From Aristotle to Algorithms

From Aristotle to Algorithms

By Hunt Lyman

I’m fascinated by artificial intelligence, and this winter my interest motivated me to take on the most substantial challenge I’ve faced in many years. Since January, I’ve been teaching an online class on Ethics and Professionalism in Computer Science with 35 graduate students to discuss why morality is essential for future computer programmers.

This course has forced me to review and learn a great deal very quickly. My class is a larger group than I’m accustomed to, and although I’ve known my students now for months, I’ve never met any in person, and likely never will.

We meet three hours each Tuesday on Zoom, a technology that did not exist for the first 30 years of my teaching career. To keep students engaged, every class involves multiple breakout rooms, links to videos and current events articles, and chats and shared google documents that encourage participants to have class “discussions” that do not rely on speech alone. 

I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate, but that was more than 40 years ago. I definitely needed a deep review of thinkers, including Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, John Rawls, and others. And then I had to learn about other recent ethical theories. At times, the reading, planning, and assessments seemed overwhelming, and I was not always sure I’d be able to do it.

One important factor that’s pulled me through was the importance of the topic. To be clear, I know very little about computer science, and as I skimmed the other listings in the course catalog, I realized I could not even understand many of the titles of other courses.

Introduction to Formal Languages and Automata Theory? Computational Biology & Bioinformatics? 

Clearly, all my students know much more about computers than I do. But I was impressed that all graduate students are required to take a course in ethics; giving the future generation of computer scientists the opportunity and understanding to consider how ethical frameworks can be applied to emerging technologies is incredibly important and relevant. 

One great pleasure of teaching this course is that almost every day an article appears in the newspapers I read relating to a topic we’re studying. I’m convinced that ethical questions should be central to people who intend to work with technology. The moral questions and case studies we’ve examined make the traditional ethical frameworks, many formulated centuries ago, newly compelling and relevant.

The second great benefit has been getting to know my students, even if our communication has been all online. 

These young people, some of whom grew up in India and China, are deeply committed to working with technology in ways that will make the world better and taking efforts to mitigate the potential challenges and pitfalls.

They’ve thought deeply about issues like how to program autonomous vehicles, how to both use and limit social media, how to develop artificial intelligence systems in ways that will benefit humanity, about copyright, privacy, surveillance, and whistleblowing.

They’ve approached these challenging and complex topics with optimism, energy, and a willingness to think deeply about the larger effects of the work they plan to do. I find their thoughtfulness and energy deeply inspiring, and they provide me with yet more evidence of how teaching, perhaps because of its challenges, keeps me young. 

Hunt Lyman is the academic dean at The Hill School in Middleburg.