{"id":2382,"date":"2025-04-14T08:36:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T08:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-alumn-nus.pantheonsite.io\/alumnus\/?p=2382"},"modified":"2025-12-10T16:22:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T08:22:34","slug":"in-order-to-work-with-ai-we-must-work-on-being-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/2025\/04\/14\/in-order-to-work-with-ai-we-must-work-on-being-human\/","title":{"rendered":"“In Order to Work with AI, We Must Work on Being Human”"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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WHO SHE IS:<\/strong><\/p>

Dr Cansu Canca\u00a0<\/strong>is a philosopher and the\u00a0Founder and Director\u00a0of\u00a0AI Ethics Lab<\/a>, a pioneer in multidisciplinary research on AI ethics that provides frameworks and advice to practitioners. She works with global bodies such as the World Health Organization and INTERPOL and has consulted for the United States Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services. Since 2021, she has served as a Research Associate Professor in Philosophy and the Director of Responsible AI at Northeastern University in Boston.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Artificial intelligence has entered into the decision-making frameworks of many, if not most, industries. While great progress is being made at breakneck speed, one of the key issues that has arisen is the ethics that guide these AI decisions\u2014or the lack thereof. Without the consideration of ethics\u2014whether a decision is good, bad, right or wrong\u2014undesirable consequences could be commonplace.<\/p>

At just 42, Dr Cansu Canca has carved for herself a unique position as an AI ethicist. Named one of the top thinkers in AI ethics and governance by the World Economic Forum in 2023, she has delivered over 100 talks on the topic at institutions including Harvard Business School and the United States Department of Justice.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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In 2024, Dr Canca was honoured with the Mozilla Rise25 award in the \u201cChange Agents of AI\u201d category. <\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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What might surprise some is that the founder of AI Ethics Lab \u2014 a research-based consultancy integrating ethics into AI and creating responsible AI strategies for organisations \u2014 is a philosopher. Born in Turkey, she earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in Philosophy at Bo\u011fazi\u00e7i University in Istanbul. During her master\u2019s, she conducted research on medical ethics at Osaka University. \u201cThroughout my education, I always focused on ethics,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>

FINDING HER WAY TO SINGAPORE<\/strong><\/p>

In 2007\u2014while exploring where to pursue her PhD\u2014her parents decided on a family holiday in Singapore. \u201cMy father was a ship captain, and my mum travelled with him a lot,\u201d she said. \u201cThey spent their first New Year together in Singapore, from 1969 into 1970. Mum would tell me things like, \u2018Oh, it was the first place I saw double-decker buses\u2019, and \u2018We went to a great New Year\u2019s party at the Tropicana Hotel and Louis Armstrong was playing\u2019. It sounded like a fairy tale. So they always wanted to go back.\u201d<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Through hearing their tales, Dr Canca fell in love with Singapore. \u201cI really, really loved the city, so I thought \u2018Let\u2019s take this NUS thing much more seriously\u2019.\u201d\u00a0<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

She discovered that NUS offered a PhD programme that was hard to resist, even with scholarship offers from universities around the world.\u00a0 \u201cWhen I chose Singapore, my mum was like, \u2018I\u2019m so glad you\u2019re not going too far\u2019,\u201d she added. \u201cSingapore was much easier for my family when I was a student living there [due to the visa restrictions they would face from nearer countries in Europe]. I loved my education at NUS. It was probably one of the best decisions I made.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Dr Canca as a student at NUS<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Dr Canca highlighted the \u201camazing\u201d financial and research support she received from NUS. \u201cI ended up going for research stints at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva and the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, but all of these were supported by grants from NUS. The philosophy department has really a high-end, world-class faculty,\u201d she added.<\/p>

RAISING UP ETHICS IN A WORLD OF AI<\/strong><\/p>

Dr Canca described philosophy as \u201can organised approach to the world\u2019s hard questions. [It entails] organising your thoughts, making them structured and systematic, and going in a direction where you can have some answers\u201d.<\/p>

She emphasised that ethics is fundamental. \u201cHow are people treated? Are they suffering? Are they happy? How can we make it better? And finally, how can we make the life experience better? That is the most fundamental question if you care about anything.\u201d<\/p>

Her doctoral research at WHO focused on organ transplantation, after which she became a lecturer in Applied Ethics at the University of Hong Kong. There, she designed a medical ethics curriculum and taught bioethics.<\/p>

