Module Content

1. Analysis of legal ramifications of AI in various guises such as contractor, tortfeasor, creator, servant and companion; apportionment of rights and liability between humans and machines.
2. Application of existing law to a number of scenarios to identify particular ethical and legal challenges in the context of intelligent machines, autonomous decision-making, advanced robotics and big data.
3. Consideration of sui generis legislation to promote the ethical decision making in various contexts such as military, transport, medicine and allocation of resources.
4. Anticipation of potential developments such as sentience, machine/human hybrids and the mitigation of criminal behaviour and existential threats to enable flexible adaptation to plan a positive future.

Teaching Methods

Preparation for the workshops will involve extensive research and reading, to consider and critically analyse the set topics and the discussion questions, set in advance, arising from those topics. Students are expected to prepare answers to the discussion questions and present these to, and discuss with, the workshop tutor and workshop group members. In addition to the skills of analysis and research, students are expected to develop and apply skills of analytical discussion, oral expression and writing. Students will engage with other students and staff in online activities, and synchronous and asynchronous workshops, to consider and critically analyse particular sources and engage in discussion leading to development of these skills.
The workshops also give students the opportunity to synthesise in a more dynamic way the independent learning already undertaken and apply principles from various themes covered in the workshop activity sheets.

Assessment Methods

This module is assessed through one Exam and one Coursework.