2022 Highlights: AI Ethics and Jazz Music

This year has been a whirlwind. In September of 2021, I arrived in the UK for the first time to pursue a MA in Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence and to call Goodenough College my home. 

Conversations are what I value most in life, and 2022 provided many. Living at such a fast pace, and balancing many responsibilities has allowed for an overwhelming amount of reframing, gratitude and growth. Studying the philosophy of AI has taught me much more about what it means to be human than I could have ever imagined. This was something that I hadn’t anticipated. The usual reaction when sharing my degree title was ‘when are the robots taking over?’ or ‘have you seen the Matrix?’ but I have found there is much more to the field than these. My goal is to mitigate the ethical risks of AI and I am certain this will manifest in many ways throughout my career.

Professional highlights of 2022 include; 

A Recap of Recent;

In September I submitted my thesis titled “On Ableism in Biotechnologies: How John Stuart Mill's harm principle can be used to assess the nature of machine bias”, and vocally defended it two weeks later. I took the final week to reflect on this year, so much happened, but I had little time to process it all. 

In October I was in full application and interview mode, while also preparing to headline two jazz shows at the Bloomsbury festival in London. I felt so grateful to be singing again! It was a privilege to produce an experience I was proud of. The jazz sets were accompanied by an exceptional band and supported with visual art made by talented friends. The show was promoted through radio and other platforms and sold out. 

In November I began my new role at Ethicsgrade.io as an ‘AI Ethics Senior Analyst’. EthicsGrade is an ESG data company that specialises in creating benchmarking data on the quality of governance at various companies on the topic of digital risks. My role is dynamic, performing and publishing research focused on AI ethics and the corporate impact of upcoming AI policies. Connecting with like-minded academics and sharing our dataset freely to support their research questions and facilitating collaborations, and supporting the twelfth season of our podcast and community "Are You a Robot?". I look forward to growing in this role that aligns with my personal and professional goal of mitigating the ethical risks of AI. 

AI ethics and jazz are my passions, and in 2023 I hope to merge the two in a special project:

 I’m aiming to build or work with an AI system that generates jazz instrumentals to accompany my vocals. I plan to ‘collaborate’ with the AI system, and upon release give the system the intellectual property rights to the creation. I hope that the project will stimulate dialogue around themes of the philosophy of law, computational creativity, and other dilemmas for copyright law in the digital age. 

Lastly, I am in the final stages of designing my website: my own tiny corner of cyberspace, which, like most things, is a work in progress, you can check it out at tessbuckley.me.

I want to thank all of those who have helped me on this amazing journey so far.

Here's to more "dreams to reality"!