Teaching
PHIL 205 AI Ethics
The development of artificial intelligence tools and their widespread use—as well as the proliferation of new AI methodologies and technologies—raises new ethical challenges. This course addresses the relation of humans to these new technological tools, guiding students to consider their role and ethical responsibility as users, designers, managers, and future policy leaders in this new technological era. The course delves into three ethical theories to help students structure their ethical decision-making and to ground ethical values such as dignity, trust, autonomy, transparency, and fairness. Students consider the goals and priorities of citizens, designers and researchers, and policy makers and explore the ethical issues raised by AI for equality, justice, democracy, social media, surveillance, censorship, and the impact on work and the human labor force.
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Current Semester
PHIL 353 Consequentialism
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Consequentialism is one of the main families of ethical frameworks in normative theory, and has a dominant role within economics and public policy. This class is divided into three sections: historical foundations, modern critiques and revisions, and recent new theoretical approaches. While many students are familiar with Mill, few have the opportunity to study in-depth the texts of Bentham, Mill, and Sidgwick. These three philosophers are the foundational theorists responsible for developing Classic utilitarian theory. Next, we turn to a variety of critiques that served to expose problems within the Classic accounts and spurred extensive explanation, revision, and development from the Classic theories into the robust versions that underpin much modern economic theory and public policy approaches. In the final section of the course, we read a recent text by a well-known theorist and examine how to apply normative theory to a real-world issue.