| Content | On 13 March 2024, the European Parliament voted in favour of the long-awaited EU AI Act. On October 30, 2023, the US passed an Executive Order on the safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of AI. Meanwhile, China has been adopting regulations: the 2021 regulation on recommendation algorithms, 2022 rules for deep synthesis (synthetically generated content), and draft rules on generative AI on August 15, 2023. In the face of this race to develop and regulate AI across various legal, regulatory, and cultural settings, this course exposes students to the overarching question: How can we envision an AI-human future that accommodates a pluriverse and ensures a just future?
In everyday life, from education, policy deliberation, planning and prediction, governance of the human behavior and the beyond human, to social and private life, and entertainments, AI systems and AI-enabled products play a significant role. At the very center of this sociotechnical system is the human, often referred to as the ‘data subject’. This raises foundational questions: Who or what is this 'data subject'? What warrants its protection or what makes it worthy of protection – is it the human dignity, autonomy, rationality, legally protected rights or something beyond and within all these? Who/what is considered a protected 'data subject', and who/what is not? While these questions might seem new, they revisit old ethical dilemmas.
However, there is no one-fits-all answer to these questions. Responses vary greatly depending on local and cultural contexts across different jurisdictions and societies. The way AI development and regulatory practices conceptualize the subject of protection – that is, the human and its environ diverges, leading to varied interpretations of personhood and what warrants protection. What personhood means and what is protected and not are not only matters of policy or legislative interpretations and standardization but a matter of social justice.
With this consideration, the course invites and encourages students to explore the concept of personhood from a cross-cultural perspective, incorporating epistemologies from the ‘South’, including Afro-communitarianism, pluriverse theories, and Confucianism. Students are then guided to critically examine personhood and community within the context of competing AI regulatory frameworks, such as those in the EU, China, Brazil, and the US, as well as in their own interactions with AI systems. By identifying conceptual limitations in current understandings of personhood and the centrality of the collective within contemporary AI regulation and practice, students can address core social justice issues. These include the overemphasis on individualism, which overlooks the communal and relational aspects of existence (including human and the beyond human), the instrumentalization of the environment, and exploitative business models. |
Performance assessment as a semester course