AI task force proposes ‘artificial intelligence, ethics and society’ minor in BCLA; The Los Angeles Loyolan, November 18, 2024

Coleman Standifer, asst. managing editor; Grace McNeill, asst. managing editor , The Los Angeles Loyolan; AI task force proposes ‘artificial intelligence, ethics and society’ minor in BCLA

"The Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts (BCLA) is taking steps to further educate students on artificial intelligence (AI) through the development of an “artificial intelligence, ethics and society," spearheaded by an AI task force. This proposed addition comes two years after the widespread adoption of OpenAI's ChatGPT in classrooms.

Prior to stepping into his role as the new dean of BCLA, Richard Fox, Ph.D., surveyed BCLA’s 175 faculty about how the college could best support their teaching. Among the top three responses from faculty were concerns about navigating AI in the classroom, Fox told the Loyolan.

As of now, BCLA has no college-wide policy on AI usage and allows instructors determine how AI is — or is not — utilized in the classroom.

“We usually don't dictate how people teach. That is the essence of academic freedom," said Fox. “What I want to make sure we're doing is we're preparing students to enter a world where they have these myriad different expectations on writing from their faculty members.”

Headed by Roberto Dell’Oro, Ph.D., professor of theological studies and director of the Bioethics Institute, the task force met over the summer and culminated in a proposal for a minor in BCLA. The proposal — which Dell'Oro sent to the Loyolan— was delivered to Fox in August and now awaits a formal proposal to be drawn up before approval, according to Dell’Oro.

The minor must then be approved by the Academic Planning and Review Committee (ARPC), a committee tasked with advising Provost Thomas Poon, Ph.D., on evaluating proposals for new programs.

According to the proposal, the proposed minor aims “to raise awareness about the implications of AI technologies, emphasize the importance of ethical considerations in its development and promote interdisciplinary research at the intersection of AI, ethics, and society.

The minor — if approved by the APRC — would have “four or five classes,” with the possibility of having an introductory course taught by faculty in the Seaver College of Science and Engineering, according to the proposal.

Most of the sample courses in the proposal include classes rooted in philosophy and ethics, such as, “AI, Robots, and the Philosophy of the Person,” “Could Robots Have Rights?” and “Introduction to Bioethics.” According to Dell’Oro, the hope is to have courses available for enrollment by Fall 2025."

USU's College of Humanities & Social Sciences Hosts Conference on Ethics of AI; Utah State University (USU), September 23, 2024

Utah State University (USU); USU's College of Humanities & Social Sciences Hosts Conference on Ethics of AI

"AI’s emergence from the obscure to the unavoidable has come with many questions and concerns — some of which deal with how we can and should use it ethically.

To help answer some of these questions the USU Communication Studies and Philosophy Department and the Center for Anticipatory Intelligence hosted a conference.

They brought in scholars from a variety of disciplines to discuss these issues — with these experts coming from the University of Cambridge, New York University and Northeastern University, among others."

AN ETHICS EXPERT’S PERSPECTIVE ON AI AND HIGHER ED; Pace University, September 3, 2024

 Johnni Medina, Pace University; AN ETHICS EXPERT’S PERSPECTIVE ON AI AND HIGHER ED

"As a scholar deeply immersed in both technology and philosophy, James Brusseau, PhD, has spent years unraveling the complex ethics of artificial intelligence (AI).

“As it happens, I was a physics major in college, so I've had an abiding interest in technology, but I finally decided to study philosophy,” Brusseau explains. “And I did not see much of an intersection between the scientific and my interest in philosophy until all of a sudden artificial intelligence landed in our midst with questions that are very philosophical.”.

Some of these questions are heavy, with Brusseau positing an example, “If a machine acts just like a person, does it become a person?” But AI’s implications extend far beyond the theoretical, especially when it comes to the impact on education, learning, and career outcomes. What role does AI play in higher education? Is it a tool that enhances learning, or does it risk undermining it? And how do universities prepare students for an AI-driven world?

In a conversation that spans these topics, Brusseau shares his insights on the place of AI in higher education, its benefits, its risks, and what the future holds...

I think that if AI alone is the professor, then the knowledge students get will be imperfect in the same vaguely definable way that AI art is imperfect."

Tech sector examines the risks and rewards of AI. How two paths converged at Northeastern’s London campus; Northeastern Global News, July 17, 2024

Patrick Daly, Northeastern Global News; Tech sector examines the risks and rewards of AI. How two paths converged at Northeastern’s London campus

"Tess Buckley boarded a plane from Canada to a country and continent she had never before stepped foot on, carrying just a suitcase and a dream.

