A prestigious Central European ethics journal is launching a dedicated special issue on artificial intelligence, inviting philosophers, bioethicists, legal scholars, and technologists to submit research on AI's deepest ethical challenges. The call represents a significant moment for academic discourse on responsible AI, moving beyond corporate ethics statements into peer-reviewed scholarship that examines how AI systems reshape human autonomy, fairness, and institutional accountability.

What Ethical Questions About AI Are Scholars Being Asked to Address?

Ethics & Bioethics (in Central Europe) is soliciting papers across five broad thematic areas, each reflecting urgent real-world tensions in how AI is deployed across society. The journal's guest editor, Anetta Jedlickova, has outlined research priorities that go well beyond surface-level bias detection.

• AI and Human Agency: How do AI systems affect human autonomy and decision-making, including risks of algorithmic paternalism, behavioral manipulation, and the erosion of authentic human agency in digital environments.
• Justice, Bias, and Discrimination: Research on algorithmic fairness, discrimination in automated systems, digital inequality, access barriers to AI technologies, and how predictive systems perpetuate or mitigate social injustice.
• Responsibility, Regulation, and Governance: Frameworks for moral and legal accountability, explainability requirements, transparency standards, AI liability, data protection, and how institutions should oversee high-risk AI deployment.
• AI Safety and Emerging Risks: Examination of AI alignment, cybersecurity vulnerabilities, autonomous weapons, deepfakes, misinformation, and threats to critical infrastructure posed by advanced AI systems.
• AI's Impact on Society and Humanity: Broader questions about AI's effects on democratic institutions, surveillance, technological power concentration, human dignity, and the future transformation of human society.

The scope reflects a maturation in how the academic community approaches AI ethics. Rather than treating fairness and transparency as isolated technical problems, the journal is inviting scholars to examine how AI reshapes fundamental relationships between individuals, institutions, and society.

Why Is Healthcare AI Ethics Getting Special Attention?

Within the broader call, the journal has carved out particular emphasis on bioethics and healthcare applications. This reflects the high stakes of AI in medical contexts, where algorithmic errors or biased training data can directly harm patients. Submissions are invited on AI-assisted medical decision-making, digital health technologies, patient autonomy in informed consent processes, and the depersonalization risks when AI systems mediate care relationships.

The inclusion of therapeutic chatbots and care robots as explicit research topics signals recognition that AI is already embedded in healthcare delivery, yet ethical frameworks for these tools remain underdeveloped. Similarly, the journal is seeking work on digital health inequalities, acknowledging that AI-driven healthcare innovations may widen gaps between populations with access to advanced systems and those without.

How to Prepare a Submission for This AI Ethics Special Issue

• Abstract Deadline: Submit a 500-word abstract by September 30, 2026, to be reviewed by October 31, 2026. Accepted abstracts move forward to full paper submission.
• Paper Requirements: Full submissions should be approximately 8,000 words, including references, and must be original, unpublished work that engages with contemporary philosophical debates, normative ethical theory, critical AI studies, or interdisciplinary approaches bridging philosophy, social sciences, law, and technology studies.
• Review Process: All submissions undergo double-blind peer review according to the journal's standard process. Full papers are due January 31, 2027, with peer review and revisions completed by April 2027, and publication scheduled for June 2027 in Volume 17.
• Contact and Resources: Inquiries should be directed to guest editor Anetta Jedlickova at anetta.jedlickova@fhs.cuni.cz. More information about the journal is available at https://reference-global.com/journal/EBCE.

What Does This Signal About the State of AI Ethics Scholarship?

The launch of this special issue reflects a broader recognition that AI ethics cannot remain confined to corporate compliance departments or technical research labs. Philosophical and bioethical frameworks are essential for understanding the normative questions that technical fixes alone cannot resolve. Questions about who bears responsibility when an AI system makes a harmful decision, how to balance innovation with human dignity, or whether certain uses of AI are simply incompatible with democratic values require sustained intellectual engagement from scholars trained in ethics, political theory, and law.

The interdisciplinary framing also acknowledges that AI's ethical implications span multiple domains simultaneously. A single AI system might raise questions about algorithmic bias (justice), informed consent (bioethics), surveillance (political philosophy), and labor displacement (social theory) all at once. The journal's structure invites scholars to bring their disciplinary expertise to bear on these interconnected challenges.

For researchers, technologists, and policymakers watching this space, the call represents an opportunity to ground AI governance discussions in rigorous ethical scholarship. The papers accepted for this special issue will likely inform future policy debates, institutional guidelines, and professional standards for responsible AI development and deployment.