Michael Lynch (UConn) delivers his talk, “AI, Rights, and Epistemic Agency” at the What Are We Talking About When We Talk About AI? Symposium. October 9, 2025 at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute.

In this episode, Michael Lynch presents the philosophical tensions between what has been understood as human rights and agency and how artificial intelligence complicates that relationship. Humans possess an unbelievably powerful capacity to make life plans, engage in projects, and make decisions that serve as the foundation for human rights and agency. For Lynch, the question of how the social integration of these chatbots will impact humans’ epistemic agency is the most pressing when it comes to the rapid expansion of AI usage in the contemporary moment. This epistemic agency is our capacity to know about the world, and that capacity becomes infinitely more complex with chatbots when they move out of the realm of tool used to extend that epistemic agency. As generative AI and chatbots continue to become more widely used, a delicate balance will have to be struck between the desire to know more and the subsequent tradeoff of losing understanding.

Prefer to watch? Check out this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Pg71vDhPajU

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