Artificial Intelligence - Philosophical Social and Cultural Perspectives

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a common term, capitalized by numerous organizations and companies. Related concepts, such as machine learning and neural networks, are also becoming widespread. AI algorithms stand at the heart of far reaching technological breakthroughs and hold great promises, but at the same time raise concerns about the possible rise of a destructive force driven by superintelligence. 

But what does artificial intelligence mean? What are the sources of the idea that one could artificially produce or create an intelligence? And what are the implications of this idea on human society? 

The course will run in the historical axis from Turing’s test for machine thinking articulated in the 50’s to recent events . We will converse with chatbots ourselves, analyze anthropomorphism and empathy towards robots, relate the primordial desire to overcome nature to current debates on granting “human rights” to digital entities, ask about the economic and cultural implications of automation, and of the different ways biases migrate from the human to the digital realm. And most importantly we will ask - in what way does this change the way we conceive humanity.