University at Buffalo

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

CSE 728SEM - Legal, Ethical and Social Issues in Artificial Intelligence

Spring 2019

M 6:30-9:00pm Cooke 248

Course Syllabus

Administrative Information

Instructor:	Dr. David Doermann
Office:	113M Davis Hall
Email:	Prefers to be contact through Piazza
Office Hours:

Course Information

- Attendance Required (80% of classes for Pass)

- Presentation of Papers

- Survey Text, Presentation and Production of TedTalk

Course Objectives

There is little doubt that AI is making a significant impact in many areas and interest in new applications is only continuing to grow. There are however, many risks that come along with the application of AI that are often not well understood. These may include for example, the introduction of bias, security vulnerabilities, privacy leakage, and ethical concerns. As tools are developed that can be applied with greater ease by those who do not have a technical understanding of machine learning and AI, we run the risk of allowing these fundamental issues to go unaddressed.

This course will take a detailed look at many of these issues from both a research and a policy perspective by studying state of the art papers as well as the perspectives of leading professionals in the field.

Tentative Topics to be Covered:

AI Fundamentals and History	Transparency or Lack of In AI	Artificial General Intelligence
Bias in AI	AI in Geopolitics	Job Loss and Solutions
Ethics - Robots	Privacy in AI
Security and Robustness in AI	Ethics - Autonomous Vehicles

Prerequisites:

Students taking this class should have a basic understanding of AI through an introduction to AI course or appropriate series of online lectures.

Course Requirements

- 1 Credit:

o Class Participation, Reading of all papers, Presenting 1 topic

- 3 Credits:

o Class Participation, Reading of all papers, Presenting 1 topic

o Written Survey and Production of TedTalk on chosen topic

Important Policies

It is entirely your responsibility to follow the policies. Please ask the instructor if you have questions.

Disabilities

- If you have a diagnosed disability (physical, learning, or psychological) that will make it difficult for you to carry out the course work as outlined, or that requires accommodations such as recruiting note-takers, readers, or extended time on exams or assignments, please advise the instructor during the first two weeks of the course so that we may review possible arrangements for reasonable accommodations. In addition, if you have not yet done so, contact the Office of Disability Services.

Academic Honesty and Professional Ethics:

All work must be your own

- Do not take the answers, words, ideas or research findings of other people as yours; cite and acknowledge properly, and develop your own ideas.

- No cheating

- According to departmental policy, any violation of academic integrity will result in a Failing Grade for the course, and termination of departmental financial scholarship.

- Tools will be used to check similarity. Similar submissions will result in Failing Grade for all involved parties.

- Use of a code from an online repository, e.g. Github, must include a proper and clearly visible attribution in your report.