STS 239
The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence Spring 2025
Division II
Cross-listed PHIL 239

Human beings will someday live alongside artificially intelligent beings who equal or exceed us. The rise of AI will be a tectonic shift for culture, technology, and our fundamental sense of ourselves. When AI is fully realized, it is likely to be amongst the most important things to happen to our species. Some challenges we face are broad and about the future. How can we ensure that AI’s will act morally? Is a world with AI’s overall better or worse for us? How do we create legal and policy frameworks that cover a new kind of thinking being? If they are conscious, will AI’s have dignity and rights? Other questions are pressing and immediate: Artificial intelligence techniques are used today to help decide whether someone gets a bank loan, is eligible to be released on bail, or in need of particular medical treatment. And right now there are autonomous vehicles deciding how to behave in traffic, and autonomous weapons capable of delivering lethal force. Is it moral for us to pass along these sorts of decisions to AI’s? What if they are biased, unbeknownst to us? What if they are more fair? How should we understand intellectual and creative work in an era of generative models that take on some aspects of thought? In this course we will engage ethical questions surrounding the seeming inevitability of AI.