With each passing day, we are witnessing an increased integration of intelligent machines in our daily lives such as self-driving cars, Intelligent Assistive Systems (IAS), and companion robots. The omnipresence of such intelligent machines poses certain ethical and legal challenges. To ensure the beneficence of autonomous agents towards humans (and other machines), we need to introduce ethical and legal mechanism(s) to govern and align actions executed by AI-based algorithms according to our societal ethical and moral norms. The challenge of encoding our ethical preferences into machines is two-fold: Technical and Philosophical. Regarding the former, various frameworks have been already proposed to realize operationalizable ethics. These frameworks can be roughly divided into three categories: 1) Probabilistic approaches 2) Learning-Based approaches 3) Logic-Based approaches. Regarding the latter, there are also ethical challenges to consider. Some dispute that machines cannot act ethically at all, since this presupposes the possibility of reflection and justification. Regardless of this objection, there is by no means agreement among ethicists about which ethical principles should be implemented and in which hierarchical relationship they should stand to each other. In light of the fact that the systems that might even get into the situation of having to make an ethically relevant decision on their own have yet to be developed, the debate on implementing ethical principles in AI systems is still in its infancy.


*Call for papers and abstracts*

The goal of the workshop is therefore to bring together contributions from computer science, engineering, philosophy, and other relevant fields that tackle these challenges and address the following topics (not limited to):


* Ethics-aware and responsible AI development
* Ethical Decision Framework(s) in different application domains
* Intelligent Assistive Systems
* Self-Driving Cars
* Healthcare
* Robotics
* Technical Approaches towards operationalizing ethics in AI
* Probabilistic Approaches
* Logic-Based Approaches
* Learning-Based Approaches
* Other approaches
* Validation approaches for an ethical decision framework

*Important Dates*

Deadline for Submission: August 8, 2021 (extended)
Notification of Authors: August 20, 2021
Camera-ready Paper: September 02, 2021
Workshop: September 27 - October 01, 2021

*Submission Guidelines*

We solicit either full papers (LNCS format, maximum12 pages) or extended abstract (of 700-1000 words) in which you present your project, your research question, your methods and, if applicable, your initial results. All papers and abstracts must be written in English and are to be submitted via the Easychair submission website [1] until 8 August 2021. Accepted papers and extended abstracts will be published in CEUR Workshop Proceedings. Authors of accepted contributions will be invited to present their work during the workshop. Since the goal of the workshop is especially to guide an exchange between disciplines, we highly encourage interdisciplinary teams to submit.

[1]: https://www.easychair.org/my/conference?conf=aithics2021

*Workshop chairs*

* Andreas Hein, University of Oldenburg, Germany
* Mark Schweda, University of Oldenburg, Germany
* Silke Schicktanz, University of Goettingen, Germany
* Stefan Teipel, University of Rostock, Germany
* Thomas Kirste, University of Rostock, Germany

*Program Committee*

* Christoph Benzmüller, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
* Kristof Van Laerhoven, Universty of Siegen, Germany
* Jesse Hoey, University of Waterloo, Canada
* Britta Böckmann, Fachhochschule Dortmund, Germany
* Johann-Christian Põder, University of Rostock, Germany
* Sebastian Bader, University of Rostock, Germany
* Kristina Yordanova, University of Rostock, Germany
* Nils Strodthoff, Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, Germany
* Matthias Braun, University of Erlangen, Germany
* Larbi Abdenebaoui, University of Oldenburg, Germany
* Martin Aleksandrov, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany

*Contact*

* Eike Buhr: eike.buhr@uni-oldenburg.de
* Johannes J. Welsch: johannes.welsch@med.uni-goettingen.de
* M. Salman Shaukat: muhammad.shaukat@uni-rostock.de