Cansu Canca is a philosopher and the founder and director of the AI Ethics Lab. AI Ethics Lab is one of the first initiatives focusing exclusively on the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), advising practitioners and conducting multidisciplinary research. Canca leads teams of computer scientists, philosophers, legal scholars, and other experts in research, development of toolkits, and consulting. In addition to her role at the Lab, she serves as an ethics expert in EU-funded research projects focusing on the ethics of AI, robotics, human enhancement, and law enforcement AI technologies.
She is frequently invited to speak to leaders in industry and academia having given keynotes at Harvard Business School, the U.S. Department of Justice, and TEDxCambridge among others.
Canca holds a Ph.D. in philosophy specializing in applied ethics. Before her work on technology, she spent over a decade working in ethics and health on a range of topics including resource allocation, human subject research, and end-of-life decisions. She was on the full-time faculty at the University of Hong Kong Medical School, and a researcher at the Harvard Law School, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, National University of Singapore, Osaka University, and the World Health Organization. Merging her areas of expertise, most recently, she has been working on the ethics of technologies targeting the COVID-19 pandemic.