Current Issues in Ethics and AI

Course Overview

Artificial intelligence, particularly with the introduction of generative AI, is fundamentally impacting a huge spectrum of human experience. This ranges from the vast majority of jobs and professions to education, healthcare, media and entertainment, and much more. These rapid advances have been accompanied by a huge array of fundamental and greatly impactful ethical challenges, including bias and inaccuracy in AI systems, where AI systems should and shouldn’t replace humans, and potential benefits and harms from various types of autonomous systems, and existential issues including the future of human work and the possibility of AI systems whose intelligence exceeds that of humans. This course provides students with a broad exposure to the ethical issues arising from AI, along with the experience and ethical tools to analyze them. It is intended to help students recognize and deal with these issues in their professional careers and their lives. It is based on a combination of current media articles and recent research papers, and is designed so that it can be kept current by refreshing the references it is based on. This course can be taken for academic credit as part of CU Boulder’s Masters of Science in Computer Science (MS-CS) and the Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence (MS-AI) degrees offered on the Coursera platform. This fully accredited graduate degree offer targeted courses, short 8-week sessions, and pay-as-you-go tuition. Admission is based on performance in three preliminary courses, not academic history. CU degrees on Coursera are ideal for recent graduates or working professionals. Learn more: MS in Computer Science: https://coursera.org/degrees/ms-computer-science-boulder MS in Artificial Intelligence: https://www.coursera.org/degrees/ms-artificial-intelligence-boulder