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AI in Society

Vak
2024-2025

Admission requirements

Enrolled in the Media Technology MSc programme, or in the Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence track of the Computer Science : Artificial Intelligence MSc specialisation

Description

With the rapid development of AI technologies, many are concerned about their impact on the world. This course explores the questions of social and technological change, ethics and the responsibilities associated with it, and invites students to speculatively re-imagine the kind of world and AI technologies we would like to have.

AI in Society offers a critical, societal perspective on artificial intelligence and explores how technical decisions concerning data, methods, and tools affect individuals and communities worldwide in many different ways.

The course broadens the traditional technical approach to AI by integrating social, political, and environmental aspects as essential components of comprehending AI technologies. Using this approach will enable students to understand better the complex relationship between social and technological change and consequently examine questions of responsibility and ethics in a more comprehensive way.

This course will provide analytical tools for how to think about the impact of AI, and invite the students to apply them to diverse industries and social fields, ranging from healthcare to creative industries, from military to food production. At the conclusion of the course, students will be tasked with creatively re-imagining the potential of AI in various social contexts through a hands-on project, prompting them to contemplate whether this could pave the way for a different world.

Course objectives

After finishing the course, students will be able to:

  • Reason about technology in a broader way, including historical, sociopolitical, cultural and environmental aspects.

  • Apply this understanding of technology to reason more holistically about the ethical implications of AI technologies.

  • Analyse social and technological change with an eye for complexity by illustrating how they inform each other.

  • Explain and give examples of common social critique of how contemporary AI systems are discussed, developed and deployed.

  • Assess and speculate about the (potential) impact of AI development and use on diverse industries and social fields.

  • Develop and speculate about alternative visions of what AI technologies could be in an informed and socially aware manner.

  • Analyse the diverse ways technologies impact various groups of people and places and relate that to historically rooted patterns of inequality and power.

  • Understand how technical decisions about data, methods, and tools relate to social and cultural values and can have far-reaching social, political and economic implications.

  • Assess the possibilities and limitations of computation to address social issues.

  • Evaluate and situate themselves in a complex net of power relations and reflect on their roles, responsibilities and ethics as users and producers of various AI systems.

Timetable

In MyTimetable, you can find all course and programme schedules, allowing you to create your personal timetable. Activities for which you have enrolled via MyStudyMap will automatically appear in your timetable.

Additionally, you can easily link MyTimetable to a calendar app on your phone, and schedule changes will be automatically updated in your calendar. You can also choose to receive email notifications about schedule changes. You can enable notifications in Settings after logging in.

Questions? Watch the video, read the instructions, or contact the ISSC helpdesk.

Note: Joint Degree students from Leiden/Delft need to combine information from both the Leiden and Delft MyTimetables to see a complete schedule. This video explains how to do it.

Mode of instruction

Lectures, Seminars

Assessment method

The final grade for the course is composed of 1) five smaller written assignments connected to the assigned literature submitted on a biweekly basis (50%), and 2) the final speculative design project at the end of the course (50%).

  • Biweekly assignments 1-5 (50%, 10% each)

  • Final project (50%)
    o Speculative design proposal (can take various forms such as a conceptual prototype, interface mockup, film or animation, poster);
    o In-class presentation of the proposal;
    o Individual report on the proposal.

Grading policy:

  • Assignments 1-5 are intermediate steps building up to the Final project.

  • In order to pass the course, students must have a final grade of at least 5.5 and Final project grade of at least 5.

  • Students who fail the Final project can re-do the assignment (using a different topic) within a specified time frame. Students who fail the second attempt will not have a third chance for re-take. No re-takes are offered for Assignments 1-5.

  • The deadline for each assignment is binding; missing the deadline will automatically lead to a grade of 0.

  • Under special personal circumstances, e.g., sickness or family issues, deadline extension can be granted. Please direct such requests to the Study Adviser. The study advisor is the one to make an assessment of a student’s confidential, personal information, not the lecturer.

Reading list

Reading materials, along with videos, podcasts, and other study material, will be announced via Brightspace.

Registration

As a student, you are responsible for enrolling on time through MyStudyMap.

In this short video, you can see step-by-step how to enrol for courses in MyStudyMap.
Extensive information about the operation of MyStudyMap can be found here.

There are two enrolment periods per year:

  • Enrolment for the fall opens in July

  • Enrolment for the spring opens in December

See this page for more information about deadlines and enrolling for courses and exams.

Note:

  • It is mandatory to enrol for all activities of a course that you are going to follow.

  • Your enrolment is only complete when you submit your course planning in the ‘Ready for enrolment’ tab by clicking ‘Send’.

  • Not being enrolled for an exam/resit means that you are not allowed to participate in the exam/resit.

Contact

Contact the lecturer Zane Kripe (z.kripe@liacs.leidenuniv.nl) for course specific questions, and the programme's coordinator for questions regarding admission and/or registration.

Remarks

Elective, external and exchange students need to be admitted to the course before registration due to limited capacity. Contact the programme's coordinator to request admission; include a short description of your course interest and state your current study programme in your correspondence.

Software
Starting from the 2024/2025 academic year, the Faculty of Science will use the software distribution platform Academic Software. Through this platform, you can access the software needed for specific courses in your studies. For some software, your laptop must meet certain system requirements, which will be specified with the software. It is important to install the software before the start of the course. More information about the laptop requirements can be found on the student website.