Language: English
Location: Online (TUM, EuroTeQ)
Offered in: Winter semester 2024–25
Contents:
AI is increasingly transforming human behavior, interaction, experience, sensemaking, and thought. While it is widely recognized that AI raises broad and sometimes novel ethical issues, there are fundamental disagreements about how we should use, treat, and regulate AI. Underlying these disagreements are different assessments of the dangers and opportunities of AI, assessments that are rooted in conflicting conceptions of the nature of AI. Different definitions of AI have different ethical implications. Is AI a kind of artificial being, or just a tool? Or is it transforming human thought, experience, behavior, and existence in entirely new ways? The course will explore the reasons for each of these views and their implications. We will pay particular attention to the ethics of generative AI. This relatively new technology has recently developed at an unprecedented rate, raising ethical concerns that are still in their infancy.
Study goals:
Upon successful completion of this module, students will be able to:
• describe the prevalent and often implicitly presupposed conceptions of digital technology
• explain the ethical issues entailed by the respective conception
• read, analyze, and understand philosophical texts
• apply the conceptions to concrete case studies
• identify the specific ethical conflicts between these conceptions
• present and discuss academic papers on this complex interdisciplinary topic
Teaching and learning methods:
Methods include conceptual analysis, hermeneutic work with texts, class discussions, group work, and presentations.