Samir Chopra
Professor
Philosophy
Location: 3307 Boylan Hall
Phone: 718.951.5000 x3215
Fax: 718.951.4675
Email:
Samir Chopra's book on the philosophical implications of free software, Decoding Liberation (co-authored with Scott Dexter), was published in 2007 (Routledge Series on New Media and Cyberculture). His most recent work, The Legal Theory of Autonomous Artificial Agents (co-authored with Laurence White), is forthcoming with the University of Michigan Press. In his spare time, Chopra is a military historian, most recently co-authoring The India-Pakistan Air War of 1965 (with P.V.S. Jagan Mohan) (2005); he is currently engaged in a follow-up volume on the air component of the 1971 war for the liberation of Bangladesh.
Education:
Ph.D., CUNY Graduate Center - 2000 (Philosophy)
M.S., New Jersey Institute of Technology - 1990 (Computer Science)
B.A. (honors), Delhi University - 1987 (Mathematical Statistics)
Areas of Expertise:
Pragmatism, philosophy of law, philosophical foundations of artificial intelligence, legal theory of artificial agents, philosophical implications of free software, politics and ethics of technology.
Books and Publications
Brave New Pitch: The Evolution of Modern Cricket. Harper Collins. (Books and Publications: Book (Authored)) 2012
Chopra, Samir and Laurence White. A Legal Theory for Autonomous Artificial Agents. University of Michigan Press. (Books and Publications: Book (Authored)) 2011
"Rights for Autonomous Artificial Agents." Communications of the ACM 53.8: 38-40. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2010
Chopra, Samir and Scott Dexter. "Free Software and the Economics of Information Justice." Ethics and Information Technology. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2010
Chopra, Samir, Richard Booth, Thomas Meyer and Aditya Ghose. "Double Preference for Generalised Belief Change." Artificial Intelligence 174.16-17: 1339-68. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2010
Chopra, Samir and Scott Dexter. "The Freedoms of Software and Its Ethical Uses." Ethics and Information Technology 11.4: 287-97. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2009
Chopra, Samir, and Laurence White. "Artificial Agents and the Contracting Problem: A Solution via an Agency Analysis." University of Illinois Journal of Law. Technology and Policy 363. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2009
"Comment on Floridi's Information Ethics." APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2008
Chopra, Samir and Laurence White. The Legal Theory of Autonomous Artificial Agents University of Michigan Press. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2008
Chopra, Samir and Scott Dexter. The Freedom Zero Problem, Ethics and Information Technology. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2008
Chopra, Samir, Thomas Meyer, Aditya Ghose and Ka-Shu Wong. "The Axiom of Recovery and Iterated Belief Change." Journal of Philosophical Logic. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2008
Chopra, Samir and David Coady. "Not Cricket." Sport and Society, May. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2007
Chopra, Samir and Laurence White. "Privacy and Artificial Agents, or, Is Google Reading My Email?" Proceedings of IJCAI 2007: 1245-50. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2007
Chopra, Samir and Scott Dexter. Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software. Routledge. (Books and Publications: Book (Authored)) 2007
Chopra, Samir, Aditya Ghose and Thomas Meyer. "Social Choice Theory, Belief Merging and Strategy-Proofness." Information Fusion 7.1: 61-79. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2006
Booth, Richard, Samir Chopra, Aditya Ghose and Thomas Meyer. "Belief Liberation (and Retraction)." Studia Logica 79.1: 47-72. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2005
Chopra, S. and S. Dexter. "A Comparative Assessment of Free Software Licensing Schemes." Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE2005). Enschede, The Netherlands. July. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2005
Chopra, Samir and Laurence White. "Attribution of Knowledge to Artificial Agents and Their Principals." Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Morgan-Kaufmann. 1175-80. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2005
