“Blockchain Technology Explained for Philosophers and Theorists”- Prof. dr. ir. Jan Broersen (Utrecht University) ***CANCELLED***

Bitcoin is part of a technology-driven paradigmatic shift that also brought us: Airbnb, Uber, eBay, open access publishing, facebook’s fake news, etc. These are all peer-to-peer interaction networks that cut out government, institutions, experts, middlemen. Bitcoin does stand out from these examples in that it manages to solve the problem of inducing trust in interactions by purely technological means. In this talk, Jan will try to explain how this is possible.

Jan Broersen is a professor of logical methods in artificial intelligence at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Utrecht University. Before moving to theoretical philosophy he worked in computer science (intelligent systems). His doctoral thesis was on logics for normative system verification. He studied mathematics at the Delft University of Technology. His main research interests are in logics for agency, norms and AI. In 2013 he was awarded an ERC project on the topic of Responsible Intelligent Systems (REINS). The project investigates how to endow AIs with a sense of responsibility, and how to actually verify if an AI has behaved or will behave responsibly. A second project he is involved in is the NWO project “The Digital Turn in Epistemology”, that investigates new learning methods that apply to our modern-day, embedded, embodied and extended kinds of knowledge in digital environments. A new NWO project, “Empowering Human Intentions through AI” will start under his supervision coming summer.

Featured Image:”Bitcoin, bitcoin coin, physical bitcoin, bitcoin photo“by Antana is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0