Philosophy, Ethics, and Technology

From TikTok to Meta and from CRISPR to digital gamification, extended reality, and the struggle against climate change, dramatic advances in technology are shaping our world and our lives like never before. This course investigates the moral, social, and political implications of these and other new technologies. How should we understand privacy and surveillance in the age of metadata? Will emerging biotechnologies and life-tracking metrics allow us to re-engineer humanity? Should we edit our genes or those of our children to extend human lives and enhance human abilities? Can geo-engineering resolve the climate crisis? How will artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics change the work world? Can machines be conscious and what would it mean if they can? Will AI help us reduce bias and combat bigotry or make things worse? What does the explosion of social media mean for human agency? How can we live an act in meaningful ways in a world increasingly dominated by technological and capital forces? This course explores how technology and our attitudes toward it are transforming who we are, what we do, how we make friends, care for our health, and conduct our social and political lives. In doing so, we also investigate fundamental philosophical and ethical questions about agency, integrity, virtue, the good, and what it means to be human in an uncertain and shifting world.