Joshua Simons

Postdoctoral Fellow in Technology and Democracy
Carr Center for Human Rights and Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University
Handle with Care

A common view is that autonomous weapons systems (AWS) should be banned because they might violate the rules of war. But even perfect compliance with the law is compatible with morally wrongful killing on a massive scale. As criterion for assessing the ethics of deploying AWS, therefore, the law must be handled with care.
A More Equal Future?

The effects of machine learning on social justice, human rights, and democracy will depend not on the technology itself, but on human choices about how to design and deploy it.
How AI Fails Us

The existing vision for artificial intelligence dangerously misconstrues intelligence as autonomous rather than social and relational.
Digital Public Goods: Guidance for Development, Governance, and Stewardship

As digital public goods (DPGs) become more common we must recognize the ethical considerations of how and by whom these systems are built. We’ve released guidance in the form of an ethics playbook.