Croatia wins the European Ethics Bowl 2024
Last weekend, 8 – 10 November 2024, UL SEB organised and hosted the semi-finals and finals of the international competition European Ethics Bowl. Ten teams from nine European universities and one team from the alumni programme of the European Investment Bank Institute Summer School took part in this year’s event. This year, the overall theme of the competition was “Ethics and Artificial Intelligence”.
On Saturday, teams from Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Germany, France, Hungary, Luxembourg, Portugal, Serbia and Slovenia competed in two rounds for the four places in the Final4 round. The students presented their views on given ethical topics related to ethical dilemmas in the field of AI. After short presentations, they debated with the opposing teams, followed by questions from a panel of judges and assessment. The ethical issues were presented to the students in the form of specific case studies. The case studies were titled “To what extent should AI be used to organise work processes?” and “AI vs. Human Drivers: The Moral Challenges of Autonomous Transportation”.
In the Final4 round, the teams discussed the topic of “The Ethics and Business of Digital Cloning In Elder Care”. After exciting debates, Team Croatia and Team Portugal were announced as the two grand finalists.
The two final teams had just under two hours to prepare and research the topic of “The Responsibility of Making Moral Decisions”. They then competed in front a panel of five judges and the rest of the participants. The final debate showed the outstanding debating performance of the finalists and led to an incredibly tough decision by the panel of judges.
Team Croatia, representing the University of Rijeka, won the final debate by just a point and was crowned the winner of the European Ethics Bowl 2024.
The organisers would like to thank the fantastic teams who travelled from all over Europe to take part in this event, the esteemed judges for their time, thoughtful questions and fair judging, the moderators who ensured that all debates ran smoothly and on time, and all the coordinators and representatives who accompanied the students throughout these three days.
The organisers would also like to thank The Economist and the companies Atlantic Group, TBA d.o.o., Hofer trgovina d.o.o. Automatic servis d.o.o., Toaster Darila, MILES d.o.o., Burek Olimpija, LPP and Ljubljana Tourism for their support, donations and sponsorship of the event.