Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence - A

This course will provide an introduction to AI and to the impacts of AI on the wider world. It is designed to be of interest to both philosophers and those with a background in computer science. It will cover topics such as the following:

- Defining intelligence (Can we compare human and animal intelligence with the sort of intelligence can be achieved on the part of a machine?)

- The Turing test (Why, after more than 50 years, we are still so often disappointed when we telephone our bank and are put through to a machine?)

- Consciousness (Can a computer have a conscious mind? Can it have emotions and desires? Can it have a will?)

- Deep neural networks (Could we build an intelligent machine by replicating the structure of the human brain?)

- AI ethics (What could it be for a machine to behave in an ethical or unethical manner? Will there, one day, be robot cops?)

- The Singularity (Could we build a machine with superhuman intelligence, which could in turn design an even more intelligent machine, thereby initiating a chain of ever more intelligence machines which would one day have the power to take over the planet?)

- Digital immortality (Could we, one day, find a way to upload the contents of our brains into the cloud so that we could live forever?)

- The meaning of life (If routine, meaningless work in the future is performed entirely by machines, will this make possible new sorts of meaningful lives on the part of humans?)

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In presence

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