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BudPT25: Budapest Workshop on Philosophy and Technology

BudPT25 is coming!

Dates: 27-28 November 2025, Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Submissions are already closed.

The workshop provides full paper publication opportunity in a special issue of an open-access journal indexed by WoS SSCI and Scopus (Q2): "Information Society" ("Információs Társadalom")

BudPT25 will be an in-person conference, held in Budapest. Only submit a paper if, except vis maior obstackles of course, you are willing to travel to Budapest.
Audience registration (not needed for speakers): https://forms.gle/v9f23wGAhhUsCaUu8

The fifth Budapest Workshop on Philosophy of Technology will seek to explore a wide variety of topics connected to the Ethics of AI, Epistemology of Engineering and the Metaphysics of Artifacts. Any other high-quality submissions in the field of philosophy of technology are welcome.

Sergii GERASKOV: Ctrl+Alt+Defend: Digital diplomacy in Ukrainian response to the Russian full-scale invasion

SERGII GERASKOV works as an associate professor of the Department of Philosophy at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Ukraine. He holds a PhD in religious studies, taught at the relocated Donetsk National Technical University, and was a research fellow at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan. In 2017–2021, he worked as a researcher at National Academy for Public Administration under the President of Ukraine. He was awarded a scholarly prize by the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in 2022, and received numerous academic grants and honors. His research efforts cover Japanese studies, religious studies and public diplomacy.

Tetiana ZATONATSKA and Kira HORIACHEVA: Applying NLP for Rapid Response in Solving Military Support Challenges

Tetiana Zatonatska is a Doctor of Economic Sciences and Professor at the Department of Economic Cybernetics, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine. She previously held the position of part-time Head of the Financial and Economic Forecasting Department at the Academy of Financial Management under the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine. Tetiana managed 16 budget research topics commissioned by the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine. Her scientific interests include macroeconomics, artificial intelligence applications, data science in e-commerce, and environmental economics. Currently, she is the Editor-in-Chief of the "Bulletin of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Economics" journal and serves on several editorial boards.

Kira Horiacheva is a Lead Researcher and Associate Professor at the Scientific and Research Center of the Military Institute of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics and possesses extensive experience in scientific research, project management, and academic teaching in the areas of defense economics, financial security, and military education. Kira actively participates in international projects and contributes to the development of scientific personnel within higher military educational institutions. She currently serves as the scientific supervisor for research projects commissioned by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. Additionally, she is an official reviewer for several academic journals.

Alireza DEHGHANI: Generative AI in Medicine: Between Curing, Caring, and Ethical Boundaries

Dr. Alireza Dehghani is a Senior Technical Programme Manager at CeADAR, Ireland’s Centre for AI, and serves as Principal Investigator on multiple AI projects. With over two decades of experience in academia and industry, Alireza has led significant research initiatives across AI and technology fields. His expertise spans the application of Large Language Models (LLMs) and real-time intelligence at the edge, AI Digital Twins, and Sustainable AI, where he has been driving innovations that align with cutting-edge industrial and societal needs, contributing to digital transformation, healthcare, and smart systems innovation.

Themes

You can present at the workshop by submitting an abstract, which will be peer-reviewed. Abstracts are welcome in the following topics:

philosophy of AI: ethics, epistemology, metaphysics
general philosophy of technology
- epistemology of engineering
- tacit knowledge in engineering
- ontology and metaphysics of technology

Special Theme - AI at War

Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) are no longer science fiction: we can say that they are part of our current reality.

The emergence of LAWS marks a profound transformation in the nature of warfare, bringing urgent philosophical, ethical, sociopolitical, and technological questions to the forefront. No longer confined to the realm of science fiction, autonomous systems are now actively reshaping the theater of conflict. Ethical debates around responsibility, bias, and accountability, the dual-use dilemma of AI research, and the shifting boundaries between human and machine agency call for a multi-layered investigation.

This track encourages contributions to explore the representation of AI in warfare across literature, film, video games, and other media, recognizing that cultural narratives both reflect and shape public understandings and moral intuitions about emerging military technologies.

In this special track, in line with the nature of the conference we focus on the philosophical questions surrounding these machines, such as:

LAWS in historical and modern contexts
Arguments for and against a ban on LAWS
The permissibility conditions of development of LAWS
The permissibility conditions of usage of LAWS
Machine ethics of LAWS: the issues of bias, fairness, explainability, trustworthiness in the context of AI at War
Dual use technologies
The transformation of soldiering and military ethics in the face of automation
Speculations about the future of LAWS
Understanding deeper human values and virtues in light of LAWS

Special Theme - Medical Technologies: Curing and Caring

The special track titled ‘Medical Technologies: Curing and Caring’ aims to bring together scholars from various fields focusing on the philosophical, historical, sociological, and communicative role of technology in the medical sciences. From functional and malfunctional medical instruments to ethical dilemmas posed by risky technologies, the influence of technological advancement on our physical and mental health is enormous. The track highlights that these questions cannot be reduced to a single discipline, since they require a much more nuanced analysis that can scrutinize ethical, technical, and philosophical problems simultaneously.

This track also aims to investigate the representational level of medical developments in the arts, media, and popular culture, since, from period dramas to science fiction, many genres reflect on the past, present, and future of health and healing.

The program committee proposes the following themes (including, but not limited to):

Historical analysis of medical instruments
Philosophy of medicine
Values in medical diagnosis and processes
Bias in medical research
Application of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine
Technological and ethical aspects of end-of-life decisions
Gendered medical instruments
Maintenance and repair studies
Medical humanities
Medical progress in the arts, popular culture, and media

If you apply to the special track, please indicate in your submission!

Local Organizing Committee

Mihály Héder - associate professor - chair of the committee
Alexandra Karakas - assistant professor
Eszter Nádasi - assistant professor
Gellért Nagy - PhD Student
Márton Pluzsik - PhD Student
Marcell Sebestyén - PhD Student

International Program Committee

Anda Zahiu - University of Bucharest, Romania
Conor Heaney - Kent Law School, University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom
Jacopo G. Bodini - Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, France
Radu Uszkai - Bucharest University of Economic Studies; Research Center in Applied Ethics, University of Bucharest, Romania
Kamila Kwapińska - School of Economics, Politics and International Relations, University of Kent at Canterbury, United Kingdom
Jurgis Karpus - LMU Munich; The Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (KU), Germany
Hermann Diebel-Fischer - TU Dresden, ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig, Germany
Jernej Kaluža - University of Ljubjana, Faculty of Social Sciences, Slovenia
Chang-Yun Ku - Tri-Service General Hospital of National Defense Medical University (Institutional Review Board, Board Member), Taiwan
Jesse de Pagter - Centre for Social Innovation in Vienna; TU Wien, Austria
Roman Krzanowski - The Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Czechia
Auli Viidalepp - University of Tartu, Estonia
Cristina Voinea - Uehiro Oxford Institute, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Oleh Shynkarenko - PhD Student in Philosophy University of Pécs, Faculty of Philosophy. Doctoral School of Philosophy, Hungary
Juraj Hvorecky - Center for Environmental and Technology Ethics, Prague, Czechia
Agostino Cera - University of Ferrara

Previous installments of BudPT: