AI Ethics

Language: English

Location: Online (TUM, EuroTeQ)

Offered in: Summer semester 2024, winter semester 2024–25

Description

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.

Upon successful completion of this seminar, students will be able to:

  • identify and distinguish different conceptions of AI
  • understand their respective ethical implications
  • evaluate the conflicting positions of AI and apply them to concrete practical examples
  • improve their skills in text analysis, group work, and presentation