Is Artificial Intelligence Biased, Sexist, and Just All-Around Evil? Sociological and Philosophical Perspectives

Dozent/in	Prof. Dr. Gabriel Abend
Veranstaltungsart	Masterseminar
Code	FS251452
Semester	Frühjahrssemester 2025
Durchführender Fachbereich	Soziologie
Studienstufe	Master
Termin/e	wöchentlich (Di), ab 18.02.2025, 12:15 - 14:00 Uhr, 3.B52
Umfang	2 Semesterwochenstunden
Inhalt	Artificial intelligence (AI) is said to be awesome. It can do lots of things for you and save you lots of time. For example, an AI-powered car will drive you home, which is nice when traffic is bad, or you’re wasted, or both. If you’re a university student, an AI assistant can write your papers. If you’re a university professor, it can write your class descriptions for the Vorlesungsverzeichnis. But wait. That sounds morally sketchy, doesn’t it? What’s worse, an AI can discriminate against you because you’re a woman or queer or an immigrant from the Global South: it’ll probably pick a straight white man for the job. AI can spread fake news and help awful politicians win elections. Its algorithms will produce biased search results and make biased judgments and decisions, whether it’s in medicine, policing, criminal law, business and finance, or public administration. So, isn’t AI biased, sexist, and just all-around evil? This is the main question we’ll ask in this seminar. Upon asking it, we’ll have AI answer it for us. Duh! Who needs these days to read boring articles and books?
Voraussetzungen	None. Everyone is welcome!
Sprache	Englisch
Abschlussform / Credits	Aktive Teilnahme (Referat) / 4 Credits
Kontakt	gabriel.abend@unilu.ch
Material	OLAT
Literatur	John Danaher: “Toward an Ethics of AI Assistants” Hubert Dreyfus: What Computers Still Can’t Do  Kelly Joyce et al: “Toward a Sociology of Artificial Intelligence”  Patrick Schenk, Vanessa Müller and Luca Keiser: “Social Status and the Moral Acceptance of Artificial Intelligence”