ETHICALLY SPEAKING
An interdisciplinary speaker series on contemporary moral issues
Gene editing. Artificial intelligence. A changing climate. Intersections of technology, values and communities in our rapidly changing world raise important ethical questions. Join us for a series of lectures by nationally renowned researchers, thinkers and leaders who will explore contemporary issues, ethically speaking.
Schedule 2025-26
Ethics and Emotion: Implications for the Professional Formation of Future Engineers
Dr. Madeline Palmer • September 23, 2025 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern
There is a growing recognition for the role of emotion in engineering education as it is embedded in students’ responses to topics, experiences in the classroom, and interactions with peers. In tandem, emotion also relates to how people learn about ethics and engage in ethical design making. In this talk, Dr. Polmear will provide an overview of the intersection between emotion, ethics, and engineering education, including recent scholarship in this area and implications for the professional formation of future engineers.
Dr. Madeline Palmer is a lecturer (assistant professor) in engineering education at King’s College London. Her research relates to ethics, societal responsibility, and emotion in engineering education. She teaches introduction to engineering and design courses where she highlights sociotechnical integration in engineering. Madeline received her Ph.D. in civil engineering (University of Colorado, Boulder) and was previously awarded a Marie Sklodowska-Curie, EUTOPIA Cofund Fellowship at Vrije Universitiet Brussel, Belgium to study macroethiczal development among engineering students.
Should We Let Chatbots Call the Shots?
Dr. David Grant • October 16, 2025 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern
Join in person in Room 101, Harris Engineering Center (HEC), UCF Main Campus or
Register online (to joint By Zoom)
Chatbots are shockingly good at making tough decisions – the kinds of decisions that most of us would only trust an expert to make. Recent studies suggest, for example, that current-get chatbots may actually be better than human doctors at determining the best course of treatment for patients with complex medical needs. As chatbots compare ever more favorably to human decision-makers, it will be increasingly tempting to simply let them make the hard choices for us. In this talk Dr. Grant will argue that we should resist that temptation. While the potential benefits of outsourcing high-stakes decisions to chatbots are considerable, so are the risks.
David Gray Grant is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Florida. His research focuses on concerns about fairness and transparency that arise when institutions use machine learning to make high stakes decisions. He has developed several courses on the philosophy of artificial tintelligence at UF and helped developed the curriculum for UF’s AI Learning Academy, which offers professional development workshops on artificial intelligence of higher education faculty and administrators. Before joining UF, Dr. Grant was an Embedded EthiCS Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, a Senior Research Fellow at Jain Family Institute, and a Summer Research Fellow at the Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society at the University of Southern California. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from MIT.
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Sponsors of Ethically Speaking
- Center for Ethics, UCF
- Colleges of Graduate Studies, UCF
- College of Science, UCF
- College of Community Innovation and Education, UCF
- CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics, UCF
- College of Arts and Humanities, UCF
- Office of Compliance, Ethics, and Risk, UCF
- Department of Chemistry
- Department of Physics
- Department of Philosophy
- Department of Psychology
- Department of Biology
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Department of Materials Science and Engineering