Epistemology of AI/Internet

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

Contemporary computing technologies, including Artificial Intelligence and internet technologies, raise a number of difficult epistemological questions. Whose speech should be heard in the public sphere? How can we avoid the spread of misinformation? What is privacy, and how can it be promoted? What is algorithmic opacity, and how can it be avoided? How can algorithms be biased, and what can we do to ensure they are fair and just? Questions like these are epistemological, as they concern information, knowledge, testimony, and inductive inference. They are also of enormous ethical and political importance, given the prominence of these technologies (and the sociotechnical systems they are embedded in) in contemporary life. In this seminar, we will seek answers to epistemological questions about contemporary computing technologies, including AI and internet technologies. We will read literature from a variety of research programs, including: traditional, social, and feminist epistemology; philosophy of science; science and technology studies; fair ML; and transparent, interpretable, and explainable AI.