Science, Technology and Humanity: Opportunities and Risks

Master's Program in Cognitive Science, Comenius University in Bratislava

Last modification: Apr 4, 2024

Summer semester 2023/24

Time: Thursday 16:30-18:00 lecture, 18:05-18:50 seminar

Place: lecture hall C

Lecturers:

doc. RNDr. Martin Takáč, PhD., Centre for Cognitive Science, room I-37, t a k a c (at) i i . f m p h . u n i b a . s k

Ing. PhDr. Tomáš Gál, PhD., Centre for Cognitive Science, room I-33bc t o m a s . g a l (at) u n i b a . s k

Credits: 5

Learning outcome

The students will gain awareness of the contemporary and potential future challenges posed by scientific
and technological innovations and their impact on human behaviour, culture and society

Assessment

You can see your progress here:

1. Semester activities: active participation in the seminar (60%)
2. Final evaluation: colloquial presentation of the selected topic (40%)

Grading

0-50%	Fx
51-60%	E
61-70%	D
71-80%	C
81-90%	B
91-100%	A

Schedule

Session	Date	Topic	Seminar Reading	Supplementary Resources (optional)	Notes
1.	Feb 22	Introduction (MT)	none
2.	Feb 29	Values in humans and machines (MT)	L. Floridi et al.: An Ethical Framework for a Good AI Society: Opportunities, Risks, Principles, and Recommendations. Minds and Machines, December 2018.	Moral Machine experiment, MIT. Value Sensitive Design and Information Systems Values in Technology and Disclosive Computer Ethics
3.	Mar 7	Big data: bias, privacy, politics and power (MT)	W. Youyou, M. Kosinski, D. Stillwell: Computer-based personality judgments are more accurate than those made by humans. PNAS 112(4), 2015. Excerpt from Grienfield, A. (2017): Radical Technologies (Supplemental text)	Principles of data ethics E. Bender, T. Gebru et al. (2021): On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? FAccT '21. Joy Buolamwini: How I'm fighting bias in algorithms (video) Wachter, S.: Privacy, identity, and autonomy in the age of big data and AI (video) Wachter, S.: Show Me Your Data and I'll Tell You Who You Are (video)
4.	Mar 14	Job market and inequality (TG)	S. Russell: Eliminating work as we know it. In: Human Compatible. Penguin Random House, 2019 (p. 113-124).	Acemlogu, D., Restrepo P.(2019) The Wrong Kind of AI? del Gato, M.(2019) Automation: impacts on labor and inequality
5.	Mar 21	Internet of things (TG)	All off, F., Henschke, A. (2018): The Internet of Things: Foundational ethical issues. Internet of Things 1-2, p. 55-66	S. K. Jagatheesaperumal, Q. -V. Pham, R. Ruby, Z. Yang, C. Xu and Z. Zhang, "Explainable AI Over the Internet of Things (IoT): Overview, State-of-the-Art and Future Directions," in IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, vol. 3, pp. 2106-2136, 2022, doi: 10.1109/OJCOMS.2022.3215676. keywords: {Internet of Things;Artificial intelligence;Data models;Medical services;Industrial Internet of Things;Predictive models;Ethics;Artificial intelligence;deep learning;explainability;Internet of Things;machine learnin}, A. Abo Bakr and M. A. Azer (2017): "IoT ethics challenges and legal issues," 2017 12thInternational Conference on Computer Engineering and Systems (ICCES), Cairo, pp. 233-237 Rane, Nitin and Choudhary, Saurabh and Rane, Jayesh, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) – Based Sensors for Monitoring and Controlling in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction: Applications, Challenges, and Opportunities (November 20, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4642197
	Mar 28	no class!
6.	Apr 4	Affective Computing (TG)	Leahu, L. & Segners, P. (2014): Freaky: Performing Hybrid Human-Machine Emotion. In: DIS '14: Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems, p.607-616.	Greene, G.(2020): The Ethics of AI and Emotional Intelligence: Data sources, applications, and questions for evaluating ethics risk. Partnership on AI report. Steiner, S.& Friedrich, O. (2020):Wired Emotions: Ethical Issues of Affective Brain-Computer Interfaces. Science and Engineering Ethics 26, p. 351-367. Will AI ever understand human emotions? The Conversation, 10 Jan2017 Why emotional AI matters(video) Hume.ai: Capture human expressions in text, audio, video, or images. Ethical guidelines for emphatic AI. Hume.ai Harper, R.: Ethics of Emotion AI. medium.com, 2019. The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed.