Chopra, Samir and Scott Dexter. "The Political Economy of Open Source Software." International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society 1.1. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2005
Mohan, P.V.S. and Samir Chopra. The India-Pakistan Air War of 1965. New Delhi: Manohar. (Books and Publications: Book (Authored)) 2005
Booth, Richard, Samir Chopra, Aditya Ghose and Thomas Meyer. "A Unifying Semantics for Belief Change." Proceedings of the Sixteenth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence. IOS Press. 793-97. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2004
Chopra, Samir and Laurence White. "Artificial Agents--Personhood in Law and Philosophy." Proceedings of the Sixteenth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence. IOS Press. 636-39. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2004
Chopra, Samir, Eric Pacuit and Rohit Parikh. "Knowledge-Theoretic Properties of Strategic Voting." Proceedings of JELIA 2004: 18-30. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2004
Peppas, Pavlos, Samir Chopra and Norman Foo. "Distance Semantics for Relevance Sensitive Belief Revision." Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation-KR2004. AAAI Press. 319-28. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2004
Booth, Richard, Samir Chopra, Aditya Ghose and Thomas Meyer. "Belief Liberation (and Retraction)." Proceedings of the Ninth Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge (TARK 2003). Ed. M. Tennenholtz. Morgan Kaufmann. 159-72. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2003
Chopra, Samir, Aditya Ghose and Thomas Meyer. "Non-Prioritized Ranked Belief Change." Journal of Philosophical Logic 32.4: 417-43. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2003
Chopra, Samir, Johannes Heidema and Thomas Meyer. "Some Logics of Belief and Disbelief." Proceedings of Australian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AI-03, Lecture Notes in Computer Science Number 2903. Springer-Verlag. 364-76. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2003
Awards, Honors and Fellowships
National Science Foundation award, for S. Chopra, E. Sklar, I. Rudowsky, S. Parsons and L. Scarlatos, for "BPC: Building a Bridge in Brooklyn." $500,000; March 2006 - March 2009. (Grants and Fellowships) 2006
Research Activities
Chopra, Samir and Scott Dexter. Organized "Birds-of-Feather" session on open source software, SIGCSE. 2008
Organized Wolfe Institute event on decoding liberation, featuring Benjamin Mako Hill, MIT Media Lab. 2007
Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums
"The Utopian Promise of Open Source: The Road Ahead." Philosophical Cafe, Union College. Schenectady, N.Y., February. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2008
Parsons, Simor, Elizabeth Sklar, Samir Chopra, Richard Jansen, Ira Rudowsky and Sheila Tejada. "Using AI to Motivate Greater Participation in Computer Science." Proceedings of AAAI Spring Symposium (http://ai.stanford.edu/~sahami/SSS08/). (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2008
"Free Software and the Freedom Zero Problem," North American Conference on Computing and Philosophy, Chicago, June. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2007
"The Legal Theory of Artificial Agents," Yale Law School Information Society Project, New Haven, Connecticut. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007
Chopra, Samir and Laurence White. "Privacy and Artificial Agents, or, Is Google Reading My Email?" International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2007
Chopra, Samir and Scott Dexter. "Free Software and the Political Philosophy of the Cyborg World." Proceedings of Computer Ethics and Philosophical Enquiry. (Paper republished in ACM SIGCAS' Computers and Society). (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2007
Chopra, Samir, Jim Whitescarver and Ken Schreihofer. "Web 1.0 = Web 3.0?, Murray Turoff and Roxanne Hiltz Festschrift," NJIT. Newark, N.J., October. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2007
Scarlatos, Lori, Elizabeth Sklar, Samir Chopra, Susan Lowes, Simon Parsons, Ira Rudowsky and Heidi Holder. "Building Bridges: The 2006 Summer Institute." CCSC Eastern 2007 Conference. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2007
Chopra, Samir, Eric Alterman, Katherine Fry and Frederick Wasser. "Digital Media: Revolution and Repercussion" Symposium, Tenth Annual Faculty Day Conference, Brooklyn College, May 24. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2006