Professor Oisin Deery

deery@yorku.ca

This course will address two sets of philosophical issues raised by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.).

The first set has to do with the nature of intelligence and the very possibility of creating a machine that is intelligent. What would it take to design an intelligent computer? Is this even a feasible goal, or are there principled obstacles to creating artificial intelligence? If it is possible in principle, what kind of features would such a machine have?

The second set has to do with the theoretical, ethical, social, and political implications of artificial intelligence. How should we manage near-term ethical challenges posed by A.I.? What would the future look like if many, or most, current human occupations are taken over by AI systems?

Format 

The course will be run entirely asynchronously and online. I will post two video lectures per week, on Monday at 3p.m. and on Wednesday at 3p.m., for 6 weeks, making a total of 12 lectures.

There is no in-person attendance requirement for this course. But note that it is your responsibility to know the material covered in the lectures. You are also responsible for knowing about any announcements that I make in class with respect to changes to the schedule, due dates, etc.

All of the required readings will be posted on the eClass site for the course.

Weekly online quizzes x 6 (quizzes open each Friday at 10a.m. and remain open for 5 days) @ 5% each = 30% of overall grade. Note that since each quiz is open for 5 days, there are no make-up quizzes; there should be ample time for you to complete each quiz by the deadline.

Online final exam (opens in week 6 — details to come later) x 1 @ 20% = 20% of overall grad

Essay x 1 (details to come later) @ 50% = 50% of overall grade

Course timetable

Part 1: Intelligence

1: What is intelligence?

Part 2: A.I. Fundamentals

2: Machine functionalism; Turing machines

3: Computationalism, the Turing Test

4: The Chinese Room, syntax/semantics

5: Problems with Chinese Room/ Turing Test

6: Symbolic vs connectionist paradigms

7: Robotics and situated cognition

Part 3: A.I. Issues

8: Optimist and pessimist views of technology, including A.I.

9: The A.I. singularity

10: Artificial moral agents/ Blame and responsibility in A.I. systems

11: Algorithmic bias in A.I. systems

12: A.I. and the future of work

TBA

Academic dishonesty 

You are responsible for knowing the policies regarding academic dishonesty. Do not plagiarize. Plagiarism is presenting somebody else’s ideas as your own. This includes (but is not limited to) quoting a work without citing it or presenting the major ideas in another student’s assignment, an article, book, web page, etc. as your own without giving credit to the author.  If you have any questions about what might count as plagiarism, please ask. Any instances of cheating will be reported and prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.

Plagiarism includes the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as Chat GPT, etc.

I will give explicit instructions below for the completion of the essay assignment in a way that will help you to avoid reliance on LLMs. If you use LLMs, you will very likely be caught by the method I employ. If so, I will reserve the discretionary right to award a mark of zero (not just an F).

You will not learn anything if you use LLMs to write your essay. So make the wise decision not to do so.

For online quizzes, I cannot check whether you have used LLMs. But I will trust you to likewise make the wise decision not to do so. You're on the honour system.

Also be aware that using LLMs is unreliable for quizzes, and that even if you do well you are cheating against the other students who do the quizzes on their own. You must ask yourself whether this is the kind of person you want to be.

Contact

Please make sure that, when contacting me by email, you use the course code in the subject line of the email. The body of your email should also include your full name and your Student ID so that your records can be accessed quickly.

I will not reply to emails that do not conform to these requirements:

• course code in the subject line,
• full name & Student ID in the body of the email.

For your own sake, I also ask you to familiarize yourselves with the basics of “How to Email a Professor”:

https://www.wikihow.com/Email-a-Professor

Learning the basics of such email etiquette will be helpful to you later on (hint: emailing your boss with the greeting, “Hey dude!” won’t serve you well in life).

Please note that many questions that I receive by email could be answered quickly by you, on your own. Before sending me an email, you might want to ask yourself whether the information you seek is available already in the syllabus, online, or from another student.

Before contacting me to ask a question about the course content, please post the question in the Forum entitled “Questions Forum.” It may be that another student can answer your question. And whether another student or instead I answer it, having both the question and the answer in the forum will assist other students who may have similar questions.

Virtual office hours

Details regarding virtual office hours will be uploaded here before the course commences on May 5.