CS Colloquium

Oluwaseun Sanwoolu
University of Kansas

Stevenson 1300
Monday, October 27, 2025

What would it mean to align AI systems with Kant’s moral theory if they can’t be moral agents like humans? I argue that it is still possible. The first challenge is that Kant’s ideas are built for moral agents, but in the view I defend,  AI can still follow his basic test: create a rule for action and ask if it would work for everyone in such a situation. This gives us a way to design and check AI decision-making using the Formula of Universal Law.

The second challenge is that Kant’s approach can seem too rigid to handle different situations. I show that his framework can adapt to context-sensitivity through practical judgment. While AI lacks human judgment, it can use a functionally similar mechanism such as transformer models to factor in important details before acting. This means Kant’s ideas can still guide AI design in a way that is both consistent and flexible.

Held in collaboration with the Center for Ethics, Law, and Society.

Dept Event

Overlook (Student Center, 3rd floor)
Monday, November 3, 2025

CS students, join us for Advise-a-palooza for Fall 2025 registration.

John P. Sullins III
Sonoma State University

Stevenson 1300
Monday, November 10, 2025

Sociotechnical risks are a reality of all technology design, and one that particularly matters in an organization like the Department of Defense.  We will look at a two-year project housed here at SSU where SSU faculty and students collaborated with Cal Poly SLO faculty and students to build a prototype application for helping DoD projects identify how best to utilize the responsible AI toolkit and NIST Framework as these applied to their particular projects.  We will also examine how LLMs present new problems for military AI applications.

Alex Mussgnug
Stanford University

Stevenson 1300
Monday, November 17, 2025

Most technology ethics starts with theory: utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics. But what if we started with people instead? This talk introduces exemplarist technology ethics — an approach that grounds ethical understanding in the study of individuals who embody technological virtue. I'll examine Seymour Papert, the visionary computing educator who saw technology as a tool for human empowerment rather than replacement, and Neo from The Matrix, whose choices illuminate what technomoral courage looks like. I end with a theory outlining how and what we can learn from fictional and real technomoral exemplars.

Held in collaboration with the Center for Ethics, Law, and Society.

Dept Event

Stevenson 1300
Monday, November 24, 2025

Short presentations of research carried out by Sonoma State Computer Science Students, and CS awards.

Dept Event

Stevenson 1300
Monday, December 1, 2025

Short presentations of capstone projects carried out by Sonoma State Computer Science Students