Tim Aylsworth earned a BA and MA in philosophy at Texas A&M, and attended UW-Madison for his PhD, where he wrote a dissertation on Kant. He teaches ethics, Kant, early modern philosophy, logic, and the ethics of big data and artificial intelligence. He is the director of the certificate in Ethics, Big Data & Artificial Intelligence.
Research Areas
His main area of research is the ethics of technology. He is particularly interested in understanding how technology impacts our autonomy. In this vein, he wrote a book about smartphones and social media. He has argued that students have good reasons to avoid using ChatGPT for certain tasks (like writing humanities papers). In addition to technology, he has other interests in applied ethics (business ethics, medical ethics, and environmental ethics). Much of his work involves applying Kant’s ethics to contemporary ethical issues.