Tartu ethics centre: education goals must steer the use of AI

The University of Tartu Ethics Centre marked 25 years in early October with a ceremony and a symposium. Founded on 1 June 2001 to advance ethics teaching and research and to encourage society to reflect on norms, values and justice, it held the ceremony on 1 October at the University of Tartu Museum and the symposium on 2 October. Most of the programme was in English without interpretation into Estonian. Recordings are available at the addresses published by Õpetajate Leht.

Tiia Kõnnussaar and Margit Sutrop presented the anniversary collection Murrang. Eetikast ja väärtustest muutuvas ajas, with retrospectives on the centre and reflections on ethical problems in today’s Estonia, including a piece by former president Kersti Kaljulaid. After the launch, former president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, academician and politician Jaak Aaviksoo, Academy of Sciences vice-president Marek Tamm and professor Marju Lauristin took part in the discussion. Thanking the collection’s contributors took ten minutes because of partners across the university, elsewhere in Estonia and abroad.

The present uncertain period marked the celebration. Risks linked to the development of artificial intelligence and a fragile security situation came up repeatedly. Speakers said that values which had been generally accepted are under pressure and that selfish interests are being put in their place. At the end of the discussion, academician Jaak Aaviksoo said that the meaning of life is survival. Scientific papers focused on education and artificial intelligence. Kristján Kristjánsson, professor of philosophy at the University of Birmingham, argued that education should aim at human flourishing, the full development of each pupil’s human potential. On 2 October, Lorna Waddington, associate professor of international history at the University of Leeds, spoke about artificial intelligence in research and teaching. She acknowledged that in some cases it can make a researcher’s work considerably more efficient, while also saying that its use in interpreting history is often biased, avoids controversial topics and hallucinates.

Centre director professor Margit Sutrop singled out a recent risk analysis of the AI leap, available on that initiative’s website. Its main conclusion is that artificial intelligence can significantly strengthen Estonian education only if the goals of education guide the use of the technology, and not the other way around.

The centre is preparing a digital higher-education textbook on research ethics for independent study, introducing ethics topics and fields. In a European Commission-funded project it is also developing an English-language research-ethics e-course for doctoral students and early-career researchers across Eastern Europe. Last academic year the University of Tartu planned 25 ethics courses, among them bioethics, journalism and communication, public health, pedagogical ethics and management ethics, plus basic courses open to all bachelor’s students. The priority is now research ethics, with a separate elective for doctoral students and cooperation with the Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tallinn University, Tallinn Health Care College and the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Sutrop said interest in ethics courses is very high, but capacity is small because funding is largely project-based, so the centre is concentrating on training successors and on methods and learning materials. From 2009 to 2024 its good-school and good-kindergarten programmes involved 21 percent of all Estonian general-education schools and 27 percent of kindergartens. Ethics councils now operate at Tartu Kristjan Jaak Peterson Gymnasium and Kuusalu Secondary School.