[PHILOS-L] Call for participation: AI as a Colleague? Towards a Social Epistemology of AI - Workshop at the University of Bern

[Claus Beisbart]

Call for participation: AI – our new colleague? Towards a social epistemology of AI Workshop at the University of Bern

Venue: University of Bern, UniS, B-102

Time: March 26-27, 2026

The past few years have witnessed tremendous progress in the development of AI. DNNs and other AI tools have increasingly demonstrated their ability to perform epistemic tasks, such as recognizing patterns in data, diagnosing diseases, or exploring solution spaces to problems. The epistemic power of some AI tools suggests that they are not just epistemic instruments but rather becoming epistemic agents of their own. If this is true, new perspectives on AI emerge: The use of AI can be studied through the lens of social epistemology, a thriving branch of epistemology that emphasizes the social nature of acquiring and transmitting knowledge. But is it really appropriate to analyze AI using concepts and ideas from social epistemology? Can AI systems be experts or epistemic authorities? Is epistemic trust towards AI models justified? Can social epistemology help to deal with difficult situations, e.g., when AI and human judgment disagree? Which kinds of collaborations between humans and AI tools are most promising for improving medical diagnoses? Might it be sensible to assign group beliefs to coupled systems involving humans and AI tools? And what consequences does the social epistemology perspective have for the explainability of AI?

This workshop aims to bring together social epistemology and the philosophy of AI to address such questions. Ultimately, we hope to advance our understanding of AI and its applications by utilizing the tools of social epistemology. A special focus will be laid on the example of medicine and the use of AI tools in this domain.

Program:

March 26th, 2026
09:00	Andreas Wolkenstein & Claus Beisbart Welcome
09:15	Inkeri Koskinen Towards a satisfactory social epistemology of AI-based science
11:00	Philipp Schwind & Jörg Löschke Advising Agents: A Social-Epistemic Framework for AI Beyond Information
12:00	Alina Jacobs Paternalism in AI
14:30	Thomas Grundmann Against the Epistemic Authority of Generative AI
16:00	Johan Largo & Oscar Piedrahita Inquiry by Proxy: On the Epistemic Role of LLMs
17:30:00	Rico Hauswald The Social Epistemology of AI-driven Science
March 27th, 2026
09:00	Federica Malfatti Learning From AI Systems?
10:30	Alessandro Corona Mendozza & Leonardo Santa Maria Confroning Knowledge Collapse
12:00	Saskia Nagel Trusting Relationships in Technicized Medicine
14:30	Àger Pérez Casanovas Rethinking Epistemic Authority in AI-Mediated Mental Health Care: The Case of Anorexia
15:45	Piotri Litwin “Doing Your Own Research” Meets AI. Epistemic Agency and the Limits of Chatbot Debunking
17:15	Andreas Wolkenstein Must Medical AI Provide Understanding? A Social-Epistemological Perspective

Organizers: Andreas Wolkenstein (LMU Munich) and Claus Beisbart (University of Bern)


Webpage: https://s8by70av.scispace.co/index.html


We have a few free places, and interested people are welcome to participate. However, registration is necessary with Claus.B...@unibe.ch no later than March 20th.

Funding by the Swiss National Science Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.

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