Carnegie Ethics Fellows Visit San Francisco for Module on Ethics and Emerging Technology

In June, the Carnegie Ethics Fellows (CEF) cohort visited San Francisco, California for their fifth module. The first-ever offsite CEF convening, away from Carnegie Council’s Global Ethics Hub, centered on the theme of ethics and emerging technology. During the module, Fellows had the opportunity to meet with researchers, practitioners, ethicists, venture capitalists, and technologists in one of the world’s most innovative and tech-centric regions, Silicon Valley.

The module included interactive sessions on Stanford University’s campus, demonstrations at the Autonomous Systems Lab, and deep discussions at a leading technology firm’s headquarters. This visit concluded with a hike in Muir Woods.

“The San Francisco module gave me a much deeper understanding of the ethical questions surrounding emerging technology,” said Carnegie Ethics Fellow Molly Schaeffer. “This is a topic that can feel abstract, but being in San Francisco made it feel much more concrete. We were in the center of the technology ecosystem, hearing directly from people building, studying, funding, and governing these tools.” Technological innovation was immediately evident upon arriving in San Francisco. From self-driving cars weaving through Fisherman’s Wharf to billboards for AI companies on Route 101 promising efficiency in automation, tech was everywhere. The ethical tensions surfaced by this technological boom, though less physically visible, were also palpable.

Thanks to the generosity of host institutions, especially the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Fellows were able to engage directly with professionals working at the forefront of ethics and emerging technology. Conversations covered AI governance, physical AI, ethics as safety within AI systems, and finally the fundamental distinction between automation and augmentation in AI deployment. Some of the ethical considerations raised by the cohort included concerns around regulation, responsibility, privacy, access, and effects on the climate.

“Speaking directly to the people building these technologies made clear both the scale of the opportunity and the genuine—dare I say terrifying!—uncertainty around their consequences, even among those at the forefront of build and deployment,” said Carnegie Ethics Fellow Alex Urwin. “It also reinforced that ethics—or indeed governance more generally—cannot be an afterthought; these things have to be part of the design, deployment, and governance of these systems from the outset, and they have to be the responsibility of a broader group than just those who will gain greatly from mass adoption.”

The Carnegie Ethics Fellowship is a space for talented young professionals to develop their capabilities, demonstrate values-driven responsible leadership, and build a community of ethics experts across disciplines. The two-year Fellowship is structured to develop the next generation of ethical leaders from business, government, academia, and non-governmental organizations. The program is designed to address frontier challenges of ethical leadership in the 21st century in six in-person modules.

The cohort will convene again in the Fall for their sixth and final module. Over the course of two years, the Fellows have collaborated on group projects which address emerging ethical issues in international affairs. The culmination of the Fellowship will include the Carnegie Ethics Fellows Symposium, held on October 15, 2026, in which the Fellows will discuss their projects, alongside panels of experts working on these issues.

As part of its Next Generation Leadership Initiative, Carnegie Council looks forward to providing opportunities for future cohorts to convene both at the Global Ethics Hub and outside of New York City to explore ethics and leadership, invest in their own professional development, and take part in experiential learning opportunities on emerging ethical issues in international affairs.

Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs is an independent and nonpartisan nonprofit. The views expressed within this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of Carnegie Council.