COGS 311 - Seminar in Cognitive Science

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2020/21b: The morality and morals of artificial intelligence. There is an interesting and increasingly complicated conversation happening at the intersection of cognitive science and artificial intelligence, a conversation built upon a very contentious set of questions. What are our moral obligations as scientists when we create intelligent systems capable of autonomous decision making and even independent action? How responsible are we for the consequences of the decisions and actions of these artificial systems if they truly are autonomous? Should we consider such systems to be moral agents in their own right? Will the morality of these agents be determined by those who build them or will the morality of these agents be emergent from the process of their creation in ways that we cannot determine before the fact? In a world of competing moral systems, whose moral system should provide the framework for answering all of our other questions? In order to immerse ourselves in this conversation, we dive into the literature on the current state of research in artificial intelligence while we explore in parallel the cognitive science of morality and moral systems. Kenneth Livingston.

Prerequisite(s): At least one 200-level course in Cognitive Science or permission of the instructor.

Two 2-hour periods.

Course Format: CLS