Philosophy
Graduate Seminar
W 12:10-2PM
What is Artificial Intelligence? Is a thermostat an AI system What about digital assistants like Siri and Alexa? Or DeepBlue, Watson, and AlphaGo – the first computer programs to beat humans at the games of chess, Jeopardy!, and Go, respectively? Does AI even exist today? If not, will it ever exist, or is it an impossible project? And if it is not impossible, should we fear it? These are not just questions for computer scientists: they are largely philosophical questions. This course will explore various issues at the intersection between philosophy and AI. We will discuss the nature of AI, the possibility of building AI that has the same mental capacities as humans, whether AI systems can actually understand the world and understand language like we do, whether the development of AI is an existential threat for the future of humanity, the ethical implications of building self-driving cars and killer robots, the problem of bias in algorithms used for decision-making, and the nature of AI-generated art.
Link to Vergil
Note: only courses offered during the two previous semesters have active Vergil links.
