108. Moral Agents with Jen Semler

This month we chatted in-person with Jen Semler. We chatted about what is AI? Philosophers and engineer collboartions, businesses working with ethicists, machine ethics and AMAs, what makes a moral agent, how to create a moral agent, types of moral decisions, the point of moral agents, how can we tell if a machine is conscious, tech companies being not democratic organisations and don’t have to adhere to their citizens, and more...

Date: 4th of February 2026
Podcast authors: Ben Byford and Jen Semler
Audio duration: 44:18 | Website plays & downloads: 6 Click to download
Tags: Ethicists, AMAs, Conciousness, Agents, Philosophy | Playlists: Philosophy, Machine Ethics

Jen Semler is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell Tech's Digital Life Initiative. Her research focuses on the intersection of ethics, technology, and moral agency. She holds a DPhil (PhD) in philosophy from the University of Oxford.

This episode is sponsored by Airia.com - Meet Airia—the AI platform that empowers everyone on your team, from no-code beginners to pro developers, to innovate responsibly.

No transcript currently available for this episode.

Episode host: Ben Byford

Ben Byford is a AI ethics consultant, code, design and data science teacher, games designer with years of design and coding experience building websites, apps, and games.

In 2015 he began talking on AI ethics and started the Machine Ethics podcast. Since, Ben has talked with academics, developers, doctors, novelists and designers on AI, automation and society. He is available for articles, talks and workshops.

Through Ethical by Design Ben and the team help organisations make better AI decisions leveraging their experience in design, technology, business, data, sociology and philosophy.

Previous episode: 2025 wrap up with Lisa Talia Moretti & Ben Byford