Laura Gorrieri

PhD Candidate | Philosophy & AI

At a glance

I'm a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Turin, where I focus on the ethical challenges posed by large language models.

During my PhD I conducted research at the Technical University of Munich under Professor Leonelli, held lectures on AI ethics at various universities, organised symposiums, panels and events, and have published papers in journals such as Philosophy & Technology and Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies. I am also a member of several societies and projects that deal with ethics and AI.

Outside of my academic work, I'm passionate about astronomy and often organize educational activities for children at the Planetarium in Modena. In my downtime, I love watching old movies, particularly classic films, which never fail to inspire me. I’m deeply curious and always eager to learn new things.

Education

12/2024 – 06/2025
Technische Universität München

I was a visiting PhD student in Professor Sabina Leonelli’s research group, which focuses on philosophy of science and the ethics of data and AI.

10/2023 – 11/2023
PhD Course 'Ethics and AI' - online

The course, organised by Società Italiana per l’Etica dell’Intelligenza Artificiale (SIpEIA), explored the intersection of philosophy, ethics, and AI.

08/2023 – 08/2023
Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy & Technology

Selected participant of the three-day online course “No, We Don’t Live In A F%#*ing Simulation” on the topics of the simulation hypothesis, long-termism and effective altruism, and AI consciousness.

08/2023 – 08/2023
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna

Selected participant for “Ethos + Tekhne”, an interdisciplinary five-day spring school on ethical and societal issues of AI technology, and how to mitigate them from a technical standpoint.

11/2022 – Present
Università di Torino | FINO Convention

Three years full-funded PhD program on Ethics and AI for the FINO consortium in Università di Torino. My research is under the supervision of Professor Graziano Lingua and Doctor Matteo Cresti (Moral Philosophy Dept.), and Professor Guido Boella (Computer Science Department).

08/2016 – 08/2016
Libera Università di Bolzano

Selected participant for ESSLLI (European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information) organised by FoLLI on the combined areas of interest: Logic and Computation, Computation and Language, and Language and Logic.

11/2013 – 11/2019
Università di Pisa

Master’s Degree in Digital Humanities for Università di Pisa. Interdisciplinary program, with a focus on computational linguistics, NLP (natural language processing) and AI for textual applications.

09/2010 – 11/2013
Università di Bologna

Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy for Università di Bologna. My thesis was about the philosophy of programming languages.

Work Experience

02/2022 – 10/2022
BIP, Milan

I worked as a Data Scientist at xTech, the company’s center of excellence for AI solutions. My responsibilities included developing AI projects with a focus on NLP and GenAI, using Python and data science libraries.

03/2016 – 02/2022
expert.ai, Modena

I worked in multiple roles during my six years at expert.ai. As a Computational Linguist, I was responsible for designing and delivering NLP software solutions for customers. As a Technology Advocate, I conducted trainings and gave talks to customers, partners, universities, and at public events. Finally, as a Data Scientist, I contributed to the development and testing of the company’s proprietary NLP Python library.

Publications

Published

Gorrieri, L. (2025). Should I use ChatGPT as an Academic Aid?: A response to Aylsworth and Castro. Philosophy & Technology.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-024-00831-y

Gorrieri, L. (2024). Is ChatGPT Full of Bullshit? Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

https://doi.org/10.55613/jeet.v34i1.149

Boella, G., D’Asaro, F. A., Dyoub, A., Gorrieri, L., Lisi, F., Manganini, C., Primiero, G. (2023). Beware 2023: Bias, Ethical Ai, Explainability and the Role of Logic and Logic Programming. CEUR-Ws.

Gorrieri, L., Raffini, D. (2023). Intelligenza Artificiale e questioni Etiche. BIOETICA.

Attardi, G., Gorrieri, L., Miaschi, A., Petrolito, R. (2015). Deep learning for social sensing from tweets. CLiC-it (Conferenza di Linguistica Computazionale Italiana).

Not yet published and work in progress

Gorrieri, L. (2025). on Speech Acts and LLMs – under review.

Gorrieri, L., Leonelli, S., Trauttmansdorff, P. (2025). Between Explaining and Understanding: Rethinking AI Explainability in Medical Diagnostics – under review.

Gorrieri, L. (2025). Towards a new communication ethics for AI – work in progress.

Teaching

October 2025 - Forthcoming
Pragma Society

Lecture in course “AI Ethicist” organized by Pragma Societies on the ethical challenges of AI and their adoption. The lecture presents the field of ethics and AI, with a particular focus on machine ethics and its limitations.

June 2025
TUM (Technical University of Munich)

Lecture “Misinformation and Disinformation. On Parrots, Libraries and Bullshit” in the course Information and Society. The lecture was about the topic of disinformation, and reflected on the role of the overload of generating texts produced by LLMs.

May 2025
TUM (Technical University of Munich)

Lecture “Exploring Explainable AI” in curricular course AI in Diverse Societies, held by Professor Leonelli. The lecture presented an introduction to the field of Explanable AI (XAI) and its challenges.

