| 课程号 |
04834070 |
学分 |
2 |
| 英文名称 |
The Social Implications of Computing |
| 先修课程 |
无。 |
| 中文简介 |
这将是一门关于计算的社会影响的讨论密集型课程。本课程的目的是帮助计算机科学学生就其职业、参与社会和未来发展活动做出明智和深思熟虑的选择。阅读和演讲主题来自一系列领域，包括：社会学、哲学、经济学、公共政策等。本课程还将提供对西方文化、政策和政府的理解，以及计算技术影响这些问题的方式。 |
| 英文简介 |
This will be a discussion-intensive course about the social implications of computing. The purpose of this course is to help computer science students make informed and thoughtful choices about their careers, participation in society, and future development activities. Readings and lecture topics are drawn from a range of fields that together seek to describe our contemporary global society: sociology, philosophy, economics, public policy, etc. The course will also provide an understanding of western culture, policy, and government and the way that computing technology affects these issues. |
| 开课院系 |
信息科学技术学院 |
| 通选课领域 |
|
| 是否属于艺术与美育 |
否 |
| 平台课性质 |
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| 平台课类型 |
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| 授课语言 |
英文 |
| 教材 |
无；
无, |
| 参考书 |
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| 教学大纲 |
本课程的目的是帮助计算机科学学生就其职业、参与社会和未来发展活动做出明智和深思熟虑的选择。
Session 1： Jobs and Automation (3 hours)
Discussion of: The dependence of world economies on exponential growth. Automation’s role in helping with that growth. Impacts of automation on income and job displacement. The growth of the Asian middle class. The shift from labor to capital heavy corporations. The potential for a better quality of life in a world with heavy automation. Impacts of self-driving cars on human safety and well being.
Session 2： Income Inequality (3 hours)
Discussion of: The decline in worldwide poverty, especially in China. Wealth inequality in the World and United States (possibly also in China) and its destabilizing effects. The relationship between income and happiness. Philanthropy by technology entrepreneurs, e.g. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jack Ma. The tension between selfishness and altruism.
Session 3：War (3 hours)
Discussion of: How technology dominates the outcome of warfare. Drone warfare and automated weapons. Google Employees’ protest of involvement the U.S. military project Project Maven. The peril of cyber warfare. The story of how the U.S. National Security Agency’s hacking tools were stolen. How states use the internet for propaganda war.
Session 4：Free Speech in the West (3 hours)
Discussion of: The western ideal of free speech. How the western conception of free speech shapes the philosophy and policies of major U.S. technology companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. How free speech policies have become more restrictive over time at these companies. How technology companies have taken action to censor extremist speech. The Popper paradox of tolerance. How unrestricted free speech leads to abuse. The reddit.com website and various difficult decisions that it has faced over time in response to crises. This day’s lectures discuss censorship unilaterally enacted by technology companies, and has nothing to do with government.
Session 5：Western Politics and Global Media (4 hrs)
Discussion of: The American electoral system. How AI and social media are used to influence elections. How Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner used advanced information technology to help win the 2016 election .The increasing cultural and political polarization of the United States. Why facts don`t change our minds. The internet allows anybody to find information to back up any viewpoint they already hold. The economic incentives for fake news. Facebook’s role in mass violence in Myanmar.
Session 6：Privacy (3 hours)
Discussion of: The philosophical value of privacy. Potential issues with companies aggressively tracking as much information as possible about you, including data breaches and identity theft. A history of several major privacy breaches. The Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal. Online privacy laws in the west, including Europe’s GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act. Vigilante justice online in the west, where people with unpopular viewpoints are harassed by online mobs.
Session 7：Government Censorship and Surveillance (3 hours)
The war on terrorism in the United States. The Apple vs. FBI case, where the FBI wanted Apple to unlock a phone but Apple refused. The increase of online censorship around the world. The Edward Snowden leaks and what we learned about the U.S. National Security Agency’s spying capabilities. Google employees’ protest of involvement in the creation of a censored Chinese search engine. A case study in the history of internet censorship in Turkey, and how previously banned social media outlets helped keep the Turkish government in control after an attempted coup. How attitudes about censorship vary around the world.
Session 8：Free Time and Attention (3 hours)
How humans find meaning through social interaction. The alarming negative associations between happiness and screen time in the social science literature. How technology and companies compete for our attention and make our lives worse in the process. How social media and other technology giants could build a better world by shifting their optimization goals from profits to human life experience.
Session 9：Software Risks and Algorithmic Bias (3 hours)
Discussion of: The Therac 25 and how things can go terribly wrong with real systems even if everybody acts in good faith. How relying on market incentives can lead to disaster (e.g. the Ford Pinto). The enormous future impact of self-driving cars on reducing human misery and death. Tesla and Uber self-driving car fatalities. How people expect objectivity from algorithms, but algorithms trained on human data reflect human biases. Examples of algorithms in the world: credit scores in the west, the social credit score in China, mortgage allocation, criminal sentencing in the U.S. A case study about the COMPAS algorithm, used in the U.S. to help determine criminal sentences, and how it is mathematically and philosophically difficult to determine whether such algorithms carry harmful biases.
Session 10：The Distant Future: Climate Change, AI, and Philosophy of Mind (4 hours)
The dire predictions of computational climate models. The possibilities for reducing climate change including geoengineering. Computational models of geoengineering. A very brief history of AI. The evolution of life and intelligence on earth. The possibility of artificial general intelligence (a.k.a. human equivalent intelligence). The dramatic impacts of artificial general intelligence. The Turing Test. Searle’s Chinese room. The hard problem of consciousness.
课堂教学
Attendance and Reading: 60%; Programming Project: 20%; Presentation: 20%
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