Leora Urim Sung

I'm a research assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Lingnan University (Hong Kong) and a fellow of the Hong Kong Catastrophic Risk Centre. I specialise in normative and applied ethics. 

Before this, I was postdoctoral fellow at the Technion and at University College London, the latter at which I also completed my PhD in 2023. I have also been a visiting researcher and global priorities fellow at the Global Priorities Institute (Oxford University). 

I'm currently interested in the ethics of AI, moral aggregation, the ethics of procreation, and the demands of beneficence.

You can reach me at leorasung@ln.edu.hk 

Publications

AS SINGLE- OR FIRST-AUTHOR

1. 'Self-Knowledge and AI Companions', forthcoming in Philosophy of AI.

While AI companions might offer us a novel medium for self-discovery, they ultimately fail to provide a means to attain self-knowledge in the Aristotelian sense. 

2. 'Empathetic Large Language Models, the Social Capacities, and Human Flourishing', forthcoming in Inquiry.

The use of empathetic LLMs as AI companions risks impoverishing the social capacities necessary for human flourishing.

3. 'Time Bias and Altruism', Mind (2025), 134, pp. 373–396.

The demands of beneficence are stronger than we think, because giving to charity tends to affect our distant-future interests, rather than our present ones. 

4. 'Supererogation, Suberogation, and Maximizing Expected Choiceworthiness', Canadian Journal of Philosophy (2024), 53, pp. 418-432. 

MEC is stuck between a rock and a hard place: it is either too demanding, or it fails to make room for acts we generally regard to be supererogatory. I offer a solution which gets it out of this conundrum. 

5. 'Never Just Save the Few', Utilitas (2022), 34, pp. 275–288. 

We should save the many over the few, just in case Taurek is wrong and the numbers do count.