Babushkina, D. (Dina)

I am an assistant professor in philosophy of technology & society, Section of Philosophy (BMS), University of Twente. I am also a research fellow at the Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies program. I transitioned to the University of Twente from the RADAR research group (University of Helsinki) where I was working as a postdoc in a project on responsible AI in health care, and with which I maintain close research ties. I have a PhD in History of Philosophy (focus on Idealism and existentialism) and a PhD in Ethics (focus on moral psychology and normative ethics).

My primary research interest is in philosophy of artificial intelligence and “smart” robotics. My approach combines ethics, epistemology, psychology, and philosophical anthropology. More specifically, I am looking into questions about:

the interaction between AI and humans, esp. AI as a player in interpersonal relationships;
the ways in which personhood and agency change due to our interactions with AI and data-mining technologies (incl. digital twins, digital identity, hybridization of personhood and cognitive agency, esp. the ways in which AI is integrated into decision making processes);
the ways in which life experiences (e.g. interpersonal relationships, phenomenology of living environments) transform as a result of the integration of artificial agents as mediators of such experiences.

Domain-wise, I primarily focus on AI and robotics in health & social care, psychotherapy (esp. patent’s perspective), and companionship, and AI for cities (esp. citizens’ perspective & lived experiences).