We have a moral duty to allow others to make ‘transformative choices’ such as changing careers, migrating and having children, a new study argues. This duty can be outweighed by competing moral considerations such as preventing murder but in many cases we should interfere with far greater caution.

Five Cambridge academics have been elected to the Fellowship of the British Academy in recognition of their contribution to the humanities and social sciences.

The Royal Institute of Philosophy has awarded (jointly) its 2021 essay prize to a University of Cambridge researcher for the first philosophical analysis of ‘liking’ on social media. The essay, which focuses on Facebook, warns that ‘likes’ encourage communicative laziness while ‘like tallies’ fuel fake news, ‘gamify sociality’ and play to our psychological weaknesses.

Powerful AI needs to be reliably aligned with human values. Does this mean that AI will eventually have to police those values? Cambridge philosophers Huw Price and Karina Vold consider the trade-off between safety and autonomy in the era of superintelligence.

A bedside device that measures ‘brain signatures’ could help diagnose patients who have consciousness disorders – such as a vegetative state – to work out the best course of treatment and to support family counselling. 

The University of Cambridge is launching a new research centre, thanks to a £10 million grant from the Leverhulme Trust, to explore the opportunities and challenges to humanity from the development of artificial intelligence. 

A philosopher, a scientist and a software engineer have come together to propose a new centre at Cambridge to address developments in human technologies that might pose “extinction-level” risks to our species, from biotechnology to artificial intelligence.