Nathan C. Walker Keynote Speaker

Founder, AI Ethics Lab at Rutgers University
Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident researching AI & Human Rights
Former Expert AI Trainer at OpenAI; research appointments at Oxford and Harvard

Nathan C. Walker's Biography

Dr. Nathan C. Walker is an award-winning First Amendment and human rights educator and founder of the AI Ethics Lab at Rutgers University.

He has held research appointments at Harvard, Oxford, and Stellenbosch University in South Africa. The Rockefeller Foundation awarded him a sabbatical as a Bellagio Center Resident to advance his research on AI ethics and human rights.

A certified AI Ethics Officer, Dr. Walker has worked with industry as an Expert AI Trainer for OpenAI and Handshake AI, provided ethics training to Adobe employees, and facilitated a working group at Google’s ethics-to-industry summit.

He has published five books on law, education, and religion, and presented his research at the UN Human Rights Council, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the U.S. Senate.He earned his doctorate in First Amendment law and two master’s degrees from Columbia University. An ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, he holds a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary.

He is the president of 1791 Delegates, a public charity named after the year the Bill of Rights was ratified. In this capacity he founded the social learning community ReligionAndPublicLife.org.

He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with his husband, Vikram Paralkar.

Moral Imagination: From Smart to Wise AI

Is “smart” the best we can imagine for the century’s technological advancements, or can we build something wiser? This keynote explores how moral imagination can spark an ethical odyssey toward a wiser future.

Bounded Freedom: Human Expression in the Age of Co-Intelligence

What does free expression mean when seemingly conscious machines can generate and mimic our thoughts, language, and identities?

Training AI Models with Rights

A practical framework for embedding human rights into the design, training, and governance of AI systems, from Dr. Nathan C. Walker, the founding editor of the AI & Human Rights Index.