The advent and increased sophistication of autonomous systems offers significant potential benefits in diverse application domains including manufacturing and transportation, healthcare and financial services, exploration, maintenance and repair. As well as cost and risk reduction, potential benefits include enhanced productivity, precision and accuracy, better health outcomes, lower mortality and injury rates due to human error, as well as opportunities for greater human creativity. These are counter-balanced by a broad range of ethical, social, philosophical and legal concerns, including further dehumanising warfare, creating existential threats and damaging the fabric of human society.

In a series of keynote speeches and panel-discussions, leading voices from the AI and ethics fields shall consider the balance between AI technologies and the ethics that underpin their development.