Summary
Overview
Professor Katrin Mißlerhorn explores fundamental questions at the intersection of philosophy, artificial intelligence, and ethics. The discussion covers her philosophical journey from studying Kant and Davidson to developing ethical principles for machine ethics, examining questions of consciousness, responsibility, empathy with robots, and whether AI can create art. She advocates for humans maintaining ultimate responsibility over machines and warns against replacing human relationships and creativity with AI simulations.
Becoming a Philosophy Professor: An Unconventional Path
Katrin describes her journey from a conservative, engineering-focused family background to becoming a philosophy professor. Despite parental expectations to study law, medicine, or engineering, she followed her passion for philosophy after discovering it in school. Her academic path included promotion, habilitation, and studying at UNC Chapel Hill, eventually securing a position in Göttingen after a relatively short job search.
- Katrin comes from a technical family background - father was an electrical engineer, relatives were engineers
- Her parents believed only three study programs were legitimate: law, medicine, and engineering
- Philosophy teacher encouraged her philosophical talent, though only at graduation
- She received a scholarship from the Studienstiftung and studied on Lehramt (teaching degree) as Plan B
- Had only 1.5 years between habilitation and first professorial appointment, which she considers relatively short
" Weil ich, als ich an die Uni ging zum Studium, die Philosophie noch cooler fand als vorher an der Schule und dachte, hey, das will ich mein Leben lang machen, wenn das irgendwie geht. "
Three Driving Philosophical Questions: God, Justice, and Mind
Three fundamental questions motivated Katrin's philosophical studies as a teenager: the problem of theodicy (how God's existence is compatible with suffering), questions of justice inspired by Rawls, and the mind-body problem. She was particularly drawn to the idea that the mind might be like software running on the brain as hardware, offering a middle ground between dualism and simple materialism.
- The theodicy problem (God's omnipotence, omniscience, goodness vs. existence of suffering) troubled her in evangelical youth work
- She was fascinated by Rawls' theory of justice and the 'veil of ignorance' thought experiment
- Bought her first Atari computer with pocket money to explore whether mind could be software on brain hardware
- Rawls proposes two justice principles: fair/equal access to offices and structuring society to benefit the least advantaged
" Ich möchte eigentlich nicht mein Leben auf unreflektierten Konventionen aufbauen. Ich möchte wirklich darüber nachdenken, was davon kann ich anerkennen, was davon würde ich verändern oder würde ich anders sehen und das ist letzten Endes philosophieren. "
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