Ethics, AI, and the Data Society

The incredible pace of technological change during the past 25 years has presented enormous theoretical, practical and policy challenges for public policymakers, regulators and legal systems throughout the world.  One of the most important such challenges involves the dramatic growth and availability of data.  Data is now regarded as the most valuable commodity in the world.  Data scraping, data mining and data monetization have become key tools in business, medicine, artificial intelligence, government, and even academic research.  Navigating the ethical issues raised by “big data” has become one of the most important issues confronting policymakers and others in the modern era.  

This course will focus on the ethical issues implicated by big data.  The course will begin by addressing the overarching theoretical and policy issues.  The course will then cover a variety of case studies, including artificial intelligence, social media, facial recognition and biometrics, medicine, surveillance pricing, agriculture, gaming, and the use of big data in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 US presidential elections.  The course will also address key social policy areas such as the digital divide, privacy, and the ethics of data monetization/data brokerages.