Provisional Course Outline & Reading Schedule
Unit 1: What is AI? What is Technology?
Week 1: What is AI? Some Philosophical Foundations
Thomas Metcalf, “Artificial Intelligence: The Possibility of Artificial Minds”
AI Ethics, Chapter 5: “The Technology”
Unit 2: What is Ethics? What is AI Ethics?
Week 2: Ethical and Social Theory
Shane Gronholz, “Consequentialism and Utilitarianism,” 1000-Word Philosophy
Andrew Chapman, “Kantian Deontology: Immanuel Kant’s Ethics,” 1000-Word Philosophy
David Antonini, “Social Contract Theory: Hobbes, Locke, and the State of Nature,” 1000-Word Philosophy
Week 3: AI Ethics and Values
AI Ethics, Chapter 1: “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall”
Joseph L. Breeden, “Reframing the AI alignment problem: insights from business”
Unit 3: Privacy, Data, and Bias
Week 4: Privacy and Surveillance
AI Ethics, Chapters 6&7: “Don’t Forget the (Data) Science,” and “Privacy and The Other Usual Suspects”
Kevin Macnish, “Being Watched: The Ethics of Targeted Surveillance”
Week 5: Algorithmic Bias
AI Ethics, Chapter 9 (just through page 136): “Bias and the Meaning of Life”
Sina Fazelpour & David Danks, ‘Algorithmic Bias: Senses, Sources, Solutions’
Unit 4: AI and Meaningful Life (and Work)
Week 6: AI, Meaningfulness, and Work
Susan Wolf, 'The Meanings of Lives' (Canvas)
AI Ethics, Chapter 9 (136-144), “The Future of Work and the Meaning of Life”
Documentary: The Future of Work, HBO
Week 7: Utopian and Dystopian Dreams: What AI Ethics Could Be
AI Ethics, Chapter 2: “Superintelligence, Monsters, and the AI Apocalypse”
Unexplainable podcast: Good Robot I and II: “The Magic Intelligence in the Sky,” and “Everything is Not Awesome.”