Data, Society, and AI Ethics

Enrollment Requirements: Graduate Prerequisite: Graduate Standing This course develops students' ability to critically examine and question the interplay between artificial intelligence (AI), data science, and computational technologies on the one hand, and society and public policy on the other. Students will complete exercises to demonstrate their facility with key ethics tools and techniques, and analyze a series of real-world case studies presented alongside ethical tools and analyses that are useful both for staying alert to emerging ethical challenges and responding to them as they arise in both employment settings and everyday life. Effective Spring 2026, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Research and Information Literacy, Social Inquiry 2.