Luciano Floridi

Why organisations work with Luciano Floridi

• His AI4People framework, developed in 2018 and formally adopted by the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on AI in 2019, is one of the intellectual foundations of the EU AI Act – the world’s first major AI regulation. Organisations engaging him are drawing on the reasoning that shaped it.
• The Fourth Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2014) introduced the “infosphere” and “onlife” frameworks – giving organisations a principled vocabulary for what happens to human agency, identity, and accountability when AI systems become environmental forces rather than discrete tools.
• He holds a specific, counterintuitive argument – that AI is a new form of agency rather than a new form of intelligence – with direct consequences for how boards assign responsibility, structure oversight, and communicate accountability to regulators.
• His advisory work spans the European Commission, the German Ethics Council, the UK Cabinet Office, and companies including Google, IBM, and Microsoft – grounding his perspective in the institutional realities of AI governance, not abstracted from them.
• His five-volume tetralogy on the philosophy and ethics of information, published by Oxford University Press, is the most systematic academic treatment of the field – giving organisations access to a structured intellectual architecture that briefings and AI ethics summaries cannot replicate.

Biography highlights

• Founding Director, Digital Ethics Center, Yale University; John K. Castle Professor in the Practice of Cognitive Science
• Formerly OII Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information, University of Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Internet Institute’s Digital Ethics Lab
• Chair, AI4People Scientific Committee (2018); framework adopted by the European Commission’s HLEG on AI in 2019 and foundational to the EU AI Act
• Author of over 300 works; books include The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (OUP, 2023), The Fourth Revolution (OUP, 2014), and The Philosophy of Information (OUP, 2011)
• Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (2022) – Italy’s highest national honour; IBM Thinker Award; Barwise Prize, American Philosophical Association
• Editor-in-Chief, Philosophy & Technology (Springer Nature), since 2010

Biography

Most AI governance conversations begin with the technology and arrive at the harder questions only under pressure. What AI does to human agency, to accountability structures, and to the nature of responsibility inside organisations cannot be resolved by technical frameworks alone.

Luciano Floridi has spent three decades building the conceptual tools that fill that gap. His 2014 book The Fourth Revolution (Oxford University Press) introduced the “infosphere” and “onlife” frameworks – arguing that digital technologies constitute a fourth revolution in human self-understanding, comparable in scale to those of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud. His more recent work positions AI as a new form of agency rather than a new form of intelligence. That distinction has direct implications for how organisations assign accountability and design oversight structures.

That thinking has had direct regulatory consequences. As chair of the AI4People Scientific Committee, Floridi developed the ethical framework the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on AI formally adopted in 2019. It underpins the EU AI Act – the world’s first major AI regulation. He also served on the HLEG itself. His advisory work spans the European Commission, the German Ethics Council, the UK Cabinet Office, and companies including Google, IBM, and Microsoft.

Since 2023, he has been Founding Director of Yale University’s Digital Ethics Center, where he holds the John K. Castle Professorship in the Practice of Cognitive Science. He has published more than 300 works and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Philosophy & Technology (Springer Nature). In 2022 he was awarded the Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic – Italy’s highest national honour.

Key speaking topics

• AI ethics and digital governance
• Philosophy of information
• The EU AI Act and responsible AI regulation
• Organisational accountability in AI-mediated environments
• Data protection and digital rights
• Generative AI: agency, not intelligence
• The infosphere and the digital transformation of human identity

Ideal for

• Boards and C-suite leadership teams making decisions about AI deployment and governance risk
• Chief Digital Officers, Chief Technology Officers, and Chief Risk Officers navigating AI regulation
• Regulatory, legal, and compliance functions operating under the EU AI Act or preparing for digital governance frameworks
• Government bodies and public sector organisations designing AI oversight structures

Audience outcomes

• A working framework for understanding why existing AI governance policies often fail to address questions of accountability – and what a principled alternative looks like
• Familiarity with the “infosphere” and “onlife” concepts from The Fourth Revolution and their application to organisational decision-making
• A clear account of the “agency without intelligence” argument – and what it means for how organisations assign responsibility and structure oversight
• Practical orientation on the EU AI Act’s intellectual foundations and what genuine compliance requires beyond procedural checkboxes
• Insight into how governments, regulators, and major technology companies are approaching AI governance from someone who has participated directly in shaping those frameworks