This lecture aims to examine critically the widespread assumption that AI systems remain passive instruments entirely under human control. It explores how emerging forms of AI agency—understood as autonomous or semi-autonomous decision-making capacities—challenge this notion and what implications this shift entails for human labour, ethics, and social stability.

Lecturer: Dr. Alexander van Biezen, Mensa Belgium

Dr. Alexander van Biezen is a philosopher of science, graduated from the Free University of Brussels (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) as a Doctor of Philosophy and Moral Sciences. He specialized in the philosophy of cosmology, with a doctoral dissertation on the cosmological models of Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog. His book Top-Down Cosmology and Model-Dependent Realism (2022, VUB Press) is freely available online through the research portal of the Free University of Brussels (https://researchportal.vub.be/). He has an additional background in religious studies and in computer science. His main areas of interest are cosmology and the philosophy of artificial intelligence.