Credit: Anna Logue
AI and Data Science in Fiction and Society (HWS 2019)
Important: you are looking at the Web page of the seminar conducted in 2019. Web page for the latest offering can be found here.
The aim of this seminar is to reflect on how AI and data science influence the world we live in. We will discuss fictional works (i.e., novels) and analyze which developments are described therein and how realistic we deem them.
Goals
In this seminar, you will read and analyze a fictional work (i.e., novel) of your choice, and identify parallels between (a) AI technology described in fiction and actual technological developments, and (b) interactions between technology and society. In particular, we will discuss the societal and ethical impact of AI on modern societies.
Each participant will read a fictional work, present it to the seminar participants, and participate in the discussions. Each presentation is accompanied by a seminar paper, which will undergo a peer review process. Note that you are supposed to also read the novels for which you are peer reviewing the reports, which makes for a total reading workload of several novels throughout the semester. Presentations are supposed to be about 25 minutes long.
Organization
This seminar is organized by Prof. Dr. Heiko Paulheim
Available for master students in Business Informatics and MMDS (2 SWS, 4 ECTS)
Prerequisites: none
Schedule
The seminar takes places on a few Thursday afternoons in HWS 2019:
- Kick off meeting: Monday, 16 September, 15:15–17:00 room B6, A 204 (Slides)
- Presentations on 7 November/
14th/21st/28th, 13:45–17:00 room B6, A 302
Timeline:
- Send your topic preferences by the end of Monday, 16th
- Get your topic assigned by Tuesday, 17th
- 13 October: Deadline for seminar report drafts
- 27 October: Deadline for peer review on seminar report drafts
- 22 December: Deadline for final seminar papers
Schedule for Presentations:
- 7 November: AI in Business
- The Circle (Dave Eggers)
- Quality Land (Marc-Uwe Kling)
- The Fear Index (Robert Harris)
- 14 November: Androids and Humans
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick)
- Walkaway (Cory Doctorow)
- 21 November: AI in Surveillance and Military
- Little Brother (Cory Doctorow)
- Daemon (Daniel Suarez)
- Drone State (Tom Hillenbrand)
- 28 November: Relation of AIs and Humans
- Aurora (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Das Erwachen (Andreas Brandhorst)
Registration
- Registration will be available in Portal2
- After getting a confirmation from Portal2, please send a ranked list of three works you would like to read and present in the seminar to Bianca Lermer
- Final assignment of topics will be made in the kick off meeting
Possible Topics
(Note: you are kindly invited to propose other works as well)
Author Title (en) Title (de) Andreas Brandhorst -- Das Erwachen Philip K. Dick Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Träumen Androiden von elektrischen Schafen? Cory Doctorow Little Brother Little Brother Cory Doctorow Walkaway Walkaway Dave Eggers The Circle Der Circle Marc Elsberg Code Zero ZERO Andreas Eschbach Lord of all Things Herr aller Dinge Andreas Eschbach -- NSA – Nationales Sicherheitsamt Robert Harris The Fear Index Angst Tom Hillenbrand Drone State Drohnenland Tom Hillenbrand -- Hologrammatica Marc-Uwe Kling -- Quality Land Stephan Meier -- Now Karl Olsberg -- Das System Karl Olsberg -- Mirror Kim Stanley Robinson Aurora Aurora Daniel Suarez Kill Decision Kill Decision Daniel Suarez Daemon Daemon Juli Zeh The Method Corpus Delicti Additional Lecture
(You may use those as background material, but you are kindly asked to conduct some further literature research yourself)
Books:
- Nick Bostrom. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. 2014
- James Hendler, Alice M. Mulvehill. Social Machines: The Coming Collision of Artificial Intelligence, Social Networking, and Humanity. 2018
Articles:
- Giorgio Buttazzo: Artificial Consciousness: Utopia or Real Possibility?, 2001
- Bruce G. Buchanan: A (Very) Brief History of Artificial Intelligence, 2005
- Colin Allen et al.: Why Machine Ethics?, 2006
- Yudkowsky, Elizier: Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk, 2008
- Ethan Fast and Eric Horvitz: Long-Term Trends in the Public Perception of Artificial Intelligence, 2016
Other Documents:
- Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI by the European Commission