Prof. Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem

Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem is the current Chair of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) and a former member of the UN Secretary General's Advisory Body on AI. She is professor and head of the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, University of Pretoria and leads the ethics of AI research group at the Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research (CAIR) in South Africa. She has a PhD in philosophy in the domains of mathematical logic and the philosophy of science. In the ethics of AI, she works on themes in the philosophy of technology relating to human-technology relations, and themes in machine ethics, the ethics of social robotics, and data ethics. Her policy making research focuses on generating culturally sensitive policies for trustworthy AI technologies while aiming for global regulation. In the philosophy of science, her work is centred on debates in scientific realism, the structure of scientific theories, and the status of machine learning-based methodologies in the discovery/justification debate in the philosophy of science.

In AI ethics and governance contexts, she was the chairperson of the Ad Hoc Expert Group that drafted the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI, which was adopted by 193 Member States in 2021, and contributed to developing implementation tools for the Recommendation. She is a member of the Global Academic Network, Centre for AI and Digital Policy, Washington DC and has worked in projects related to AI ethics with the African Union Development Agency (AUDA)-NEPAD and the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR). She is a member of various international AI ethics advisory boards ranging from the inter-governmental sector (as expert for the Global Commission on Responsible AI in the Military Domain), to the private sector (e.g., SAP SE), and academia (e.g., the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Programme Human Sciences). She is an associate editor for Science and Engineering Ethics. She is on the editorial boards of the Journal of AI Law and Regulation and the Cambridge Forum on AI: Law and Governance. Emma is on the 2022 list of the '100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics' compiled annually by the Women in AI Ethics global initiative. She is a founding member of the Southern African Conference for AI Research.

In philosophy of science contexts, Emma is a full member of the International Academy for the Philosophy of Science. She is a member of the editorial board of Springer’s respected Synthese Library Book Series.