PHIL 385

PHIL 385 B1: Ethics and Artificial Intelligence
Instructor: Howard Nye

Course Description

Artificial intelligence systems are revolutionizing our world, and raising many difficult ethical issues that we will explore in this course. When AI systems are used to make important decisions in such areas as medicine, employment, and the criminal justice system, how can we tell if they are discriminatory, and how can we address the fairness of these decisions? Who bears responsibility for the outcomes of AI systems, and how can we responsibly draw upon their strengths while protecting ourselves from their weaknesses? How can we address the profound impacts that AI systems are having upon our social relationships, privacy, employment and economic power relations, and political freedoms? How can we responsibly govern the use of AI systems, ensure that these systems are used in ethical ways, and prevent governments and corporations from using AI systems to wield undue power? To what extent must we worry about the possibility that in the near future AI systems themselves may become moral patients to whom we owe duties, and the existential risks of creating extremely powerful AI systems that we cannot control?

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course, students should be able to:

  1. Identify specifically ethical and philosophical issues in the evaluation of current and potential future developments and impacts of AI systems
  2. Identify and explain the general ethical and philosophical considerations and theories that bear on these distinctively ethical and philosophical issues in the development and implementation of AI systems
  3. Evaluate and critically assess philosophical arguments regarding what we should do in the face of current and potential future developments of AI systems
  4. Construct well-reasoned arguments, orally and in writing, for their own positions regarding what we should do to address current and potential future developments of AI .

Course Requirements

15% Class Participation
15% First Paper Due Sunday, Feb. 21 (4-5 pgs / ~ 1,200 words)
35% Second Paper Due Friday, Apr. 16 (7-8 pgs / ~1,800 words)
35% Third Paper Due Friday, Apr. 30 (7-8 pgs / ~1,800 words)

Tentative Schedule of Topics and Readings

Social Impacts of AI Systems

Introduction, Automation, and Employment

  • Bruun and Duka, “Artificial Intelligence Jobs and the Future of Work: Racing with the Machines”
  • Nozick, Anarchy, State, & Utopia (Ch 7, Selection)

Economic Justice and the Future of Work

  • Rawls, “The Principles of Justice” (ch. II of A Theory of Justice, Selection)
  • Bastani, Fully Automated Luxury Communism (Selection)

Manipulation, Polarization, and Political Epistemology

  • Susser et al. “Technology, Automation, and Manipulation”
  • Rini, “Fake News and Partisan Epistemology”

Privacy and Surveillance

  • Roessler, “Privacy as a Human Right”
  • Andrew and Baker, “The General Data Protection Regulation in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism”

Algorithmic Bias and Discrimination

  • Binns, “Fairness in Machine Learning: Lessons from Political Philosophy”
  • Veale and Binns, “Fairer Machine Learning in the Real World Mitigating Discrimination without Collecting Sensitive Data”

AI Systems and Accountability 

The Opacity of AI Systems 

  • Danaher, “The Threat of Algocracy Reality, Resistance and Accommodation”
  • Zerilli et al., “Transparency in Algorithmic and Human Decision-Making Is There a Double Standard?”

Ethical Issues With Autonomous Systems

  • Himmelreich, “Never Mind the Trolley The Ethics of Autonomous Vehicles in Mundane Situations 
  • Amoroso and Tamburrini, “The Ethical and Legal Case Against Autonomy in Weapons Systems”

Humans in the Loop and Responsibility

  • Santoni de Sio and van den Hoven, “Meaningful Human Control over Autonomous Systems: A Philosophical Account”
  • Winfield et al., “Machine Ethics: The Design and Governance of Ethical AI and Autonomous Systems”

AI Systems as Agents and Patients 

Artificial Moral Agency

  • Moor, “The Nature, Importance, and Difficulty of Machine Ethics”
  • Hakli and Makela, “Moral Responsibility of Robots and Hybrid Agents”

Artificial Moral Patiency 

  • Basl, “Machines as Moral Patients We Shouldnt Care About (Yet)”
  • Degrazia, Taking Animals Seriously Ch 8 (The basics of well-being across species)

Artificial Mental Life, Intentionality, and Motivations 

  • Dennett, “True Believers: The Intentional Strategy and Why it Works”
  • Whyte, “Success Semantics”
  • Whyte, “The Normal Rewards of Success”

Artificial Mental Life, Sentience, and Understanding

  • Tye, “The Problem of Simple Minds”
  • Chalmers, “The Singularity A Philosophical Analysis” (Selection)

Existential Risk and Singularity

  • Chalmers, “The Singularity A Philosophical Analysis” (Selection)
  • Bostrom, “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority”