(Un)Ethical AI: Fact and Fiction - Supplemental File

This lesson template provides a non-technical introduction to ethical considerations about AI, through the lens of a Captain America film.

We are bombarded with claims about the ways that AI algorithms are remaking society, often made with hyperbolic comparisons to science fiction. How should we evaluate these claims? Though they hear about the impact of "algorithms" all the time, students often do not know what they are or how they work, unless they are pursuing courses in computer science. In order to effectively evaluate the news around them, and understand which tools are valuable and which are troubling, students in nontechnical fields need to understand what an algorithm is and how one can be ethically deployed.

This lesson is designed to introduce the concept of ethical AI through the movie Captain America: Winter Soldier, which has a subplot about an AI-powered assassination device, and compare this fictional tool to real-world cases including social network recommender algorithms, FICO credit scores, and automated resume classification programs. The lesson will include a conceptual description of a neural network, with an emphasis on training data and the limitations of systems that aim to predict the future based on data from the past. Knowledge of coding or mathematical principles will not be assumed. Instructors can include additional or alternative examples of AI in pop culture at their discretion.

Students will be able to describe how a neural network works, including the concepts of training data, classification, and measurement error. They will also be able to discuss the ethical principles behind gathering data, training models, and deploying them. They will be able to evaluate for themselves whether a model was ethically developed and whether, and in what contexts, it should be deployed.