Philosophy of Technology: Humans vs Machines – Final Week

In this final session we discussed some of the best sci-fi films that explore issues of technology, artificial intelligence, robotics and more. In particular we discussed the film Ex Machina and watched some scenes from the movie. Kerry has recommended Ex Machina from week 1 of the course and says it was one of the best …

Philosophy of Technology: Human vs Machine – Week 8

This session featured two main topics: medicine and crime. We started by reading an article titled 'Human Enhancement and Personal Identity' by Philip Brey. The article talks about the implications of human enhancement for personal identity and assesses the social and ethical consequences of these changes. Human enhancement is an emerging field with medicine with the …

Philosophy of Technology: Human vs Machine – Week 7

In our session this week we finished our discussion of Machine Ethics and began discussing Medical issues and technology. We started the session by talking about intelligent machines that could be capable of thinking of their own rules. We asked who would be to blame when something goes wrong? The programmer did not code in …

Philosophy of Technology: Human vs Machine – Week 6

This week's session focused on AI and Machine Ethics. Kerry began the session by talking about a recent article and an interview with Elon Musk on Lateline talking about humans merging with machines. You can access the article in question by clicking here. This idea is not new and has been around for over 50 …

Philosophy of Technology: Human vs Machine – Week 5

One of the main topics this week was the idea of a utopian/dystopian society created by technology. We started the session by talking about computers and the way they think. They are not random, their task is to achieve a goal, they are goal-driven. Humans are much more random with their thoughts, we think just …

Philosophy of Technology: Human vs Machine – Week 4

The main focus this week was the Edge question - What to Think About Machines That Think. We read and discussed a range of articles that addressed this question. We started the session by discussing the question, 'What is thinking?'. We gave Kerry lots of different ways we think, such as analysing, creative, imagination, rational …

Philosophy of Technology: Human vs Machine – Week 1

My first new course for 2017 is Philosophy of Technology: Human vs Machine, a 10 week course at the University of Sydney. In this opening week of the course we learnt what technology is, and isn't, and had some interesting debates about driverless cars, human looking robots, Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger and Freud. So, what is …