- Singularity — AI and human decision-making/control
- Intelligent explosion
- Superintelligent machine: benefits and harms
- Management and control of AI development towards Singularity
- AI and human intimacy (companionship, relationship, physical intimacy)
- AI robots as therapeutic companions (for the elderly and vulnerable)
- AI robots aiding children with special needs develop social skills.
- Sex Robots for physical intimacy
- Robots manage communication premised on data not feelings.
- Ethnic issues and dilemmas:
- AI’s impact on human interaction and relationship
- Ethical and social considerations of using social robots in our society
- Is it actually possible to have intimate relationships with robots?
- Implications of turning to social robots for emotional and physical intimacy on humanity
- Reliance on the never frustrated or bored robots without the need for negotiations could lead to what some experts describe as ‘emotional de-skiling’. What would we as a society have to lose when that happens?
- How do we strike a balance in the human-robot relationship to reap the benefits of AI and pre-empt possible negative consequences?
- Should decisions on human-robot relationships be left to individuals?
- AI and human creativity (e.g. AI in chess, Go, debate, art, story writing)
- Imaginative AI can envision/anticipate possible futures and brings these futures into reality (Google Now)
- Algorithmic programming with Big Data on viewers’/consumers’ habits can shape diverse creative productions (e.g. the sitcom House of Cards)
- Algorithms can write stories (Narrative Science), compose music (IBM Watson Beat), and create pieces of art
- Imagination-augmented AI can imagine and reason about the future, which enabled them to construct plan and strategies to solve problems more efficiently in imperfect environment (Google DeepMind)
- Human and algorithmic machine collaboration in artistic creation
- Ethical issues and dilemmas:
- Would AI replace artists, composers, journalists, novelists?
- What are the benefits (dangers) of creative AI being used to influence and manipulate masses of people towards desirable (malicious) goals of its creator?
- What are the societal impact when writers are slaves to the algorithms that determine what is worth presenting based on the potential virality, shareability, and human interest of the post, with human attention trumping the importance of ideas?
- AI and Human Mobility (transport systems, autonomous vehicles)
- Autonomous and self-driving vehicle controlled by AI
- Efficient allocation and sharing of transportation resources among commuters through AI (Uber, Lyft)
- Ethical issues and dilemmas:
- Trolley problem: should the driverless vehicle hit the pedestrian to save the life of its passengers?
- How do we manage the impact of job disruptions from autonomous vehicles?
- How should an autonomous vehicle make value judgements?
- Do you trust that autonomous vehicles will keep you safe?
- How should an autonomous vehicle react in exceptional circumstances, by even breaking road rules (e.g. to give way to an ambulance)?
- Would overdependence on self-driving vehicles adversely affect humans’ driving skills, which may ultimately affect road safety?
- What are the beneficial and harmful societal consequences of a transportation system managed by AI?
- AI and healthcare (implantable AI, medical diagnostics, robo-doctors/caregivers)
- AI promises to enhance human life in the prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disease
- Ethical issues and dilemmas:
- The potential for AI to make erroneous decisions
- Who is responsible for AI decision-making?
- Difficulties in validating the outputs of AI systems
- The risk of inherent bias in AI systems data
- Security and privacy of personal health data
- Public trust in AI health technologies
- Dignity and loss of human contact in healthcare situations
- AI’s impact on healthcare professionals’ job roles and skills
- AI’s potential for malicious purposes
- AI and inequality: Employment and discrimination (job creation and job loss)
- The adoption of automation across various industries created fears over loss of jobs
- Rise of AI – job creation or job loss?
- Job recruitment discrimination- data generated by AI algorithms shaped possibly by biased human input
- Issues and dilemmas:
- How to avoid bias in AI-aided job recruitment?
- Does AI destroy more jobs than it creates? Who are most affected?
- How do we enhance job security?
- Implications of AI-induced high unemployment rate on a society
- Would the “regime of data analytics” serve everyone equally in a data-driven age?
- AI’s impact on the economic and digital divide; winners and losers
- How do we ensure that AI redresses and not worsens inequalities?
- AI and finance system, global finance
- High frequency algorithmic trading in stock exchanges (in micro-seconds)
- Algorithmic commercialization of time by micro-auctioning/bidding (such as Google Adsense for serving advertisements)
- Cryptocurrency that enabled transparent and consensus-driven mechanism of digital transaction based on cryptographic proof instead of trust (Bitcoin and Blockchain)
- Crowd-funding through the web to support the creative production of diverse projects
- Ethical issues and dilemmas:
- Algorithmic arbitrage leading to huge income inequality, or well-designed system enhancing fairer resource distribution and economic well-being: What are the key considerations that are instrumental in creating a beneficial algorithmic financial system that is beneficial to all humanity?
- How could algorithmic financial system guard against algorithmic arbitrage which could lead to instability and market crashes such as that happened in the US capital market on May 6, 2010?
- AI and news/(dis)information/fake news in a “post-truth” world
- AI generated fake news – e.g. Fake Obama created using AI video tools (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ54GDm1eL0)
- Conversely, can AI be used to combat fake news? (At present, the effort is yet to be successful)
- The Fake News AI arms race
- Digital dictatorship: Surveillance/predictive policing
- Convergence in bio-technology and information technology with Big Data processing enables the capability of human hacking and the tracking of their feelings
- Such hacking allows gathering of detailed knowledge and information that can be exploited to the advantage of its owner
- Ethical issues and dilemmas:
- A small elite, or a big corporation, or a dictatorial government may exploit this knowledge to achieve objectives of interest to them
- Conversely, such information can be used to survey the actions of government and to prevent their corruption
- Use of extensive medical data by authorities to discriminate in social benefits and health coverage for its citizens, or against the genetically unhealthy.
- Weaponization of AI: autonomous weapons, killer machines, AI arms race
- AI-powered weapon systems could generate a more humane war, where machines fight machines, and AI weapon system is more precise in not killing civilians?
- Should human be in the loop of an AI-powered weapon system?
- Cyberwar – hack and crash the adversaries’ economy and weapon system such as its drones, self-driving cars, robots, financial systems, power grids etc (Stuxnet worm)
- Is it possible to build a robust and unhackable AI defense system?
- Third revolution in warfare with autonomous weapon system generating an arms race that can be ubiquitous.
- Characteristic role of AI weapon system: targeted assassination, selective ethnic cleansing, subduing dissenting population, and subverting nations.
- An International Treaty on Autonomous Weapon System (similar to that for the nuclear, and chemical and biological weapon systems)?
- AI and climate change, disaster response and recovery management
- AI in weather and climate forecasts
- AI-designed smart cities
- Autonomous and connected urban transportation system
- Smart agriculture and autonomous farming
- Community disaster response platform
- De-centralised and distributed energy grids and water system
The curriculum consists of 4 parts. Go to Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3| Part 4