Three years later, she is living in London and fulfilling her ambition of being an artificial intelligence ethicist in her job with techUK, the sector’s trade association, where she is charged with helping to ensure the advanced technology is used with the right intentions.

Tracy Woods was already a senior figure at tech firm Cognizant when she started asking the same type of questions about the responsible use of AI. Like Buckley, she too looked to texts and lessons of the past, some dating back thousands of years, to help her pursue the answers to some very modern questions.

Buckley and Woods may have come from opposite corners of the globe and been at different stages of their careers but they ended up at the same place: Northeastern University’s philosophy and AI graduate program in London." 

Philosophy, ethics, and the pursuit of 'responsible' artificial intelligence; Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), March 7, 2024

 Felicia Swartzenberg, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT); Philosophy, ethics, and the pursuit of 'responsible' artificial intelligence

"Evan Selinger, professor in RIT’s Department of Philosophy, has taken an interest in the ethics of AI and the policy gaps that need to be filled in. Through a humanities lens, Selinger asks the questions, "How can AI cause harm, and what can governments and companies creating AI programs do to address and manage it?" Answering them, he explained, requires an interdisciplinary approach...

“AI ethics has core values and principles, but there’s endless disagreement about interpreting and applying them and creating meaningful accountability mechanisms,” said Selinger. “Some people are rightly worried that AI can be co-opted into ‘ethics washing’—weak checklists, flowery mission statements, and empty rhetoric that covers over abuses of power. Fortunately, I’ve had great conversations about this issue, including with folks at Microsoft, on why it is important to consider a range of positions.”

There are many issues that need to be addressed as companies pursue responsible AI, including public concern over whether generative AI is stealing from artists. Some of Selinger’s recent research has focused on the back-end issues with developing AI, such as the human toll that comes with testing AI chatbots before they’re released to the public. Other issues focus on policy, such as what to do about the dangers that facial recognition and other automated approaches to surveillance.

In a chapter for a book that will be published by MIT Press, Selinger, along with co-authors Brenda Leong, partner at Luminos.Law, and Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, offer concrete suggestions for conducting responsible AI audits, while also considering civil liberties objections."

Certificates… From a Philosophy Department; Inside Higher Ed, May 17, 2023

 Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher Ed; Certificates… From a Philosophy Department

Pennsylvania’s Millersville University has begun offering ethics certificates. It’s among multiple philosophy departments that have shaken things up.

"He said the department wanted to help people understand philosophy’s relevancy “to whatever else they were doing.”

“What we ultimately decided was that the ethics angle was a clear way in which that was the case,” he said. “Our society today is kind of encountering a challenge in terms of the limits of our ability to think through the ethical issues in all of these various kinds of advancements that are taking place.”

Amy E. Ferrer, executive director of the American Philosophical Association, said in an email that her organization “is aware of philosophy programs naming and structuring their degrees, courses and concentrations in ways meant to draw the interest of students that might not have a clear understanding of what philosophy is.” She even provided her association’s own Department Advocacy Toolkit.

“Consider whether some of the traditional names of courses might be failing to attract students,” the guide says. “The appeal of a course on ‘epistemology,’ for instance, might be limited to students who are already ‘in the know’ about philosophy. It is worth considering whether a name change might attract a wider audience. Words like ‘information,’ ‘knowledge,’ ‘truth’ and ‘belief’—common topics in an epistemology course—might draw a student to read the course description more so than ‘epistemology.’”"

Stephen Fry Would Like to Remind You That You Have No Free Will; The New York Times Magazine, May 2, 2021

David Marchese , The New York Times Magazine; Stephen Fry Would Like to Remind You That You Have No Free Will

"You said earlier you’ve been reading philosophy. Is there a particular idea that you’re tickled by lately? I suppose the real biggie is free will. I find it interesting that no one really talks about it: I would say that 98 percent of all philosophers would agree with me that essentially free will is a myth. It doesn’t exist. That ought to be shocking news on the front of every newspaper. I’m not saying we don’t look both ways before we cross the road; we decide not to leave it to luck as to whether a car is going to hit us. Nor am I saying that we don’t have responsibility for our actions: We have agency over the body in which our minds and consciousness dwell. But we can’t choose our brains, we can’t choose our genes, we can’t choose our parents. There’s so much. I mean, look at the acts of a sociopath, which are performed with absolute will in the sense that he means to do what he’s doing, but he’s doing it because he has desires and impulses which he didn’t choose to have. Nobody elects to be a sociopath. The difference between us and them is one of degree. That certainly interests me. But, generally speaking, I suppose ethics is the most interesting. You do wonder if there are enough people in the world thinking about the consequences of A.I. and technology...

