Digital Dignity Day, Friday May 2, 2025, Santa Clara University. Image of outstretched hand holding a heart by Tiffany Yu ’26.
Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to shape many aspects of our world, prompting ethical questions about humanity and the nature of human flourishing.
Digital Dignity Day, sponsored by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and NHNAI, will take place on May 2nd, 2025, bringing together academics from diverse disciplines, industry and government representatives, students, and the broader public to explore the intersection of AI and human dignity.
According to Ethics Center Director of Technology Ethics Brian Green, the event highlights human dignity because it “provides a foundation upon which to build other ethical values, principles, ideas and ideals.”
“For example, human dignity serves as a groundwork for international human rights law, not to mention many other approaches to ethics. While many people might not think directly about dignity when making ethical judgments, it is there indirectly, a layer or two down. If we undermine dignity through bad technologies and bad choices about technologies, we put at risk a lot of other important ethical ideas–ideas which could collapse if their foundation is knocked out,” added Green.
This conference is part of the Ethics Center’s work in the international project New Humanism in the time of Neurosciences and Artificial Intelligence (NHNAI), which spans five continents of North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. NHNAI’s overall objective is empowering all relevant stakeholders in neuroscience and AI to be able to address ongoing ethical issues as they develop in these fields.
“The Markkula Center is grateful to have had the opportunity to represent Santa Clara University in our work with NHNAI and our team of global collaborators. We have approached our work through ‘competence, conscience, and compassion,’ as we have held conversations with a variety of stakeholders over the past four years. Understanding how AI is impacting democracy, health care, and education–and what our future may hold–is a discussion we must continue to have in our quest to find solutions and a responsible path forward so that all of humanity may flourish,” said Ethics Center Managing Director Thor Wasbotten, who serves as project coordinator for NHNAI. Green additionally acts as thematic coordinator for AI Ethics for NHNAI.
The event will feature keynote speaker Professor Shannon Vallor, Baillie Gifford Professor in Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence and Director of the Centre for Technomoral Futures at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, University of Edinburgh. Vallor, author of The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking, will be speaking on “De-Coding Our Humanity, Dignity, and Fullness in the Digital Age.”
“The intent of this event is to have people better understand–and to make a commitment to–how to enhance our sense of purpose as humans, and to help all humans flourish in a future where AI and emerging technologies are responsibly designed, developed, and deployed,” said Wasbotten.
While AI represents progress and aspirations to go beyond human limitations, many experts argue that AI is holding up a mirror in an unprecedented way, reflecting our blind spots and implicit bias.
Associate Professor of computer science and engineering and Faculty Scholar with the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics Maya Ackerman writes how the data AI is trained on contains patterns of implicit bias that impact its outputs, such as a brilliance bias that shows a bias towards intelligence as a male trait: “AI, like a young child raised on the sum of our culture, picks up on the patterns we don’t even realize we’re teaching,” says Ackerman in her article, “AI and the Pink Elephant in the Room.”
According to Ackerman, looking at AI’s flaws presents two choices: fix the machine, or turn inwards and fix ourselves.
Additionally, Ann Skeet, Ethics Center senior director, leadership ethics, discusses an arising gender gap in AI usage and impact in her article, “Who Cares About the Ethics of AI? Women Do.” Studies show that women approach ethical reasoning differently than men, and show more concern about AI and its impact on human relationships.
Skeet argues that expecting one to use AI in a way that violates their ethics violates their dignity, thus companies and businesses integrating AI into their processes should be mindful of these concerns.
Digital Dignity Day serves as a timely and necessary space for reflection and dialogue as we navigate the ethical questions about AI such as these. By centering the conversation on human dignity, the event invites us to confront the challenges AI presents and how to reimagine these technologies to support a more just, inclusive, and humane future.
“I hope that attendees will come away with a recognition that creating technology that serves human dignity is a worldwide interest and worldwide need. We have speakers coming from France and Scotland, we have speakers representing vulnerable groups in America, and we have representatives from industry who are building the future right now. This will be a unique opportunity to bring together very different groups of people to talk about an issue that is of great interest to us all: the use of AI for good purposes, to help strengthen human dignity,” said Green.
Digital Dignity Day will take place from 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. PDT on Friday, May 2nd, 2025, in the St Clare Room of the Santa Clara University Learning Commons.
Register here and learn more about the agenda and featured speakers, and access our spotlight articles on topics supporting human dignity. Join us on May 2nd, as we explore how to shape a future where AI supports–not undermines–human dignity.
Grace Woidat ’25, communications and French studies major and marketing and communications intern at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, contributed to this story.