Parliamentary Evening (2023)

On 19 September 2023, the German Ethics Council invited the members of the German Bundestag to its 11^th Parliamentary Evening. Alena Buyx, Chair of the Ethics Council, welcomed all participants and handed over the 2022 annual report to Bundestag Vice-President Yvonne Magwas, MdB.

The presentation of the Opinion “Humans and Machines – Challenges of Artificial Intelligence” was followed by a stimulating discussion on the opportunities and ethical challenges posed by the new technologies. “We are very pleased about the great interest shown by the members of parliament,” emphasised Alena Buyx during the debate. In addition to contributions to the discussion, there were also many questions on a very broad range of ethical topics, for example regarding prenatal diagnostics or matters of personal responsibility and tolerance in a democracy. Furthermore, Kerstin Schlögl-Flierl and Steffen Augsberg presented the current work of the German Ethics Council on the topics of “climate justice” and “normality in the life sciences”. Alena Buyx concluded the evening by thanking everyone for the lively discussion and inviting the politicians to the next annual meeting of the German Ethics Council. “It will be about the topic of ‘loneliness’,” she announced. “There is still far too little research on this topic, and we believe it deserves more attention. Loneliness has enormous social consequences that we want to investigate from an ethical perspective.”

Please switch to the German version of this website for more information on the programme.