New Humanism at The Time of Neurosciences and Artificial Intelligence (NHNAI)

Humanism at the time of Neurosciences and Artificial Intelligence (NHNAI) is a research project hosted by the International Federation of Catholic Universities (IFCU) aiming at ethically empowering persons that are actors of, and impacted by, scientific and technological developments in the field of Neurosciences (NS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

NHNAI draws on the conviction that it is crucial that stakeholders concerned by NS and AI enter themselves in a movement of collective ethical exploration of societal issues raised by these scientific and technological fields. Such an ethical empowerment however requires putting expert knowledge about the different dimensions of these issues at the service of societal questioning.

For instance, how to decide how AI tools for diseases diagnosis should be mobilized without minimal understanding of strengths and limits of AI algorithms, of medical and biological characteristics of considered diseases, as well as of human, social, cultural or philosophical specificities of the act of diagnosing them? How to determine the role of neuroimaging in lawyering without neuroscientific knowledge, but also without political, sociological and philosophical insights about the role of legal systems in societies?

To address ethical issues raised by AI and NS, a specific topic needs societal exploration: the question of humanism, of what it means to be human at the time of NS and AI. The question is extremely pressing because AI and NS deeply question our traditional conceptions of humanism (is there free will? Can machine think like us? Feel like us? What does "think" or "feel" even mean?), while the notion is key for ethical interrogation.

NHNAI will build a worldwide network gathering Catholic universities and associated partners to contribute to the ethical empowerment of stakeholders' communities concerned by societal challenges raised by NS and AI. For its first 3 years of operation, NHNAI network will focus upon 3 specific topics that are highly impacted by NS and AI (education, health, democracy) and will thus interact with corresponding communities of concerned stakeholders.

The Four Main Components of NHNAI: 1. Members of NHNAI network will organize and align available expert knowledge about humanism with issues effectively faced by concerned communities (co-identification and co-construction of key questions). 2. Members of NHNAI network will put that aligned expertise at the service of collective questioning communities through dedicated mediation tools (citizen juries, hackathon, workshops). 3. Members of NHNAI will collect the outcomes of collective ethical questioning to disseminate them, notably to bring them at the policy-making level. 4. NHNAI will deploy background efforts to ensure perpetuation of ethical empowerment through societal questioning about humanism at the time of NS and AI.

Focus Topics: Education, Health, Democracy

NHNAI Activities: • Put expert knowledge about humanism at the time of NS and AI at the service of societal questioning • Build capacities for a societal questioning about what it means to be human at the time of NS and AI • Analysis, exploitation and dissemination of societal questioning outputs at the policy level • Deploy efforts to ensure the perpetuation and dissemination of ethical empowerment

Expected Outcomes: • Enriched academic expertise on methodological aspects and exploration of humanism on the ground of societal questioning • Wider audience acquainted with the collective effort of societal questioning about humanism at the time of AI and NS • Seeds for bottom-up policy making about technological developments in the field of NS and AI • Enhanced societal awareness about questions raised about what it means to be human at the time of NS and AI, susceptible to foster ethical questioning