After successful completion of the course, students are able to...

• explain the central concepts and problems in the field;
• reflect critically on the central technical and philosophical challenges in the field;
• develop their own state of the art informed arguments on central AI ethics questions;
• argue for the importance of ethical reflection in AI development;
• voice an open and critical stance to claims and arguments in AI (ethics).

Content:
With the rapid developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI), we find an inevitable increase in AI’s impact on our lives, posing various ethical challenges for developers, policy-makers, and society at large. This has led to a general awareness that AI systems must be aligned with human values, ethics, and laws. This course introduces various ways in which ethics and AI meet. It enables students to develop basic skills for identifying and critically reflecting on AI-specific ethical challenges, and for incorporating critical thinking on these topics in their work and further studies.

The course focuses on four central perspectives on AI ethics:

1. the rise of novel ethical concerns specific to AI (think of explainability versus opacity, AI accountability, and perpetuating bias);
2. AI ethics and policy-making (think of the right to explanation and UNESCO’s recommendation on the ethics of AI);
3. implementing formal reasoning with ethics in AI (e.g., formalizing legal reasoning);
4. responsible AI research and engineering practices (think of handling sensitive data and transparency).

As will become clear throughout the course, these perspectives often intersect.

Teaching methods
The course comprises lectures, seminar group discussions, and individual work in the form of a presentation and essay. The central topics of the course are introduced by means of lectures. These are, then, followed by seminars where we together interactively reflect on the various challenges and solutions related to the respective topics.

Further information concerning the course, including the syllabus and relevant reading material will be made available on the course's TUWEL platform in due time.

ECTS breakdown: 6 ECTS = 150 Hours:

• Lectures and seminars 30h (15 sessions)
• Preparation for the seminars 30h
• Engagement in TUWEL discussion forum 15h
• Preparation for the presentation 10h (will be given during a seminar)
• Writing reviews for and processing reviews of other students 15h
• Final essay 50h

Mode of examination:

Oral (presentation) and written (essay and TUWEL).

Examination modalities (6ECTS)

• Final essay (60%)
• Presentation (30%)
• Participation on TUWEL (10%)