ETHICS AND LAW IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (DASCI 271)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already been applied to numerous industries and has significantly impacted countries around the world. The power of AI technology has been demonstrated in various areas, including healthcare, law enforcement, business operations, hiring, and personnel management, finance and investments, personal identity confirmation in online transactions, security and biometric surveillance, and the list is continually expanding. Just like other powerful technologies, the applications of AI also present many ethical and legal questions, dealing with issues such as infringement on personal human rights, informed consent, bias against protected minorities, autonomy, and technical issues such as assurance of accuracy. Major controversies also revolve around who and what organizations and governments would have access to the various data sources such as personal information, financial data, law enforcement records, and business processes, as well as access to outputs from complex algorithms and deep learning employed in AI that may lack transparency and explicability. This course will cover the various frameworks for ethical and legal analysis of AI applications using case studies that illustrate various controversies. Students who complete this course will better appreciate the ethical and legal issues that impact the practice of data science professionals.