Aims of the course
This course aims to:
1. Introduce approaches to AI as a suite of social, cultural, environmental, political and computational technologies.
2. Identify the ethical and political challenges to social and cultural diversity, human rights, global politics, the natural environment, and socio-political institutions emerging through AI.
3. Brainstorm approaches to addressing the community, social, and political concerns that AI technologies generate, and what to do about them.
Content
From chatGPT, to how we treat ‘Alexa’, Amazon’s digital assistant, to the potential threats of automated weapons systems, AI consumer applications generate ethical questions, and real world harms. These debates are not just about the technologies ‘inside’ AI, but also what we as societies think, respectively, about the place of language, secretarial or administrative assistance, and warfare and geopolitical conflict in our worlds. In other words, studying AI and Ethics is also about confronting the social, political, and cultural worlds around and containing AI. This course will introduce ways to understand how these complex interactions shape our world, the political and ethical challenges they raise, and how we might consider living in a time of rapid socio-technological change.
We are living in a time of an overwhelming, socio-technological shift with the development of new technologies and challenges to how we have traditionally known and organised our societies over the 20th century. Nation-state politics, institutional authority, geopolitical alignments, industrial power, economic systems, knowledge systems, and cultural scripts can feel unstable. AI brings a particular flavour to this mix because it makes us confront what we mean by the category of ‘human’. Machines are becoming more human, we’re told; or, has there always been an unsatisfying and limited answer to the question of what we mean by ‘the human’? Is it really that machines can now ‘think’ (or see, drive, or be creative), or that thinking itself (like, seeing, driving, or being creative) are changing through the interaction of society and humanity? Or, that we might be in thrall to marketing hype? This course is a brief moment to pause and reckon with the implications of these changes and to ask ourselves: what will we do next?
This course will diversify our understanding of AI by bringing a range of social realities, histories, and contexts to test the claims it makes. We will look at AI as a data infrastructure that relies on vast natural resources; how it is shaped by distinct cultural imaginaries; and as a set of tools that measure and re-shape human bodies and social relationships. In other words, this course will emphasise how these technologies rely on interactions in the human social world for their emergence.
Presentation of the course
We will examine the implications of emergent AI for human society, evaluate its promises, and, most critically, confront our concerns about how we may intervene, if at all. Each day of the course is organised around a particular question or theme, a reading, podcast, video, or game, and lots of group discussions and interactions. You will be given a writing prompt for the day to complete on your own and bring to the next session to share, if you wish to. Bring your questions, and your spirit of engagement.
Class sessions
Day 1. What is AI anyway? AI in, and as, myth, metaphor, and future imaginary.
This introductory session will begin with clarifying terms and definitions about what we think AI actually is. For each of its manifestations as infrastructure, imaginary, or tool, generates different kinds of political and ethical questions. This session will be organised around a comparative review of tropes and motifs in science fiction literature and cinema, advertising, and business media from different global regions.
Day 2. Will AI replace us? AI in work, labour, and automation.
One of the big fears and concerns associated with AI is that it will replace human creativity, work, and jobs. Yet like many other technologies before it, AI applications do not so much re-place human labour, as dis place it. This session will introduce histories of automation and examine how applications such as the ‘driverless’ car’ are continuations of that tradition. We will examine the ‘gamification’ of everyday life and work and the ‘faux-tomation’ of AI.
Day 3. Is AI malicious and harmful? How can we mitigate its harms?
One of the distinct aspects of AI in consumer applications is that it has already resulted in considerable real-world harms; scientists refer to its applications as ‘snake oil’. Elon Musk famously referred to it as ‘demonic’. AI applications also generate a significant drain on planetary resources that we share with our nonhuman co-habitants of the planet. In this session we will examine AI as an infrastructural system and examine recent initiatives to address its real, imagined, and potential harms.
Day 4. Is AI creative or actually intelligent?
This session will examine the kinds of questions AI is prompting about art, language, and creativity through applications like chatGPT and Dall-E. We will consider why we are asking these questions now, and unpack our understandings of culture and creativity, and what AI applications mean for our society and creative industries.
Day 5. Is there anything to be done? Where do we go from here?
This final day will be a moment to gather our reflections and learnings and review individual and collective potential for life in a highly datafied, AI-shaped reality.
Learning outcomes
The learning outcomes for this course are:
1. Critically analyse how AI is continuous with the social and cultural history of technology and society.
2. Identify the ethical concerns associated with AI in terms of society, culture, the natural and planetary environment, and existing socio-political institutions.
3. Feel more confident about addressing myths and facts associated with AI’s emergence.
4. Address and name feelings and concerns associated with rapid socio-technological change and what this means for human society.
Required reading
Crawford, Kate and Joler Vladan. 2018. Anatomy of an AI system. See VLE for details
Crawford, Kate and Paglen, Trevor. 2019. Excavating AI. See VLE for details
Ganesh, Maya Indira. 2022. Between metaphor and meaning: AI and being human. Interactions 29, 5 (September - October 2022), 58–62. See VLE for details
Taylor, Astra. 2018. The automation charade. Logic Magazine. See VLE for details.
Choose any two episodes of the Good Robot Podcast to listen to with these guests: Meryl Alper, Alex Hanna, Virginia Dignum, Sareeta Amrute, or Cynthia Bennett. See VLE for details.
MIT Technology Review series. 2021. AI Colonialism. See VLE for details.
Typical week: Monday to Friday
Courses run from Monday to Friday. For each week of study, you select a morning (Am) course and an afternoon (Pm) course. The maximum class size is 25 students.
Courses are complemented by a series of daily plenary lectures, exploring new ideas in a wide range of disciplines. To add to the learning experience, we are also planning additional evening talks and events.
c.7.30am-9.00am
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Breakfast in College (for residents)
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9.00am-10.30am
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Am Course
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11.00am-12.15pm
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Plenary Lecture
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12.15pm-1.30pm
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Lunch
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1.30pm-3.00pm
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Pm Course
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3.30pm-4.45pm
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Plenary Lecture/Free
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6.00pm/6.15pm-7.15pm
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Dinner in College (for residents)
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7.30pm onwards
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Evening talk/Event/Free
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Evaluation and Academic Credit
If you are seeking to enhance your own study experience, or earn academic credit from your Cambridge Summer Programme studies at your home institution, you can submit written work for assessment for one or more of your courses.
Essay questions are set and assessed against the University of Cambridge standard by your Course Director, a list of essay questions can be found in the Course Materials. Essays are submitted two weeks after the end of each course, so those studying for multiple weeks need to plan their time accordingly. There is an evaluation fee of £75 per essay.
For more information about writing essays see Evaluation and Academic Credit.
Certificate of attendance
A certificate of attendance will be sent to you electronically after the programme.