Module manager: Dr Dibyadyuti Roy
Email: d.roy1@leeds.ac.uk
Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable
Year running 2024/25
| ARTF5211M | The Cultural Politics of Artificial Intelligence |
This module is not approved as an Elective
What does intelligence mean? Can it ever be artificial? This module will examine key cultural debates in artificial intelligence that shape the utopic and dystopic imaginaries of the future. Through analysing relevant case studies and scholarship from historians, philosophers, computer scientists, and artists, among others, you will learn to critically evaluate how the physical infrastructures enabling the benefits of big data and machine learning intersect with the harms and biases of an algorithm-driven world.
1. Introduce you to the cultural politics of artificial intelligence and allow you to understand how terms such as nature, culture, intelligence relate to each other and help inform notions of human subjectivity.
2. Allow you to interrogate a number of key topical issues relevant to the cultural politics of AI, potentially including the nature-culture binary, virtual reality, human-machine relationships, and the human bias of algorithms.
3. Encourage you to reflect on utopian and dystopian discourses surrounding AI and how this relates to cultural politics, deepening the sophistication of syour thinking through their engagement with the power dynamics over knowledge production in and about AI.
On successful completion of the module you will be able to:
1. Critically engage with literature and contemporary artefacts on and related to artificial intelligence, especially as related to cultural politics.
2. Evaluate the links between keywords such as nature, culture, human and intelligence.
3. Apply understandings of AI cultures to the study of current debates in subjectivity, society, and technology.
4. Formulate independent arguments surrounding the utopian and dystopian discourses on AI.
Skills learning environment
On successful completion of the module, you will be able to:
5. Search for, evaluate and use appropriate and relevant information sources to help strengthen the quality of academic work and independent research.
6. Weigh up different arguments and perspectives, using supporting evidence to form opinions, arguments, theories and ideas.
Details of the syllabus will be provided on the Minerva organisation (or equivalent) for the module
| Delivery type | Number | Length hours | Student hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lectures | 10 | 2 | 20 |
| Private study hours | 180 | ||
| Total Contact hours | 20 | ||
| Total hours (100hr per 10 credits) | 200 | ||
Each week, a class discussion on prior week’s content will allow for verbal feedback on understanding of content. Students will receive written feedback on the discussion questions in time for them to apply this to the essay. As students will be required to develop their own research topics for the final essay, office hours will be made available for the working out of suitable topics, relevant bibliography etc.
| Assessment type | Notes | % of formal assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Coursework | Written | 50 |
| Coursework | Written | 50 |
| Total percentage (Assessment Coursework) | 100 | |
Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated
The reading list is available from the Library website
Last updated: 8/29/2024
Errors, omissions, failed links etc should be notified to the Catalogue Team