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                <h1>Taylor Olson</h1>
                <p>Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of Iowa</p>
                <p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorolson23/"><i class="fa-brands fa-linkedin"></i></a> |
                <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/TeeOhh"><i class="fa-brands fa-github"></i></a> |
                <a href="docs/CV_TaylorOlson.pdf" target="_blank" class="header-contact-info">CV</a> |
                taylolson@uiowa.edu</p>
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            <p class="mb-0 mt-3 fw-bold">Northwestern University</p>
            <p class="mb-0">PhD, Computer Science (AI & Cognitive Science)</p>
            <p class="mb-0">MS, Computer Science</p>
            <p class="mb-0 fw-bold">University of Northern Iowa</p>
            <p class="mb-0">BS, Computer Science</p>
            <p class="mb-0">BA, Mathematics</p>
            <p class="mb-0">Minor, Philosophy</p>
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          <h1>Theoretical Machine Ethics</h1>
          <p>Trying to understand morality and build AI systems that are moral (Artificial Moral Agents, or AMAs).</p>
          <p class="mb-0">Doing so mathematically:</p>
          <ul>
            <li>Formalizing moral and epistemological theories;</li>
            <li>Building formalisms for learning normative concepts;</li>
            <li>Extending deontic, temporal, action, etc. logics.</li>
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          <p>My dissertation <a style="font-style: italic" href="docs/A_Formal_Theory_of_Norms-Olson.pdf" target="_blank">A Formal Theory of Norms</a> presented a mathematical formalism modeling the ability to learn and adapt to the norms of a population while staying grounded in moral principles. In other words... <span style="font-style: italic">it does as the Romans believe it should do, unless (for example) the Romans believe it should slaughter babies.</span> This work was done under advisement of Ken Forbus at Northwestern University and committee members Kyla Ebels-Duggan (Philosophy, Northwestern University), Ian Horswill (Computer Science, Northwestern University), Francesca Rossi (AI Ethics Global Leader, IBM).</p>

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          <h1>Teaching</h1>
          <p>Office Hours (Spring-26): Tuesdays 2-3pm. Please email me if you plan to stop in.</p>
          <h4 class="mb-0">Fall, 2025</h4>
          <a href="machine-ethics-seminar.html">Machine Ethics Seminar</a></p>
          <h4 class="mb-0">Spring, 2026</h4>
          <a href="intro-to-ai.html">Intro to AI</a>
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          <h1>Publications</h1>
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            <li><span">Olson, T.</span>, Salas-Damian R., & Forbus, K.D. (2025). <a class="paper" href="https://www.ifaamas.org/Proceedings/aamas2025/pdfs/p2699.pdf" target="_blank">Reasoning and Planning with Dynamic Social Norms (Extended Abstract).</a> AAMAS 2025.</li>
            <li><span">Olson, T.</span>, & Forbus, K.D. (2024). <a class="paper" href="https://www.ijcai.org/proceedings/2024/53" target="_blank">Normative Testimony and Belief Functions: A Formal Theory of Norm Learning.</a> Proceedings of IJCAI 2024.</li>
            <li><span">Olson, T.</span>, Salas-Damian R., & Forbus, K.D. (2024). <a class="paper" href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.04869" target="_blank">A Defeasible Deontic Calculus for Resolving Norm Conflicts.</a> Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems 2024. Palermo, Sicily, Italy.</li>
            <li><span">Olson, T.</span> (2024). <a class="paper" href="docs/TowardsUnifyingDescriptivePrescriptive-Olson.pdf" target="_blank">Towards Unifying the Descriptive and Prescriptive for Machine Ethics.</a> In P. Wu, M. Salpukas, H.F. Wu, S. Ellsworth (Eds.), <a class="paper" href="https://shop.elsevier.com/books/trolley-crash/wu/978-0-443-15991-6?country=US&format=print&utm_source=google_ads&utm_medium=paid_search&utm_campaign=usapmax&gclid=CjwKCAjwjOunBhB4EiwA94JWsBMCYtEiMKkr8KJsT87el37mxo8K5d7OuO8Z40vqNG_C-Rb61mGVlxoCOuQQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds" target="_blank">Trolley Crash: Approaching Key Metrics for Ethical AI Practitioners, Researchers, and Policy Makers</a>. (Chapter 5). Elsevier.</li>
            <li><span">Olson, T.</span>, & Forbus, K. D. (2023, June). <a class="paper" href="https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/26402" target="_blank">Mitigating Adversarial Norm Training with Moral Axioms.</a> In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Vol. 37, No. 10, pp. 11882-11889).</li>
            <li><span">Olson, T.</span> (2022). <a class="paper" href="docs/towards-unifying-descriptive-prescriptive.pdf" target="_blank">Towards Unifying the Descriptive and Prescriptive for Machine Ethics.</a> Proceedings of the AAAI 2022 Spring Symposium on "Approaches to Ethical Computing Metrics for Measuring AI’s Proficiency and Competency for Ethical Reasoning". Spring 2022.</li>
            <li><span">Olson, T.</span> & Forbus, K. (2021). <a class="paper" href="https://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/papers/Files/QRG_Dist_Files/QRG_2021/ACS-21_paper_17.pdf" target="_blank"> Learning Norms via Natural Language Teachings.</a> Proceedings of the 9th Annual Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems 2021.</li>
            <hr>
            <li><a class="paper" href="docs/A_Formal_Theory_of_Norms-Olson.pdf" target="_blank">A Formal Theory of Norms.</a> Olson, T. Dissertation. Computer Science, Northwestern University. 2025.</li>
            <li><span">Olson, T.</span> (2018). (Unpublished). <a class="paper" href="docs/machine-learning-approach.pdf" target="_blank">A Machine Learning Approach to Solving Ethical Relativism.</a> University of Northern Iowa</li>
            <li><span">Olson, T.</span> Nandini, E. Neal, J. Prater-Lee, C. (Summer 2017). (Unpublished). <a class="paper" href="docs/recommendation-system-developer.pdf" target="_blank">Recommendation System Developer.</a> Harvard University.</li>
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