Sean Welsh
Sean Welsh is a co-founder and CTO of Engine No. 2, a digital transformation agency working with healthcare professionals in Australia. Engine No. 2 helps clinicians understand and access technology through education, virtual CTO On Demand services and boutique advisory.
Bringing over 20 years of experience in IT systems, coding, artificial intelligence and the digital space, Sean’s worked with IT before it was IT.
Working with big-name brands in Australia and around the world, Sean was responsible for writing the code that enabled large data migration projects from outdated technology to new, as well developing cutting edge technical solutions for enterprise.
Sean understands the technology landscape across sectors and how clinical practitioners can use it to deliver superior healthcare outcomes.
Sean was awarded a PhD in Philosophy by the University of Canterbury in 2019. A keen observer of emerging technology, his research explored ethics and artificial intelligence. Sean continues to research and publish in the areas of governance, regulation and the moral impact of technology.
Sean is a powerful speaker and talks about ethics, moral decision-making, robotics and artificial intelligence.
When he’s not keeping up to date with robotics and emerging technologies, Sean relaxes by writing novels or indulging his love of all things culinary by whipping up a feast in the kitchen.
Education
Postgraduate Certificate in Statistics, University of Canterbury, 2020
PhD, University of Canterbury, 2013-2019
BA(Hons), University of New South Wales, 1982-1987
Publications
Books
Bartneck, C., Lütge, C., Wagner, A., Welsh, S. (2020). An Introduction to Ethics in AI and Robotics. Springer.
Bartneck, C., Lütge, C., Wagner, A., Welsh, S. (2019). Ethik in KI und Robotik. Munchen: Hanser.
Welsh, S. (2018). Ethics and Security Automata. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge.
Book Sections
Welsh, S. (2017). Clarifying the Language of Lethal Autonomy in Military Robots. In M. I. Aldinhas Ferreira, J. Silva Sequeira, M. O. Tokhi, E. E. Kadar, & G. S. Virk (Eds.), A World with Robots: International Conference on Robot Ethics: ICRE 2015 (pp. 171-184). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Welsh, S. (2017). Formalizing Complex Normative Decisions with Predicate Logic and Graph Databases. In M. I. Aldinhas Ferreira, J. Silva Sequeira, M. O. Tokhi, E. E. Kadar, & G. S. Virk (Eds.), A World with Robots: International Conference on Robot Ethics: ICRE 2015 (pp. 35-45). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Papers and book reviews
Welsh S. (2021). An Ethical and Technical Examination of the ICRC’s Call for Regulation of Autonomous Weapons. International Society for the Study of Information. Philosophy and Computing.
Welsh S. (2020). Resolving Clashing Norms Using Tiered Utility. The 29th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication.
Welsh S. (2019). Regulating Lethal and Harmful Autonomy: Drafting a Protocol VI of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. AAAI/ACM Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Society, Honolulu, Jan 27-28, 2019.
Welsh, S. (2017). Luís Moniz Pereira & Ari Saptawijaya, Programming Machine Ethics. Minds and Machines, Volume 27, Issue 1, pp. 253–257.
Welsh, S. (2016). Jerry A. Fodor and Xenon W. Pylyshyn, Minds Without Meanings: An Essay in the Content of Concepts. Minds and Machines, Vol. 26, Issue 4, pp. 467–471.
Welsh, S. (2016). Formalizing Hard Moral Choices in Artificial Intelligence. APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers (Fall 2016), 43-47.