The Knowledge Box: AI and Epistemic Dispossession

Professor Shannon Vallor FRSE is the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Philosophy at The University of Edinburgh, where she also codirects the Centre for Technomoral Futures in the university’s interdisciplinary Edinburgh Futures Institute. Prof. Vallor’s research explores how AI, robotics, and data science reshape human character: our habits, virtues and capabilities. Professor Vallor's work includes advising policymakers and industry bodies on the ethical design and use of AI, and she is a former Visiting Researcher and AI Ethicist at Google. She is the recipient of multiple prizes and awards for her research, including the 2026 Barwise Prize in Philosophy and Computing from the American Philosophical Association, the 2026 Leadership Award from the UK’s AI and Robotics Research Awards, and the 2022 Covey Award from the International Association of Computing and Philosophy. She is a standing member of Stanford University’s One Hundred Year Study of Artificial Intelligence (AI100), EY’s Global AI Advisory Council, and a member of the Oversight Board of the Ada Lovelace Institute. She is the author of two monographs, Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting, from Oxford University Press in 2016, and The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking, from Oxford University Press in 2024.