Brian Hedden PhD ’12 has been appointed co-associate dean of the Social and Moral Obligations of Computing (SERC) at MIT, a cross-cutting initiative within the MIT Schwarzman Faculty of Computing, efficient Jan. 16.
Hedden is a professor within the Division of Linguistics and Philosophy, holding an MIT Schwarzman Faculty of Computing shared place with the Division of Electrical Engineering and Pc Science (EECS). He joined the MIT college final fall from the Australian Nationwide College and the College of Sydney, the place he beforehand served as a school member. He earned his BA from Princeton College and his PhD from MIT, each in philosophy.
“Brian is a pure and compelling selection for SERC, as a thinker whose work speaks on to the mental challenges dealing with schooling and analysis at the moment, notably in computing and AI. His experience in epistemology, resolution principle, and ethics addresses questions which have turn out to be more and more pressing in an period outlined by data abundance and synthetic intelligence. His scholarship exemplifies the form of interdisciplinary inquiry that SERC exists to advance,” says Dan Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman Faculty of Computing and the Henry Ellis Warren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Pc Science.
Hedden’s analysis focuses on how we should kind beliefs and make choices, and it explores how philosophical fascinated about rationality can yield insights into modern moral points, together with ethics of AI. He’s the writer of “Causes with out Individuals: Rationality, Identification, and Time” (Oxford College Press, 2015) and articles on matters equivalent to collective motion issues, authorized requirements of proof, algorithmic equity, and political polarization.
Becoming a member of co-associate dean Nikos Trichakis, the J.C. Penney Professor of Administration on the MIT Sloan College of Administration, Hedden will assist lead SERC and advance the initiative’s ongoing analysis, educating, and engagement efforts. He succeeds professor of philosophy Caspar Hare, who stepped down on the conclusion of his three-year time period on Sept. 1, 2025.
Since its inception in 2020, SERC has launched a variety of applications and actions designed to domesticate accountable “habits of thoughts and motion” amongst those that create and deploy computing applied sciences, whereas fostering the event of applied sciences within the public curiosity.
The SERC Students Program invitations undergraduate and graduate college students to work alongside postdoctoral mentors to discover interdisciplinary moral challenges in computing. The initiative additionally hosts an annual prize competitors that challenges MIT college students to ascertain the way forward for computing, publishes a twice-yearly sequence of case research, and collaborates on coordinated curricular supplies, together with active-learning initiatives, homework assignments, and in-class demonstrations. In 2024, SERC launched a new seed grant program to help MIT researchers investigating moral know-how growth; thus far, two rounds of grants have been awarded to 24 initiatives.