7.	Apr 11	Assistant AI and its place in future society (MT)	R. Sparrow: Virtue and Vice in Our Relationships with Robots: Is There an Asymmetry and How Might it be Explained? International Journal of Social Robotics, 2020.	John Danaher: Toward an Ethics of AI Assistants: an Initial Framework. Philosophy and Technology31(4), 629ďż˝653, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-018-0317-3 John Danaher: The Ethics of Algorithmic Outsourcing in Everyday Life. In K. Yeung, M. Lodge (eds.): Algorithmic Regulation. Oxford University Press, 2019. Robots will probably help care for you when you are old, Quartz, Sep11, 2018. Jessica Nordell: Stop Giving Digital Assistants Female Voices. The New Republic, June 23, 2016. Ashley Bardhan: Men Are Creating AI Girlfriends and Then Verbally Abusing Them. Futurism, Jan 18, 2022. UNESCO: Evolving Interactions between Humans and AI. Thinking Ethics of AI (video)
	Apr 18	no lecture (Student science conference)
8.	self-study! watch the lecture online	Hybridization between species and between AI and organic minds (J. Benko)	Specter, M. (2016) How the DNA Revolution Is Changing Us	Jorgensen, E: What you need to know about CRISPR (video) UNESCO: Questions on medical treatments and the impact on future generations (video) UNESCO: Impact of Genome editing on plants, animals and environment (video)
9.	Apr 25	Artificial minds, artificial persons (MT)	J. Bryson: Robots Should Be Slaves in: Y. Wilks (ed.): Close Engagements with Artificial Companions: Key Social, Psychological, Ethical and Design Issues. John Benjamins, 2010.	Kelley, J.D.: The Sapient and Sentient Intelligence Value Argument and Effects on Regulating Autonomous Artificial Intelligence in N. Lee (ed.): The Transhumanism Handbook. Springer, 2019. J. Bryson: Patiency is not a virtue: the design of intelligent systems and systems of ethics. Ethics and Information Technology (2018) 20:15ďż˝26. Knott, A., Sagar, M., Takac, M. (2021): The ethics of interaction with neurorobotic agents: a case study with BabyX. AI Ethics. Goertzel, B., Pennachin, C., eds. (2007): Artificial General Intelligence. Springer. Kurzweil, R.: The accelerating power of technology (TED talk 2005).
10.	May 2	Enhancements and human rights, the right to change self and others (TG)	Lamaze A. (2019) Transcranial electrical stimulation for human enhancement and the risk of inequality: Prohibition or compensation?	Miah,A. (2016) Ethics Issued Raised By Human Enhancement
11.	May 9	Superintelligence, singularity and after-human era (MT)	Chollet, F. (2017) The implausibility of intelligence explosion	Vinge, V.(1993) The Coming Technological Singularity
12.	May 16	Future of minds and transhumanism (TG)	Vita-Moran, N.: History of Transhumanism. In N. Lee (ed.): The Transhumanism Handbook. Springer, 2019.	MacKellar, C. (2019: Cyborg Mind: What Brain-Computer and Mind-Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics. Berghahn Books. (Open access).

Assessment details

Semester Activities

Student will acrue points for attending seminars. They are expected to actively participate in discussions of use cases and/or other seminar activities. Ongoing evaluation can be checked here

Colloquial presentation

Participants will choose a topic related to the course and prepare a presentation for their fellow students and teachers. It is necessary to sent the presentation slides (ideally pdf) to both teachers by email at least one day before the colloquium. Presentation should be relevant to the course topic, based on scientific knowledge and contain a list of references. Each student will present it orally (10 min) to the class during the colloquium.

Colloquium will take place during the examination period. Dates will be announced in due time (sign up for a term via AIS).