VCU news

By Sian Wilkerson

As artificial intelligence continues to grow, educators in Virginia Commonwealth University’s College of Humanities and Sciences are highlighting the technology’s humanist roots in several new courses.

AI “is essentially applied philosophy,” said Frank Faries, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy. “Foundational questions and challenges in building synthetic minds are unavoidably philosophical in nature.”

This year, Faries and James Fritz, Ph.D., an associate professor of philosophy, are teaching new courses on the ethics and philosophy of AI, in which students will explore questions raised as AI’s influence expands.

“We’re living in exciting times,” Fritz said. “New applications of AI – and new moral questions about those applications – seem to pop up every day.”

With these new courses, VCU is taking a “key step in future-proofing the university’s academic offerings and equipping our graduates to thrive in an era of rapid technological disruption,” said Fotis Sotiropoulos, Ph.D., provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “The students we serve today will step into careers and industries that may not yet exist. Generative AI and other fast-evolving technologies are fundamentally reshaping the future of work. These courses, along with other initiatives at VCU, will empower students to creatively navigate and succeed in a world increasingly defined by the collaboration between humans and intelligent machines.”

Together, the two philosophy classes constitute a new microcredential digital badge – Ethics and Philosophy of AI – that will equip students with the knowledge and skills to think critically about and ethically address topics such as AI transparency, algorithmic bias, data privacy and the implications of artificial general intelligence, with the goal of restoring the severed lineage between students’ understanding of AI and its connection to humanitarian disciplines.

"Teaching AI is not just about technical skills – it's about preparing our students to be ethical, critical thinkers in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence," said Catherine Ingrassia, Ph.D., dean of VCU’s College of Humanities and Sciences. "By integrating AI studies across disciplines, we're equipping our graduates to navigate the complex intersections of technology, society and human values."

As Faries explained, “AI researchers must typically investigate the broader implications of their findings, speculate about abstract matters, appeal to thought experiments and invoke traditional philosophical concepts like knowledge, representation and actions. Many of the metaphysical, epistemological and ethical problems that arise in AI are perennial problems with which philosophers of mind and cognitive science are very familiar.”

With the acceleration, development and popularity of large language models such as ChatGPT, it made “a lot of sense for us to try to give students some tools to think about various ethical, legal and philosophical issues that come in the wake of some of the technological advancements,” said Donald Smith, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Philosophy. “The topic is a natural fit for philosophy because the origins of artificial intelligence are not only in mathematics and computer science but also in philosophy as well.”

Beyond philosophical questions, the acceleration of AI raises significant conceptual, ethical, legal and societal challenges, Smith said.

Among other AI-focused classes offered by the College of Humanities and Sciences:

• The Language of Artificial Intelligence, in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, introduces the basic language that underpins the algorithms and models used in AI.
• Artificial Intelligence in Mass Media, in the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture, looks at how AI is affecting the media industry.
• Critical AI Studies, in the Department of English, explores AI technologies and their societal impacts.

Many of the courses also contribute to VCU’s new minor in artificial intelligence. Along with a minor in mixed and immersive reality studies, the new interdisciplinary minor will let students take classes with faculty experts from a variety of disciplines to examine the applications and ethical implications of these emerging technologies within their fields of study.