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I am a post-doctoral fellow on the Humanising Machine Intelligence Grand Challenge project at the Australian National University (where I have been awarded the John Vincent Fellowship). I completed my post-doctoral fellowship at the Polonsky Academy of Advanced Study at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, after having received my PhD from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 2014.

My main areas of research are ethics, both normative and applied, and the philosophy of technology. My current project focuses on creating ethical machine intelligence: on both developing the theoretical framework necessary to understand the challenges and opportunities that AI affords and designing technology to implement my findings. Through working with other philosophers, as well as social and computer scientists, the Humanising Machine Intelligence project will progress through discovery, foundations and design to reshape our understanding of what it means to be ethical in the age of machine intelligences.

In normative ethics, I work primarily on supererogation. Supererogatory actions are those that go above and beyond the call of duty. In my work on supererogation, I examine both the conditions that an act must meet to be counted as supererogatory as well as the value of including this class of normative action in our ethical theories. Often overlooked in the traditional ethical discussions of liars, murderers, promise-breakers and thieves, I focus on the wonderfully positive side of our moral lives and encourage us all to take more seriously those modest gift-givers, blood-donors, saints and heroes who similarly populate our moral world.

For further information, feel free to email me at cmabenn@gmail.com or see my website at www.clairebenn.wordpress.com