BRAID x IDI Hybrid Seminar - Dr Emily Postan

Institute for Design Informatics

Please note this event starts at 16:10 to allow time for in-person audiences including staff and students to move around campus. Zoom Webinar will open from16:00 for online audiences <h1>Uncanny Kinds: Machine learning, healthcare, and categorising human</h1> In the fields of healthcare and health research, there is particular interest using machine learning (ML) to generated novel or refined diagnostic, prognostic, risk, and treatment categories. This talk interrogates the nature of these categories and their implications for the people thus (re)categorised. It approaches these questions through the lens of the philosophical idea of ‘human kinds’. It asks to what extent health-related categories generated by ML might function as human kinds and, if so, whether they might differ, in ethically significant ways, from socially-originating kinds. In doing so, it suggests that our understanding of responsible ML categorisation practices need to look beyond technical capabilities and clinical utility to consider wider personal and social impacts.

<h2>Bio</h2>Emily Postan is a Chancellor’s Fellow in Bioethics at the University of Edinburgh Law School and a Deputy Director of the J Kenyon Mason Institute for Medicine Life Sciences and the Law. Her research principally focuses on ethical questions about the relationship between our bodies, our health, and our identities, and the ways that health technologies affect these relationships. Her current research project 'Identity by Algorithm' explores the ethical implications of novel social categories generated by health applications of AI. Her wider research interests includes addressing the ethical challenges posed by data sharing, neurotechnologies, genomics, and assisted reproduction. Emily has a background in philosophy and as a policy-manager at the Scottish Government. She received her PhD from Edinburgh Law School in 2017. Her monograph 'Embodied Narratives: Protecting Identity Interests through Ethical Governance of Bioinformation' was published by CUP 2022.

Running Order16.00 – Welcome by John Zerilli16.10 – Talk by Dr Emily Postan16.40 – Q&amp;A17.00 – End In-person: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB Online: Zoom Please note limited seats are available at Inspace for in-person audiences, so please book tickets in advance. For those joining online please visit the online event page for the Zoom joining link and password.

*Important Notice* This event will be photographed, recorded and live streamed and the data published online and used for research, promotional and reporting purposes by BRAID UK and the Institute for Design Informatics based at the University of Edinburgh. For further information please contact the organisers.

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BRAID x IDI Hybrid Seminar - Dr Emily Postan

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