Ethics of Technology
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this introduction to philosophical ethics applied to modern technology. The course works through frameworks for moral reasoning and then applies them to live debates: privacy and surveillance, algorithmic bias, the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence, automation's effect on jobs, and threats digital platforms pose to democratic institutions. Material is examined from three angles, that of the ordinary user, the practitioner building the systems, and the regulator trying to govern them. Course materials include readings, a syllabus, and assignments drawn from MIT's Linguistics and Philosophy department, published under a Creative Commons license and free to access. No certificate is offered, since MIT OpenCourseWare publishes course content rather than running graded enrollment, but the full set of readings and assignments used in the actual class is included.