| Through a series of case studies, students will identify epistemological, ethical, political, and artistic problems raised by AI systems. The unit will examine contexts such as AI-assisted policing and the automatisation of warfare, law and racial profiling. Students will learn to recognise AI deepfakes and social manipulation, gatekeeping in job recruitment, automatisation and cognitive offloading. Students will analyse AI-generated art, and the use of sexist stereotypes in AI-assisted outputs. Students will be invited to discuss initiatives that could be undertaken to de-bias and decolonise harmful uses of AI. The unit will provide students with conceptual and theoretical resources to understand and critique the social impacts of artificial intelligence (AI). Using examples from the history of human technology and the cognitive sciences, the unit will begin with an analysis of artefacts that may be understood as displaying traits associated with intelligence (cognitive behaviour). This will lead to a critical examination of AI understood as computational symbol-manipulation or as deep machine learning based on artificial neural networks. Finally, students will review beneficial and harmful social consequences associated with the rapid propagation of AI assistants and algorithms. |
