IE University Hosts the 'Global AI, Ethics, and Society Conference 2025'

IE University hosted the 8th AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES) this week at IE Tower, its vertical campus in Madrid, marking the conference’s first appearance in continental Europe and serving as the marquee event of IE University’s inaugural AI Ethics Week 2025.

AIES is the premier multidisciplinary venue on the ethical, social, legal, and governance dimensions of artificial intelligence. More than 275 research teams, selected through competitive peer review, convened in Madrid to present new work across computer science and engineering, law and policy, philosophy, and the social sciences. The program featured talks, panels, networking, and poster sessions.

Headline sessions included David Leslie (Alan Turing Institute), Urs Gasser (TUM), Maria Eriksson (European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency), Ted Lechterman (IE University), Miriam Fernandez (The Open University), Shannon Vallor (University of Edinburgh), Julienne LaChance (Sony AI), Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem (University of Pretoria), and Samer Hassan (Harvard University and UCM), among others. AIES also included a competitive PhD program with mentorship, poster presentations, and travel assistance.

"Hosting AIES underscores IE University’s growing leadership in AI research and follows the recent inauguration of the UNESCO Chair in AI Ethics & Governance at the IE School of Humanities", says Theodore Lechterman, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at IE University and UNESCO Chair in AI Ethics & Governance. 

AIES is organized annually by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Association for Computing Machinery. AIES-25 is led by an international scientific committee co-chaired by Ted Lechterman (IE School of Humanities) and Kush Varshney (IBM Research), with Francesca Palmiotto (IE Law School) among the organizers. Sponsors include Google, Lenovo, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, AE Studio, Artificial Intelligence Journal, ACM SIGAI, and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

AIES headlines AI Ethics Week, a festival led by the IE School of Humanities on the ethical and humanistic dimensions of artificial intelligence. This will conclude today with the event ‘AI Ethics at the Edge: Philosophy Meets Industry’, which will bring together philosophers, policy experts, and industry leaders to explore the frontiers of AI ethics and governance. Highlights include a keynote by visiting scholar Andrés Páez, a leading philosopher of AI; a panel with representatives from OpenAI, Lenovo, and UNESCO; and opportunities to connect with speakers and guests.