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Global perspectives on teaching AI ethics

Thu 30 March 2023

Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH)

Although the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been discussed extensively since at least the 1950s, the way in which future computer scientists, information engineers, and software developers are taught about this crucial topic at university differs vastly. In many countries it is still possible to study subjects such as machine learning or natural language processing to the highest level, without ever having to consider the ethical implications of autonomous intelligent systems, their underlying algorithms, and/or the data they are trained on. This provides a striking contrast to, say, Medical Sciences, which cannot usually be studied to degree level anywhere in the world without at least one compulsory ethics module having been taken.

This workshop will provide an opportunity for those who teach AI Ethics to students of science subjects at university to share ideas about what they teach and how they teach it, and may lead to a useful identification of common ground that connects differing ideologies and methodologies. The discussions will consider fundamental questions that at present have no widely-agreed answers, such as:

- which topics should be covered in such courses?
- which specific pedagogical strategies are most effective, and in which specific teaching contexts?
- how can ethical considerations be integrated practically into very technical subjects, such as modifying system architectures, developing particular neural models, and annotating and/or pre-processing training data?
- academics from which disciplines are best placed to deliver that teaching?’
- and, crucially, how should the ethical literacy of the students taking such courses be formally assessed?

Organised by Giving Voice to Digital Democracies, a research project which is part of the Centre for the Humanities and Social Change, Cambridge,

Convened by Marcus Tomalin and Stefanie Ullmann.

Cost: free