What’s so interesting now is that in 20 or 30 years, we will be in exactly the same ethical positions as Prometheus and Zeus. We will say, “A.I. has reached this event horizon, this transformative moment in which it becomes self-conscious.” Will we then say we have to turn those machines off — be like Zeus — and not give A.I. fire? Or some will be like Prometheus. They will say, “Give A.I. fire; it would be fantastic to watch these creatures have their own will.""

The Ethics of Developing COVID-19 Treatments and Vaccination; Carnegie Mellon University, April 7, 2020

Jason Maderer, Carnegie Mellon University; The Ethics of Developing COVID-19 Treatments and Vaccination

CMU's experts explore the options

"In the rush to do science quickly, Carnegie Mellon University ethicist Alex John London says it is easy to make mistakes. 

"The point of research is to reduce uncertainty — to sort out dead ends from fruitful treatment strategies," said London, the Clara L. West Professor of Ethics and Philosophy and director of the Center for Ethics and Policy. But if you don’t do rigorous science, you can wind up increasing uncertainty, which can actually make things worse."

London’s research in Carnegie Mellon’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences focuses on ethical and policy issues surrounding the development and deployment of novel technologies in medicine...

One strategy to expedite the vaccine process for COVID-19 is turning to the power of artificial intelligence (AI). London’s colleague, Carnegie Mellon professor David Danks, looks at the intersection of ethics and machine learning."

The Most Important Skills for the 4th Industrial Revolution? Try Ethics and Philosophy.; EdSurge, October 6, 2018

Tony Wan, EdSurge; The Most Important Skills for the 4th Industrial Revolution? Try Ethics and Philosophy.

"[Patrick] Awuah [founder and president of Ashesi University College in Ghana], a MacArthur Fellowship recipient, continued: “If humans are designing machines to replace humans, versus helping them get work done, then that will change the structure of humanity to something that we have never seen. I’ve not read any history books where whole societies were not working. This is why it’s so important to have history and philosophy as part of the curriculum for somebody who's being educated as an engineer.”

In the United States, increased interest in technology and computer-science related career has correlated with a precipitous drop in the proportion of humanities majors at colleges. For Goodman, that’s one of his biggest worries for the future. “We’re entering a time when schools are eliminating programs in humanities, and philosophy departments are becoming an endangered species.”

“We need to be educating people so they are productive and employable,” Awuah later added. “But we also need to be educating people so that they’re creating a society that is livable and social, where human interaction is important.”"

It’s Westworld. What’s Wrong With Cruelty to Robots?; The New York Times, April 23, 2018

Paul Bloom and Sam Harris, The New York Times; It’s Westworld. What’s Wrong With Cruelty to Robots?

"This is where actually watching “Westworld” matters. The pleasure of entertainment aside, the makers of the series have produced a powerful work of philosophy. It’s one thing to sit in a seminar and argue about what it would mean, morally, if robots were conscious. It’s quite another to witness the torments of such creatures, as portrayed by actors such as Evan Rachel Wood and Thandie Newton. You may still raise the question intellectually, but in your heart and your gut, you already know the answer."

In Theory: Feminist thinkers challenge ‘traditional ethics’; Burbank Leader via Los Angeles Times, February 7, 2018

Burbank Leader via Los Angeles Times; In Theory: Feminist thinkers challenge ‘traditional ethics’

"Ideas largely introduced by feminist thinker Carol Gilligan in her 1982 book "In A Different Voice" contend that feminine "ethics of care" stress "caring" as opposed to the more theoretically masculine "ethics of justice," which stress "duty" as a moral view.

The notes for a philosophy course at Texas A&M posit that "Doing one's moral duty ... does not mean that we should ignore the circumstances, people or future interpersonal impact of our judgments."

One might recognize this philosophy in marchers calling for "dismantling systems of oppression through nonviolent resistance and building inclusive structures guided by self-determination, dignity and respect."

Q. Are the "traditional ethics" of Western Civilization essentially male? Do ethical differences between sexes exist, and if so, what accounts for them?"

Teaching philosophy with Spider-Man; BBC News, 8/12/10

Katie Connolly, BBC News; Teaching philosophy with Spider-Man:

"Now, philosophy professors are finding superheroes and comic books to be exceptionally useful tools in helping students think about the complex moral and ethical debates that have occupied philosophers for centuries...

"I usually have students read Plato, Aristotle and Hume in introduction to philosophy courses. They often find it interesting, but get scared away by just how hard it is to read the stuff," Mr Bartel told the BBC.

"Comic books can provide really good illustrations of these philosophical ideas without scaring them off."...

For Christopher Robichaud, who teaches ethics and political philosophy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and Tufts University, superhero-based thought experiments can help people grapple with ethical dilemmas in an unsentimental fashion."