She is attracted to the urgency of applied ethics. \u201cYou have to give answers: there is a patient and there must be a decision about that patient’s treatment. For example, who is going to get the kidney? Who is going to get the life support? Who is going to get the vaccination? You don\u2019t have the luxury of thinking about this for centuries; you have to make a decision. You have the moral weight of any action, including inaction,\u201d she described. \u201cI have always been very drawn to the idea of combining this importance and urgency with philosophy\u2019s very structured and deep thinking process, which leads you to robust answers.\u201d<\/p>

It was while she was at the University of Hong Kong that she noticed how technological tools were being used to make value-based decisions in hospitals\u2014often bluntly. For example, she explained, an AI system predicting which patients need more healthcare might prioritise those who return to the hospital more often. At first glance, this looks objective. But in reality, wealthier people can afford more frequent visits, while lower-income patients might delay care due to the cost. The AI algorithm, if left unchecked, would result in deprioritising patients that need healthcare the most. \u201cSo whatever pattern the AI system recognises is really dependent on the data and values encoded in it. If we don\u2019t know that, we miss a whole chunk of the ethical assessment that we make,\u201d Dr Canca said.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Dr Canca speaking at a conference in Istanbul in 2025. She is the first technology and AI ethicist in Turkey. <\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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This led to her leaving Hong Kong for Cambridge, Massachusetts, to research and affect how AI makes ethical assessments. \u201cI thought [it would be good to go back] to Harvard,\u201d she recalled of her move in 2017. \u201cThis town is full of researchers, and I was sure they were working on [the ethics of AI]. But they were not working on it\u2014not in relation to the practice and to the practitioners.\u201d

She also talked to professors at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as well as major tech companies, only to learn there was no opportunity to focus on this specific question. So, Dr Canca started her own consultancy, AI Ethics Lab. She went to a caf\u00e9, bought a website, created a logo and started contacting people. \u201cI said, \u2018Can we work together? I have nothing to offer, no money\u2014nothing\u2014but we can start working on these research questions, developing papers and workshops to guide the practitioners. And it worked because there were no similar groups\u2014which meant there was no real competition. So if anybody wanted to work on this, I provided the setup.\u201d<\/p>

The AI Ethics Lab team consists of philosophers and computer scientists \u2014 an unconventional combination that, to Dr Canca, makes perfect sense. She pointed to a precedent in public health ethics: a group of philosophers within a programme called Ethics and Health, who advised on triage decisions during the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. These experts worked together to make extremely difficult ethical decisions that had to be implemented immediately. \u201cSo in my mind, that has always been the model,\u201d she explained. \u201cYou bring the computer scientists together with the philosophers, and they together make better decisions, because computer scientists know the technical aspects and philosophers know how to determine what is right.\u201d<\/p>

Her timing was impeccable when she launched AI Ethics Lab in 2017. The following year, the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandals, in which personal data belonging to millions of Facebook users was used without consent by Cambridge Analytica to market targeted political messages through AI, heightened awareness of ethical risks in technology. \u201cI was in town, I was available, and I had a very easy-to-find website,\u201d she said. \u201cI was already connected to the academic community here, so I was pulled into different projects, and I pulled in my other collaborators into those different projects.\u201d The lab quickly gained traction, leading to talks, workshops and consultations with companies.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Mapping is a structured, interactive workshop designed by the AI Ethics Lab to help participants think deeply about ethical problems, evaluate possible outcomes, and decide on ethically viable paths forward. <\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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As an early voice in AI ethics, Dr Canca has worked with organisations such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice in the US, educating them on the ethical implications of using AI tools. She also collaborates with the World Economic Forum, the United Nations and INTERPOL to develop guidelines for law enforcement, investors and companies on responsible AI innovation.<\/p>

Although the world is enamoured with AI now, Dr Canca argues that the key to working with the technology lies in strengthening human qualities. \u201cThe reality is, in order to work with AI, create better AI systems and be successful in an AI-embedded world, it\u2019s much more important that we work on being human,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need to be more creative, more critical in our thinking and we need to understand the world better. That\u2019s how we can train and control AI better.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Cansu Canca (Arts & Social Sciences PhD \u201912) founded AI Ethics Lab, which brings together philosophers and computer scientists to develop ethical frameworks in artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2382"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12884,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382\/revisions\/12884"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alumni.nus.edu.sg\/thealumnus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}