We’re thrilled to announce that a new student-directed seminar on political philosophy of artificial intelligence is open for registration for Winter Term 2 of 2024-25! Learn more about this exciting course below.
POLI 344Z-001: Political Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence
Time: Winter Term 2 – Mondays from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Location: BUCH D315
Eligibility: This course is open to students with third-year standing or higher OR who have completed all of the following prerequisites: POLI 100, POLI 101, and POLI 240. If you have any questions about eligibility, please reach out to the student coordinator or the department.
Credit: This seminar counts as a 3-credit, third-year level POLI course.
Course description
What will artificial intelligence mean for politics? Could the growing sophistication of these technologies spell out the end of democracy as we know it? What will happen to collective processes and norms of deliberation, accountability, and justice with the rise of intelligent agents capable of approximating reason — the very faculty Aristotle pointed to as that which makes us human? This seminar aims to answer these questions by approaching contemporary issues related to AI through the lens of political philosophy. Drawing from a rich body of literature encompassing the fields of political theory, computer science, and machine ethics, the seminar will highlight how rapid advancements in AI require a radical reconfiguration of the social contracts, legal regimes, and core assumptions about moral agency which presently govern our societies.
Meet the student coordinator
Tina Yong (she/her)
I’m in my final year in the political science honours program, and my research interest lies in the intersection between critical theory and the governance of emerging technologies such as AI. I’m currently writing my thesis on feminist approaches to deepfake regulation, grounded in the work of theorists like Catharine MacKinnon, Seyla Benhabib, and Iris Marion Young.
Ensuring that the development and adoption of AI promotes human flourishing across various spheres of life will be one of the most onerous and defining tasks of our time. I created this seminar in order to equip the rising generation of policymakers and theorists with a set of philosophical frameworks and analytical tools that can help them navigate a world being made anew by AI.
Through constructive discussion and debate, students will be invited to examine dominant notions of justice, fairness, autonomy, and democracy in order to engage with the question of whether (or how) these conceptions can be reconciled with the incursion of intelligent agents, who are already changing the ways in which we deliberate, vote, govern, and justify the exercise of authority.
