Ethics for Nerds

Sarah Sterz, Holger Hermanns

News

Reminder: Guest Lecture today at 4 pm

Written on 25.04.24 by Sarah Sterz

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to give you a quick reminder of today's guest lecture. Elijah Millgram is a very proficient philosopher and usually gives awesome talks that are very entertaining. He even took the time to write an alternative abstract for his talk for you (see below).

Title:… Read more

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to give you a quick reminder of today's guest lecture. Elijah Millgram is a very proficient philosopher and usually gives awesome talks that are very entertaining. He even took the time to write an alternative abstract for his talk for you (see below).

Title: Instrumentalism, Moral-Theory Overlays, and the Control Problem
Speaker: Elijah Millgram, professor of philosophy from the University of Utah
Date: today at 4pm at the
Place: German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence in building D3 2 (that's next to the Mensa), room Reuse HG 2.17.

Abstract (normal): How do we make sure that the much more capable AI agents of the future behave themselves and don't get out of line? The default response to worries about alignment and the control problem overlays constraints on AI decision making processes which are normally adapted from some familiar moral theory. Examining Stuart Russell's representative proposal makes it clear that recommendations of this kind will not work, and shows why it is a mistake to see the underlying issue as a question of control.
Abstract (fun): You know, evolution tried to build its theory of what we're supposed to be doing into the wetware, and look what *we* did with it: ultraprocessed junk food, rom-coms, and don't forget the bichon frisees and shih tzus. Why think our own attempts to build moral guidelines into future AI are going to fare any better? We should be taking a completely different approach, where our objective is not to *control* the AI agents we build, but to make healthy relationships with them possible, by ensuring that we can get a divorce when we want one.

The lecture is optional, but it will for sure be interesting! The event is public, so if you know anyone else who wants to attend, you can bring them along. The lecture is not recorded or streamed.

I hope to see many of you around!
Sarah

Timetable

Written on 23.04.24 by Sarah Sterz

Hello everyone,

Please note that you can find all dates of office hours, recap sessions and deep dive sessions in the timetable. This week, no sessions are taking place. I was informed that there was a mistake in the timetable this morning, falsely claiming that the deep dive session will take… Read more

Hello everyone,

Please note that you can find all dates of office hours, recap sessions and deep dive sessions in the timetable. This week, no sessions are taking place. I was informed that there was a mistake in the timetable this morning, falsely claiming that the deep dive session will take place today. If you planned to attend and found yourself in an empty seminar room, please apologize! There will be cookies in the next deep dive session to make it up to you. (Please don't attend for the cookies only, though.)

Best wishes
Sarah

Study, Guest Lecture, and more

Written on 22.04.24 by Sarah Sterz

Hello everyone,

Thanks for the great first lecture! I want to let anyone who did not attend the lecture know a few important things and remind those who attended:

  1. The Ethics for Nerds study: You are invited to take part in a study on the effects of Ethics for Nerds. It would be a huge help… Read more

Hello everyone,

Thanks for the great first lecture! I want to let anyone who did not attend the lecture know a few important things and remind those who attended:

  1. The Ethics for Nerds study: You are invited to take part in a study on the effects of Ethics for Nerds. It would be a huge help for me if you could take part, and you can even win one of ten gift cards worth 20€. You are entirely anonymous to me, and I will never be able to know what you answered during the survey or whether you even took place. So, there is no risk involved in taking part. You can only take part until the end of this week. You can enter the survey on your personal status page or via a link in an email that you will receive shortly.
     
  2. The guest lecture: We will have a guest lecture called "Instrumentalism, Moral-Theory Overlays, and the Control Problem" by Elijah Millgram from the Univeristy of Utah. It will take place this Thursday, on April 25 at 4pm at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence in building D3 2 (that's next to the Mensa), room Reuse HG 2.17. The lecture is optional, but it will for sure be interesting! You can also find the time and location in the timetable. The event is public, so if you know anyone else who wants to attend, you can bring them along.
     
