PHIL 15
Automata to AI: Ancient Ethical Assumptions Implicit in Our Current Attitudes toward genAI Winter 2025

Class Details

Why do we automatically refer to generative AI as a tool? Why does it feel natural to discuss its social impacts from a perspective of labor? Why do stories of sentient tech prompt certain visceral reactions? While LLMs are new, our moral imaginations have had millennia of history developing robust theories about artificial beings’ place in human relations. We will interrogate original texts from antiquity (as well as contemporary scholarship) which explore ethical concerns relevant to artificial entities: agency, control, sentience, language, creativity, soul, and more. Through critical reading, discussion and weekly writing, as well as guided encounters with generative AI, students will situate our current cultural conversations within the long philosophical traditions which tacitly shape them.
The Class: Format: lecture
Limit: 20
Expected: NA
Class#: 1204
Grading: pass/fail only
Requirements/Evaluation: Paper(s) or report(s)
Prerequisites: None
Enrollment Preferences: None
Unit Notes: Gerol Petruzella holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and an M.A. in Classics, and works in OIT at Williams College. In 2018 he served on the IEEE working group for Ethically Aligned Design v2, a standards guide for ethical development of AI.
Attributes: EXPE Experiential Education Courses
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