Science, Technology and Humanity: Opportunities and Risks

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

Last modification: March 29, 2023

Summer semester 2022/23

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

Place: F1-108

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, 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: submitting weekly reading assignments (35%), seminar activities (5%)
2. Final evaluation: colloquial presentation of the selected topic (60%)

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 15	Introduction	none
2.	Feb 22	Values in humans and machines	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	Special guest: Juraj Podroužek, assignment about values
3.	Mar 1	Job market and inequality	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
4.	Mar 8	Big data: bias, privacy, politics and power	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)	assignment about ChatGPT
5.	Mar 15	Internet of things	All off, F., Henschke, A. (2018): The Internet of Things: Foundational ethical issues. Internet of Things 1–2, p. 55–66	Berman F.,Cerf, V.: Social and Ethical Behavior in the Internet of Things. Comm. ACM60(2), Feb 2017. Baldini G.,Botterman, M., Neisse, R., Tallacchini, M.. (2018): Ethical Design in the Internet of Things. Science and Engineering Ethics 24, pp.905–925. 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
6.	Mar 22	Affective Computing	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) Harper, R.: Ethics of Emotion AI. medium.com, 2019. The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed.
7.	Mar 29	Assistant AI and its place in future society	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), 629–653, 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’re 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)
8.	Apr 5	Artificial minds, artificial persons	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) 20:15–26. 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).	Activity: Relationships with AI persons. Before the seminar, please read this article and watch this short sci-fi film. Try to identify ethical issues in the film.
9.	Apr 12	Hybridization between species and between AI and organic minds	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)	Special guest: Jakub Benko
	Apr 19	no lecture	none
10.	Apr 26	Enhancements and human rights, the right to change self and others	Lamaze A. (2019) Transcranialelectrical stimulation for human enhancement and the risk of inequality: Prohibition or compensation?	Miah,A. (2016) Ethics Issued Raised By Humane Enhancement
11.	May 3	Future of minds and transhumanism	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).
12.	May 10	Superintelligence, singularity and after-human era	Chollet, F. (2017) The implausibility of intelligence explosion	Vinge, V.(1993) The Coming Technological Singularity

Assessment details

Semester Activities

Reading assignments

Each session is structured as a lecture (90 min) followed by a seminar (45 min).
Before each seminar, a student should carefully read the article listed in the Seminar reading column and send an email with the following content (to t o m a s . g a l (at) u n i b a . s k):

1-2 paragraph summary of the main idea / message of the paper,
a short comment / question / discussion point related to the paper.

The deadline is Sunday midnight before the seminar. The reading assignments constitute 35% of grade.
The remaining 5% can be obtained at the seminar by solving special tasks.

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 an abstract to both teachers at least two days before the colloquium.

Colloquium dates will be anounced later in the semester.