  3. Lecture recordings: Please watch the recording of the first lecture if you did not attend, since I explain important information on the course, especially concerning its organization and the exam admission. You can find the lecture recordings and the slides in the dCMS in the Materials section.

Best wishes,
Sarah

Ethics for Nerds

Time: Monday, 10-12 
Place: GHH (building E2 2)

Due to the semester kick-off on April 15, Ethics for Nerds will start on Monday, April 22.

Many computer scientists will be confronted with morally difficult situations at some point in their career – be it in research, in business, or in industry. Ethics for Nerds equips you with the crucial assets enabling you to recognize such situations, and to devise ways to arrive at a justified moral judgment regarding the moral problems you will encounter. For that, you will be made familiar with moral theories from philosophy, as well as different Codes of Ethics for computer scientists. Since one can quickly get lost when talking about ethics and morals, it is especially important to talk and argue clearly and precisely. In order to prepare you for that, Ethics for Nerds also covers what is usually known as "Critical Thinking". In the end, you will be able to assess a morally controversial topic from computer science on your own and give a convincing argument for your assessment.

Ethics for Nerds is intended to always be as clear, precise, and analytic as possible. What you won't find here is the meaningless bla-bla, needlessly poetic language, and vague and wordy profundity that some people tend to associate with philosophy. You will, however, get many interesting insights into philosophy, ethics, and computer science – or so we have been told.

This course is a Vertiefungsvorlesung and worth 6 ECTS-points. All bachelor and master students (of all subjects) are welcome! :)

Contents

This course covers:

  • an introduction to the methods of philosophy and the basics of normative as well as applied ethics;
  • relevant moral codices issued by professional associations like the ACM, the IEEE, and more;
  • argumentation theory (also known as "Critical Thinking")
  • starting points to evaluate practices and technologies already in use or not that far away, including for instance: filter bubbles and echo chambers, ML-algorithms as predictive tools, GPS-tracking, CCTV and other tools from surveillance, fitness trackers, big data analysis, autonomous vehicles, lethal autonomous weapons systems and so on;
  • and more.

Presuppositions

We expect basic knowledge of propositional and first-order logic, an open mind, and interest to look at computer science in ways you probably are not used to. (If you come from a subject of study that usually does not cover logics, you can nevertheless take the course. Just get in touch with us before.)

The lecture and all its materials are in English, but if you feel more comfortable to write assignments and exams in German, you are invited to do so. For this course you should at least have a level of either German or English that is equivalent to a C1 level (see here for further details). We do not need any formal proof that you fulfil these requirements, but we recommend taking them seriously. If you are in any doubt whether this course is suitable for you, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us.

Organization

There is a weekly lecture as well as office hours and different kinds of tutorials that you can (but to not have to) attend. In order to get the exam admission, you will do small assignments and a project in which you will become part of a fictitious Ethical Review Board. Your final grade will be determined by the exam (or the re-exam).

Literature (not mandatory)

Upon request, we added some literature that may be interesting to read before the course. Reading this, however, is not mandatory! We will cover everything that you will need to know during the course (except for the presuppositions above). You will not have a disadvantage if you do not read any of the literature that follows:

  1. Moor, J. H. (1985). What is computer ethics?. Metaphilosophy, 16(4), 266-275.
    A rather old paper that is nevertheless still very relevant today. Available here.
  2. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
    This is the wikipedia of philosophy. Many (though not all) of the articles there are high-quality. Among others, the following articles are relevant for Ethics for Nerds and are relatively easy to understand without a philosophical background:
  3. Another resource of material can be the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in particular the following articles:
  4. Rosenberg, J. F. (1984). The practice of philosophy: A handbook for beginners.
    If you are very much into philosophy, you can also dive a little deeper into the daily business of philosophers by having a look at this all-time-classic introduction to being a philosopher. Sadly, the English edition of this book is usually very expensive, but you will find the book in the SULB and in the philosophy library. The German translation is equally good as the English original.
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