Data Sciences, Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence (DCAI) Ethics Collaboratory

Emerging information technologies are transforming social, economic, political and legal systems. As a result, the way we think about liability, trust, ownership, responsibility, justice, and sovereignty is changing. Managing these transformations now requires both technical and philosophical innovation. The DCAI Ethics Collaboratory (a part of the LSU Ethics Institute) fosters cross-disciplinary research at the intersection of ethics, artificial intelligence, data science, and cybersecurity. Our unique backgrounds and wide-ranging knowledge of the issues involved allow us to research, identify, and ameliorate ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) in emerging information technologies.

The DCAI Ethics Collaboratory produces white papers, peer-reviewed scholarly research, and course modules for undergraduate and graduate courses in STEM. They collaborate with scientists and practitioners on research design, ethics plans, ELSI, and broader impacts statements for NSF and other major grant-making bodies.

Participating Faculty

Deborah Goldgaber

Associate Professor of Philosophy

Director, LSU Ethics Institute

Hire Date: 8/2014

Areas of Interest: Applied Professional Ethics, Philosophy of Technology, Data Ethics

Since 2019, Professor Goldgaber has served as director of the LSU Ethics Institute, piloting initiatives on Ethical AI in computer science, agriculture, Biotechnology (cardiovascular digital twins), Data Ethics and Cybersecurity in collaboration with the LSU Cyber Center. A recipient of grants from the NSF and the LA Board of Regents, she works with STEM faculty to expand moral literacy across STEM fields through innovative partnerships with the humanities. She is a co-PI on the recently awarded NSF POSE II ($1.5M) and the LSU NAS Gulf Scholars Program.

Anthony Kelley

Assistant Professor of Philosophy

Associate Director, LSU Ethics Institute

Hire Date: 8/2022

Areas of Interest: Practical and Theoretical Ethics

Dr. Kelley is an affiliate faculty member of the LSU Cybersecurity Center and associate director of the LSU Ethics Institute. He works mostly in theoretical and practical ethics, especially as it relates to the philosophy of well-being. His recent work is on topics in the philosophy of emerging technologies. He is also the organizer of the Data Sciences, Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence (DCAI) Ethics Reading Group which begins in Fall 2024 with the aim of facilitating a campus-wide conversation regarding individual rights, privacy, human flourishing, and the responsible use of technology.

Lauren Horn Griffin

Assistant Professor of Religious Studies

Hire Date: 8/2022

Areas of Interest: Religion, Media, and Technology; Religion and Politics

Dr. Griffin studies the socio-technical forces that are profoundly remaking ourselves and our social world. Her current book project looks at how algorithmically driven platforms are starting to reshape how we view ourselves as religious subjects and the concept of religion itself. She also teaches courses on religion and AI, and digital religion.

Michael Ardoline

Assistant Professor of Philosophy

Hire Date: 8/2024

Areas of Interest: Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Science

Dr. Ardoline is an affiliate faculty member of the LSU Cybersecurity Center. He teaches courses on science, technology, and human values. As part of the Embedding Ethics in STEM @LSU (EESTEM) project, he has developed several ethics modules. He presents and publishes on the metaphysics and ethics of emerging technologies, and is currently working on a monograph entitled Interiority Against Control: Virtue Ethics and Subjectivation in Control Societies.

Recent Grant Activity

NSF POSE: Phase II: Nexus: Harnessing Open HPC through HPX, ($1.5M awarded)
NSF LSU ADVANCE ($3M, pending)
NSF FTD Biotech: Framework for Regulatory Assessment and Medical Ethics for Cardiovascular Digital Twins (FRAME-CVT) ($680K) pending
ATLAS, $50k

Recent Peer-Reviewed Research

Deborah Goldgaber, “Overcoming Digital Divides: Developing Next Generation Digital Agriculture Professionals”
Deborah Goldgaber, “Ethics of AI and Automation in Digital Agriculture,” Choices AAEA (forthcoming)
Deborah Goldgaber, “Analogies or Ontologies? On the ‘Unreasonable Effectiveness’ of ‘Code’ in the History of the Life Sciences,” The Oxford Literary Review 45 (2024): 186-207
Anthony Kelley, “Subjective Theories of Ill-Being,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 46 (2022): 109-35
Anthony Kelley, “The Welfare-Nihilist Arguments Against Judgment Subjectivism,” Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy 19 (2021): 291-310
Michael Ardoline, Deleuze, Mathematics, Metaphysics: Difference and Necessity. (Edinburgh University Press, 2024)
Michael Ardoline, “Extending Intensions: Deleuze and Guattari’s Critique of Formal Logic,” Deleuze and Guattari Studies (forthcoming)
Michael Ardoline, “Building a Way: Becoming Active in One’s Own Subjectivation Through Deleuze and Xunzi,” Philosophies 7 (2022). 1-16
Lauren Horn Griffin, “Mediatizing Religion: Affective Publics and Epistemological Populism in #RosaryExtremist,” Religion Compass (forthcoming)
Lauren Horn Griffin, “How #Trad Media Challenge the Current Discourse on Christian Nationalism,” Journal of Religion and Media (forthcoming)
Lauren Horn Griffin, "The ‘Discipline’ of the Humanities: Religion, Privacy, and Contemporary Nationalist Ideology,” in Discourses of Crisis and the Study of Religion, ed. Lauren Horn Griffin (Equinox, forthcoming)
Lauren Horn Griffin, ed., Discourses of Crisis and the Study of Religion (Equinox, forthcoming)
Lauren Horn Griffin, "The Illusion of #RadTrad Identity," American Examples: New Conversations About Religion, Volume Three, ed. Michael Altman (University of Alabama Press, 2024), 33-51
Lauren Horn Griffin, Fabricating Founders: History, Rhetoric, and the Arrival of Christianity in England, Supplements to Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 22 (Brill, 2023)

Teaching

The DCAI Ethics Collaboratory produces Embedding Ethics in STEM @ LSU Course Modules. Several of which included cybersecurity ethics as the central focus, including:

“Privacy and Proxy Variables in Biosensor Design” for the Biological and Agricultural Engineering department
“Online Authenticity” for the Information Sciences and Analytics department
“Data Ethics: Introduction”

Members have recently taught classes on AI ethics with data-security components, and members are currently developing classes including “Human Flourishing in the Digital Age,” “Science, Technology and Human Values and an AI through Film,” “Ethics of Emerging Technologies,” and “Religion and AI.”