Biography

Jim A.C. Everett is a Reader (Associate Professor) at the University of Kent, specializing in moral judgment, perceptions of moral character, and the moral psychology of artificial intelligence. Jim completed his BA, MSc, and D.Phil at the University of Oxford, before receiving a Fulbright Fellowship to work at Harvard University, and a Marie-Sklodowska-Curie PostDoctoral Fellowship to work at Leiden University.

Jim’s research sits at the intersection of psychology, philosophy, and politics, driven by a fascination about how we make sense of one another in the moral domain, and what this means. A central theme uniting his work is how judgments of morality shape judgments of character and trust, and how perceptions of moral character and trust shape our perceptions of right and wrong.

In his current work, he is especially interested in how we learn about others in the digital social world through their moral decisions, and how these processes now play out in relation to artificial intelligence. By blending social psychology with ethical analysis, Jim’s work explores both fundamental questions of human morality and applied challenges about how we should design and interact with emerging technologies.

Some of his core lines of research include:

• Moral Psychology and Trust in Artificial Intelligence. How, when, and why do we trust artificial agents in the moral domain? How should our knowledge of human moral psychology inform both the implementation, ethics, and regulation of artificial intelligence?
• Person Perception and Moral Character. How do different kinds of moral judgments people make influence how we perceive others? In what contexts will we prefer different kinds of moral agents? How does this shape our preferences for leaders? What are the philosophical implications of this?
• Utilitarian Moral Psychology. What are the psychological roots of utilitarianism? Why does utilitarianism attract some people but strongly repel so many others? What are the psychological processes, personality correlates, and social consequences of decisions in different kinds of utilitarian moral judgments?

Jim’s has received numerous awards for his contributions to the field, and his published his work Psychological Review, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Bioethics, Nature Human Behavior, and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. His research has been featured in The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The New York Times, Scientific American, and more.

Jim’s work has been funded through a New Investigator Grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (£300,000); a Philip Leverhulme Prize from the Leverhulme Trust (£100,000), and a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (TRUST-AI: €1,700,000). You can find out more information about his current 5-year project on Trust in ‘Moral’ Machines, here.