Olya Kudina

Tech Ethics | AI DeMoS Lab

Journal of Human-Technology Relations

About

Olya Kudina is an ethicist of technology focusing on the dynamic interaction between values and technologies. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology (the Netherlands), where she helps to accompany technology development with ethical reflection and cultural sensitivity as essential counterparts.

Olya is a co-director of the AI DeMoS Lab that focuses on the relation between AI and democracy, and responsible AI development practices. She is also a co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of the diamond open access Journal of Human-Technology Relations.

Her previous work outside academia includes diplomacy, (inter)governmental work, data protection and privacy. Together with her current expertise in empirical philosophy, Olya connects ethics, design and governance in providing strategic foresight and developing technologies that are adaptable to the changing world.

Olya holds a PhD degree in Philosophy of Technology from the University of Twente and speaks English, Spanish, Dutch and Ukrainian fluently, with limited working proficiency in several other languages.

In 2024, Olya was also appointed as an Extraordinary Professor in Philosophy of AI at Optentia Research Unit of the North-West University in South Africa; and became an elected member of The Young Academy of the Dutch Royal Science Academy (2024-2029)

Research

Olya is an interdisciplinary researcher in philosophy/ethics of technology who explores the relation between human values and technologies. Her recent focus has been on AI and democracy in the framework of the AI DeMoS Lab that she founded and co-leads. To anticipate the ethical challenges and opportunities of technologies, Olya thinks it is essential to combine different academic practices and fields.

To this end, her philosophic work is inspired by (post)phenomenology, Dewey’s pragmatism, and bioethics and integrates qualitative empirical methods from STS and psychology.

Olya’s recent research explores the responsible use and design of Natural Language Processing and Automatic Speech Recognition algorithms, with applications in voice assistants such as Alexa and conversational agents such as ChatGPT. As of 2023, Olya supervises 8 PhD projects and a visiting researcher from the Fulbright program.

Teaching

Olya teaches in a range of university courses across bachelor, master and PhD levels. She pursues creative teaching, inviting the students to integrate different theoretical and stakeholders perspectives in analyzing contemporary case studies and engaging them in responsible design practices. Below are the courses Olya created and teaches in:

Robots and society

Introduction to AI and Responsible AI Engineering

Ethics of technology and bioethics

Empirical Methods in Philosophy of Technology

Ethics of Technology in Design (Ukrainian)

News and upcoming events

Article alerts! Recently, two new articles featuring Olya's work came out: with Bas de Boer on "Large language models, politics, and the functionalization of language"; and with Syafira Aulia, Aaron Ding and Ibo van de Poel on "AI versus AI for democracy: exploring the potential of adversarial machine learning to enhance privacy and deliberative decision-making in elections".

On November 19, 2024, Olya will speak in the roundtable on "Artificial intelligence as a catalyst for change" in the first Spanish-Dutch Scientific Congress, ‘Science as a Bridge.’

On December 2, 2024, Olya will give a public talk at the Batavian Society for Experimental Philosophy in Rotterdam, one of the oldest philosophy societies in the Netherlands, on "Deepfakes and Democracy: Is there a Place for Trust in the Age of Deception?"

New book! Olya's book, "Moral Hermeneutics and Technology", Rowman&Littlefield Lexington Books, 2023 is available as an open-access e-book.

Contact

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o.kudina@tudelft.nl