PERSON
Shannon Vallor
American philosopher of technology (b. 1969), Baillie Gifford Chair in Ethics of Data and AI at Edinburgh, whose technomoral virtue framework applies Aristotelian, Confucian, and Buddhist ethics to AI.
Shannon Vallor is one of the most influential contemporary philosophers examining how artificial intelligence reshapes human moral character. Born in 1969 and educated in the United States, she earned her PhD from UC Santa Cruz and spent years at Santa Clara University before moving to Edinburgh's Futures Institute. Her year as AI Ethicist at Google (2018–2019) gave her rare insight into the industry's structural incentives. Vallor's major works — Technology and the Virtues (2016) and The AI Mirror (2024) — position her as the foremost theorist of moral deskilling, the invisible curriculum, and technomoral virtue in the AI age.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Vallor's philosophical method distinguishes her from both uncritical boosters and apocalyptic critics. She does not oppose AI; she worked inside Google's machinery and understands its power. What she brings is precision: the insistence that the central question is not what machines can do but what kind of people they are making us become. Her framework draws on three independent