Course Details

Course offered Autumn 2022

HONORS 220 D: Artificial Intelligence and Robots Meet Modern Society: What Could Go Wrong? Answer: Everything (NSc, W)

HONORS 220 D: Artificial Intelligence and Robots Meet Modern Society: What Could Go Wrong? Answer: Everything (NSc, W)

SLN 16379 (View UW registration info »)

Richard Freeman (Physics)
Email: rrfree@uw.edu

Credits: 5
Limit: 28 students

Honors Credit Type

8 seats reserved for incoming freshmen

We are living in a time in which automation, robots and especially artificial intelligence system are beginning to dominate our lives. What started out as a largely benign academic computer exercise in the 1960s has morphed into systems and algorithms that not quite literally shape our social lives, but threaten to place large segments of society under universal surveillance. And its advances have outstripped virtually all experts’ predications.

This course has several components/goals: 1. A systematic review of the state of A.I. and the areas of our society and economy which are currently most affected by A.I.; 2. Deeper investigations into the effects, currently and in the near future, of specific applications of A.I. with a goal of understanding the technology sufficiently to make realistic projections as to its eventual impact.; 3. Understanding the existential challenges of A.I. to what it means to be human in contrast to machines, machines that may be able to do everything a human does. ; 4. Understand the mechanisms of machine learning and contrast them with human learning.

The course has: 1. Extensive reading of current literature and media; 2. Many short essays on specific examples of advances in A.I.; 3. Several presentations, both with in a group as well as individually, 4. A term paper and presentation in which the students are challenged to put advances in A.I. into the perspective of where our culture and society are going.