Ethics in Intelligent Systems - 635.782

This course is to fortify and enrich the values-assessment and critical thinking skills of engineers as they grapple with the numerous ethical challenges in their professional and personal lives. To that end, the course will define and delineate some global, macro-level concepts and approaches to ethics; move on to review some ethical issues unique to engineers as they apply intelligent technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to developing complex systems; and finally present some finite cases studies and concrete situations by which to apply these ethical principles. This class will stimulate students to help identify a critical thinking zeitgeist and framework by which to filter, absorb and resolve complex ethical problems and questions in both their professions and at the personal level. This class will be completely value-neutral and hence devoid of any one overarching governing ethical school of thought; thus, we are ecumenical in our approaches. Having said that, the IEEE ethically aligned design standards are noteworthy and very salutary to any exploration. This course will make use of a variety of current, recent historical and classical materials to illustrate major themes.