October 2024
Università di Pisa

Lecture “Ethical considerations on AI” in curricular course Digital Culture Lab. The lecture highlighted issues that AI usage raises, such as environmental problems, privacy issues, and biases.

May 2023
Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Lecture and workshop “Ethics and AI” in curricular course Digital Humanities Lab. The lecture highlighted issues that AI usage raises and the workshop asked participants to apply critical thinking to some scenarios (care robots, self driving cars, automated judicial sentences).

Organizer and Editorial Teams

Full-day panel “Redefining Relationships: Human Vulnerability and AI driven Technologies”, 10th STS Italia Conference, Milan – co-organizer and co-chair. June 2025.

Symposium “The Illusion of Conversation. From the Manipulation of Language to the Manipulation of the Human”, 24th Biennial International Conference of the Society for Philosophy and Technology, University of Eindhoven – co-organizer and presenter. June 2025.

“Graduate Conference in Political Philosophy”, Università di Pavia – organisational team member. September 2023.

“BEWARE-23: 2nd International Workshop on Emerging Ethical Aspects of AI”, AIxIA 2023, Rome – organisational team member. November 2023.

Journal BIOETICA. Rivista interdisciplinare – editor of the column “Intelligenza Artificiale”.

Public Engagement Project “Magazine Intelligenza Artificiale (MagIA)” – deputy editor-in-chief.

Talks and Presentations

“Large Language Models are Conversational Zombies. Chatbots and Speech Acts: How to (Not) Do Things with Words”, SPT Conference, University of Eindhoven – paper presenter. June 2025.

“Linguistics and Ethics for GenAI”, JYU Seminars, Jyväskylän Yliopisto University of Jyiväskulä, Finland – invited speaker. April 2026, forthcoming.

“Can We Have Good Communication with Chatbots?”, Moral Philosophy Recurring Seminar, University of Turin – paper presenter. May 2025.

“Large Language Models are Not Speakers”, Retour à babel: Langage et Intelligence Artificielle, Collèges des Bernardins, Paris – invited speaker. May 2025.

“Large Language Models are Conversational Zombies. How (Not) to Do Things with Words”, LLM talk: the post-evolution of speech acts, University of Bucharest – selected paper-presenter. March 2025.

“Large Language Models are Conversational Zombies. Chatbots and Speech Acts: How to (Not) Do Things with Words”, SOS Seminar, Technical University of Munich – paper presenter. February 2025.

“Is ChatGPT full of Bullshit?”, GENAI 2024, University of Lisbon – selected participant. July 2024.

“Is ChatGPT Full of Bullshit?”, Moral Philosophy Recurring Seminar, University of Turin – paper presenter. October 2023.

“Is ChatGPT Full of Bullshit?”, June Seminar, FINO Consortium, UniUPO – paper presenter. June 2023.

Book discussion: “Big Data e Algoritmi: Prospettive Critiche” by Professor Numerico, Consulta di Bioetica, Turin – invited discussant.* May 2023*.

Public Engagement

09/2024 – 12/2024
Civico Planetario, Modena

Organized and coordinated a series of four lectures exploring key topics in Philosophy and Astronomy, including the philosophy of time (Samuele Iaquinto), philosophy of mathematics (Luigi Laino), cosmogony (Stefano Covone), and ethics of alien encounters (Luca Lo Sapio).

17/05/2024
OGR, Turin

Contributed to the organizational team of the public engagement event for the launch of MagIA (Magazine di Intelligenza Artificiale), a project that brings together experts in the philosophy and ethics of AI to inform the general public on the latest research and developments in the field. The event aimed to foster awareness and understanding of AI’s impact on society.

02/2024 - 04/2024
Various locations

Organized and facilitated “La Bioetica in Classe”, a series of meetings in schools for students aged 13 to 18 to raise awareness of the ethical implications of AI, on behalf of the Consulta di Bioetica. The program included a lecture and a participatory activity designed to foster critical thinking on the ethical challenges posed by AI.

23/01/2024
Civico Planetario, Modena

Organized a conference, “Scopriamo l’Etica dell’Universo IA” for general audiences on the ethics of AI, featuring Professor Guido Boella and Dr. Matteo Cresti. The event aimed to explore the intersection of AI and ethics, fostering public understanding of the social and moral implications of artificial intelligence.

17/04/2022
Liceo Einstein, Turin

Delivered a lecture on the ethics of AI alongside Professor Boella, representing the Società Italiana per l’Etica dell’Intelligenza Artificiale (SIpEIA). The session aimed to engage high school students in discussions on the ethical challenges and responsibilities surrounding AI technology.

Societies and Projects

Association Italian Society for the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (SIpEIA) – Member of the executive committee.

Techinical University of Munich Public Science Lab – Member.

Project PianetaLab – Member.

Platform The Ethical Data Initiative – Affiliate member and content creator.

University of Turin Research Group on Ethics and AI – Member.

Association Consulta di Bioetica – Member.

Journal Philosophy & Technology – Reviewer.