014/15 exceeded £522.9m and we rank first in the UK for university spin-outs, with more than 130 companies created to date. We are also recognised as leaders in support for social enterprise.

Join us and you will find a unique, democratic and international community, a great range of staff benefits and access to a vibrant array of cultural activities in the beautiful city of Oxford.

For more information please visit

Social Sciences Division

The Oxford Internet Institute is a department within the Social Sciences Division, one of four academic Divisions in the University, each with considerable devolved budgetary and financial authority, and responsibility for providing a broad strategic focus across its constituent disciplines.

The Social Sciences Division represents the largest grouping of social sciences in the UK. It is home to a number of outstanding departments and to the internationally ranked Law Faculty; all are committed to research to develop a greater understanding of all aspects of society, from the impact of political, legal and economic systems on social and economic welfare to human rights and security. That research is disseminated through innovative graduate programmes and enhances undergraduate courses.

For more information please visit

The Oxford Internet Institute (OII)

The Oxford Internet Institute has expanded rapidly since its founding in 2001 to become a world-leading centre for the multidisciplinary study of the Internet and society, with activities focusing on research, post-graduate teaching and policy-making and practice.

The OII aims to bring about a greater understanding of the various social factors that are shaping the Internet and their implications for society. Central to this vision is a view of the Internet as a phenomenon that goes far beyond its technical capabilities to encompass all the people, services, information, and technologies that are intertwined in this 'network of networks'. Excellence in research underpins the Institute's collaborative and teaching activities. Wide-ranging collaborative relationships with experts from academia, government, business, and industry in the UK and around the world also play a central role in its strategic drive.

The OII’s research strategy has targeted areas critical to the public interest, where the design and use of the Internet and related technologies are likely to contribute to a substantial restructuring of social practice and institutional arrangements. Having developed critical mass in these areas, the OII’s strategy for the next five years is geared towards deepening and extending the range of grant-funded research around each theme and disseminating the outputs in high-quality journals, while ensuring that research helps inform and shape policy and practice.

Research at the OII focuses on 8 research clusters:

  • Connectivity, Inclusion & Inequality: understanding the shifts in the power dynamics caused by information and communication technologies.
  • Digital Knowledge and Culture: charting the on-going digital transformations of the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities, and their implications.
  • Digital Politics & Government: investigating political behaviour, digital government and government-citizen interactions in the age of the internet, social media and big data.
  • Education, Well-Being and Digital Life: addressing the psychological, social and educational implications of the Internet, for people of all ages, across the full lifespan, with a particular focus on children and young people.
  • Ethics and Philosophy of Information: investigating the ethical, epistemological, logical and ontological aspects of information, its sciences, phenomena and dynamics.
  • Internet Economics: understanding the economic and social implications of new business models, new market structures, and new types of economic activity.
  • Information Governance & Security: analysing the challenges created by the digitisation of information, seeking solutions through new governance rules, processes and institutions, and investigating the relationship between emerging technologies, their design, and information security and privacy.
  • Social Data Science: seeking a quantitative understanding of how individuals behave and interact in society.

In all its research, the OII aims to operate at the cutting edge in both quantitative and qualitative methodologies that cut across disciplines and topics. Methodological innovation is vital given the changing nature of the Internet and advances in ICTs which both necessitate and facilitate the development of new techniques. OII researchers are developing methodologies such as the embedding of ICTs for real time observation of social phenomenon; webmetric techniques for observing the underlying structure of the web presence of social institutions; artificial intelligence design; experimental research; on-line action research; content analysis; investigation of virtual environments; and online survey research.

For more information about the Oxford Internet Institute please visit

The Digital Ethics Lab

At the Digital Ethics Lab we tackle the ethical challenges posed by digital innovation. We help design a better information society: open, pluralistic, tolerant, equitable, and just. Our goal is to identify the benefits and enhance the positive opportunities of digital innovation as a force for good, and avoid or mitigate its risks and shortcomings.

Our work builds on Oxford’s world leading expertise in conceptual design, horizon scanning, foresight analysis, and translational research on ethics, governance, and policy making. As part of the Oxford Internet Institute, we are a multidisciplinary research group. We draw from AI, anthropology, biomedical ethics, computer science, cybersecurity, data science, economics, epistemology, ethics, ethnography, formal logic, information theory, Internet studies, law, philosophy, political science, and sociology.

We know that ethics deeply affects the development of technology, science, politics, law, business, and, ultimately, every aspect of society. This is true especially in digital contexts, where transformations are rapid and disruptive, and tend to have profound and widespread ethical consequences, with direct and daily impact on millions of lives.

We understand that the ethical challenges posed by digital technologies are becoming pressing everywhere. The world is quickly and irreversibly moving towards increased monitoring of ethical behaviours, such as ESG (environmental, social, and governance) scores and ELSI (ethical, legal, and social impact) analyses. For example, most of the value of companies is nowethics-dependent, in terms of intangible assets such as intellectual property, trust, and reputation. Clearly, ethical mistakes are increasingly costly and visible. And because digital innovation has wide reach and immediate impact, the negative consequences of suboptimal decisions or policies may be hard to reverse, especially when confidence and trust are undermined.

We believe that technology can and must help solve social and environmental problems. The natural, social, and artificial worlds can foster each other. We consider digital ethics to be both humanistic and ecological.

This is why we seek to interact with interested parties and stakeholders from all sectors and internationally, to identify the ethical opportunities, challenges, and risks presented by the digital world, and to provide independent research, advice, solutions, and strategic options to deal with them successfully.

To this end, we develop innovative, foundational studies and offer relevant expertise, thought-leadership, and translational research on a broad range of key areas in digital ethics, including automation, algorithms, artificial intelligence, big data, cyberconflicts, data governance, data science, digital platforms, e-commerce, e-governance, e-health, information quality, Internet of Things, machine learning, personal data, persuasive technologies, privacy, protocols, robotics, security, social media, surveillance, and virtual or augmented reality.

For more information about DELab please visit