0 or 3 credits
Fall 2025 Lecture Departmental CreditLower Division
Just what is it to be artificially intelligent and what will be AIs impact on our future? This course tackles these questions using an interdisciplinary and historically anchored approach beginning with the development of AI to arrive at a more holistic, socially and ethically ensconced account of what it means to be artificially intelligent. Will AI agents change the nature of work? Can they be used to regulate individuals and their opportunities through automated algorithms and sorting software? What are the human and environmental costs of a full-throated adoption of AI? This class will arm you with the philosophical and historical background to begin to devise and weigh the creative opportunities and challenges posed by this future. We'll first consider traditional questions and issues in the philosophy of computation, epistemology, ethics and justice before turning to home onto a series of specific challenges that may include issues of AI in equity, AI and the law, AI and gender, AI and labor, AI and policy, the future of AI, and whether we can even design 'ethical' AI.
Learning Outcomes1Examine the theoretical foundations of AI.
2Identify ethical and epistemological implications of emerging AI technologies.
3Evaluate policy challenges posed by AI technologies.
made by Purdue students.