English - Elective Subject, topic 1: Ethics in AI - Navigating Fairness, Biases, and Transparency Challenges in the Humanities

This course introduces students to artificial intelligence applications, with particular attention to the use of AI systems in the humanities. This will include the use of AI in teaching and learning contexts (for text production, translation, language learning, and foreign language acquisition) as well as real-world use cases in society. The students are introduced to how generative AI systems work followed by an overview of the various ethical, social, legal and political issues around AI from various perspectives and its use in humanities-oriented environments. This will be the basis for students to begin working with ethical frameworks to analyse the implications of AI in society.

Students will analyse and discuss different systems and case studies in which AI is employed, for example sociolinguistic inclusion, text-to-speech AI tools for dyslexia, language learning tools, and professional translation technologies. Important ethical issues concerning AI use in areas within the humanities will be presented and critically discussed in class. These include algorithmic bias, hallucinations, fair and sustainable AI, data security and privacy issues related to training data, and the ways in which AI systems are integrated into educational (e.g. chatbots as tutors/mentors/assistants) and wider social systems (translation systems used in public settings).

Students who complete this course will have the skills and competencies to understand how AI systems work and to interact with generative AI tools, as well as critically evaluate the ethical use of generative AI in various contexts related to their educational profile.