Bowdoin College is involved in a new project aimed at developing academic courses that tackle the ethical issues raised by emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
Sponsored by Google and the National Humanities Center (NHC), the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Curriculum Design Project grew out of mounting concern among academics over the extent to which AI permeates many aspects of our lives and the ethical questions raised by the implications of this.
“Our selection committee valued the diverse perspectives that different types of higher education institutions would contribute to this project,” said Andy Mink, the NHC’s vice president for education programs.
“As a small liberal arts college, Bowdoin represents a unique setting with an exceptionally bright and engaged student body. Also, considering Bowdoin’s academic culture, we anticipated that they would fully embrace the interdisciplinary possibilities for this work.”
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Bowdoin has assembled a team of four faculty members who will cocreate and coteach this course. The two principal investigators on the project are computer scientist Eric Chown, who is the Sarah and James Bowdoin Professor of Digital and Computational Studies (DCS), and Assistant Professor of Digital and Computational Studies (DCS) Fernando Nascimento, who has a background in philosophy.
“This is exactly the sort of area we focus on at the DCS program, so I’m sure that’s one of the reasons we were chosen for this award,” said Chown. One example of this kind of work that’s already underway is the Computing Ethics Narratives, another national initiative involving Bowdoin faculty aimed at integrating ethics into undergraduate computer science curricula at American colleges and universities.
Other faculty involved in the NHC project are cinema studies scholar Allison Cooper, who is also an assistant professor of Romance languages and literatures, and Professor of Government Michael Franz. While his colleagues will work on the broader ethical issues regarding AI, Chown’s focus will be more on teaching the nuts and bolts behind the subject.
“My work in machine learning and artificial intelligence will serve basically to study what’s going on in AI and how it works. Then we’ll look at various applications and, using the work of Fernando and Alison, students will be asked to consider questions like ‘What are the developers’ goals when they’re doing this?’ ‘How is this impacting users?'” Franz, meanwhile, will focus on issues surrounding government regulation in the AI sphere and what the political implications might be.
Representatives from Bowdoin (and fourteen other institutions) are partnering with the NHC to develop undergraduate courses to examine the issue from a number of different angles.