The Ethics and Technology Lab at Queen’s University is an interdisciplinary setting where computer scientists trade skills with cognitive scientists, ethicists, and artists. We use data science tools, artificial intelligence models, philosophical analysis, and artistic praxis to address social and ethical issues in computing.
Current areas of focus include challenging bias in AI methods, investigating authorship and creativity at the intersection of AI and art, providing digital tools for resisting targeted violence, and uncovering racism in medical practice.
We welcome participation by Queen’s students interested not only in deeply understanding technical problems, but also co-constructing knowledge within their communities, and communicating effectively with policy makers and the public. If you are interested in joining the lab, please write a brief personal email expressing in your own words why you are interested. AI-written correspondence and form letters will not receive a reply. Please write in your own voice.
Job openings
We are looking to hire 1 computing MSc or PhD student (to start as early as January 2026) to work on a project critically evaluating the use of chatbots for mental health support. Thesis work would involve developing and testing new benchmarks for LLMs that evaluate the capacities important for successful psychotherapy, like empathy, understanding, and ethical judgment. (To be clear, our hypothesis is that LLMs are likely not suitable as replacements for human therapists for some tasks, though we also take seriously the role they could play in reducing stigma, and we are generally critical of medical AI projects that sound innovative but fail to translate safely to clinical use.)
We are also looking to hire 1 part-time Graduate Research Assistant from Philosophy, Cultural Studies, or a related field (either a current Queen’s student, or a new recruit) who has knowledge of / experience with mental healthcare to provide background research for and critical analysis of the benchmarking project described above.
Part of the funding package for both positions may involve working on the Tracking (In)justice project (see below).
Inquiries about these positions should start with a brief personal email to the Lab Director, indicating why you are interested in the project, and describing any relevant research or experience. Feel free to attach something you’ve written, whether published or not, but transcripts/CVs, etc. are not necessary in a first email. Generic AI-written correspondence and form letters will not receive a reply; please write in your own voice. We try to maintain a lab environment that celebrates LGBTQIA+ scholarship, supports and affirms (dis)abilities, is enthusiastically anti-racist, and works to dismantle the colonialism embedded in academic systems.
Research Highlights
The paper Beyond the Imitation Game: Quantifying and extrapolating the capabilities of language models (https://openreview.net/forum?id=uyTL5Bvosj) was recognized as a finalist for Outstanding Certification at Transactions in Machine Learning Research, and invited for presentation at ICLR 2025.
ET Lab recently released a policy report called Large Language Models and the Disappearing Private Sphere. Check out the report, a timeline of privacy leaks and patches, our list of policy recommendations, and explore an interactive demo here: https://llmprivacy.ca/.
ET Lab collaborates on a Carleton University led law enforcement data and transparency project called Tracking (In)justice that collects data about police-involved deaths in Canada, and makes this information openly available to researchers, affected families and the public. Check out the data and analysis here: https://trackinginjustice.ca/.
