Lingnan offers free online self-learning course on AI, environmental and scientific global risks
With the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and increasing environmental challenges, global catastrophic risks have gone beyond traditional natural disasters to raise controversial ethical issues. In view of this, the Hong Kong Catastrophic Risk Centre (HKCRC) of Lingnan University has introduced a new, free, online bilingual self-learning course on Ethics and Global Catastrophic Risks, taught by international authorities in philosophy and ethics. Designed to help people understand and cope with the complex landscape of global disaster risks through eight modules, the new programme, launched in late February this year, incorporates in-depth, real-life examples in AI, the environment, and the sciences, and has already attracted more than 8,000 participants from Mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, South Asia, the US, and Europe. It is now open to the public at no charge.
The online course provides textual information and instructional videos, starting from the basic concept of “What is Risk?” It incorporates authentic examples, and uses open-ended questions to stimulate thinking about the nature of catastrophic risks around the world.
Most importantly, the AI Risk module of the course (Module 5: AI Risk | Ethics and Global Catastrophic Risks) shows students how to philosophically understand and assess the multiple risks associated with the development of AI systems. For example, automated decision-making systems driven by advanced AI technologies are now used in a variety of domains to make predictions, although their algorithms or data may create biases in the decision-making process. Also, the capabilities of AI systems may soon be far greater than any we currently know, posing a catastrophic risk when the system's values diverge from human ethical and moral values. Many AI researchers are already working on technical solutions, such as attempting to make the behaviour of AI systems easier for designers to understand, in order to ensure that their values are consistent with human standards.
Scholars invited to teach this free online course include Prof Andrea Sauchelli, Director of the Hong Kong Catastrophic Risk Centre, Head and Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy; Prof Andre Curtis-Trudel, Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Cincinnati; Prof Darrell Rowbottom, Professor of the Department of Philosophy at Lingnan University; Prof Peter Hawke, Prof Adam Gibbons, Prof Adam Bradley, Prof James Fanciullo, Assistant Professors of the Department of Philosophy at Lingnan University; Prof Daniel Pallies, Prof Song Fei, Dr Gary O’Brien and Dr Jesse Hill, Research Assistant Professors of the Department of Philosophy at Lingnan University.
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