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The Causal Gap: Truly Responsible AI Needs to Understand the Consequences

Why do LLMs systematically drive themselves to extinction, and what does it have to do with evolution, moral reasoning, and causality?

In this brand-new episode of Causal Bandits, we meet Zhijing Jin (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Toronto) to answer these questions and look into the future of automated causal reasoning.

In this episode, we discuss:

- Zhijing's new work on the "causal scientist"

- What's missing in responsible AI

- Why ethics matter for agentic systems

- Is causality a necessary element of moral reasoning?

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Video version available on Youtube:

https://youtu.be/Frb6eTW2ywk
Recorded on Aug 18, 2025 in Tübingen, Germany.

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About The Guest
Zhiijing Jin is a researcher scientist at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and an incoming Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. Her work is focused on causality, natural language, and ethics, in particular in the context of large language models and multi-agent systems. Her work received multiple awards, including NeurIPS best paper award, and has been featured in CHIP Magazine, WIRED, and MIT News. She grew up in Shanghai. Currently she prepares to open her new research lab at the University of Toronto.

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